Great Fire of London Tour
London’s burning! Travel back to the year 1666 and trace one of the greatest infernos the world has ever seen.
You will start your tour right where the story begins, at the iconic Monument to the Great Fire of London. It is said that if it were laid down on its side, it would touch the exact spot where the fire ignited. Is this true? There’s only one way to find out, and as you get close to the spot where the blaze began, you’ll notice a clue: a plaque in the ground marking where it is thought the embers of an oven were not fully extinguished.
You will learn that the man to blame was a baker named Thomas Fariner, and, incredibly, you will see that a local office is named after him. The moral of the story: responsible bakers get forgotten, careless ones get immortalised!
Wandering the narrow medieval alleyways, you will learn how they have survived due to the property laws of that era. The King had refused to sanction a planning proposal that could have created a layout for London more like the radial city plan Paris adopted. These alleyways lead to St Dunstan’s-in-the-East churchyard, where material that survived the fire was reused and can still be found today.
You will then get up close to the church tower, where you will discover how Christopher Wren, one of history's great architects, reshaped London forever following the fire.
Across the road, you will stand in front of one of London’s oldest churches. This was where William Penn—who later founded the American state of Pennsylvania—was baptised 22 years before the great fire of London. It is partially thanks to his father that this church survived, as he was instrumental in creating fire breaks to help prevent the fire from spreading.
It is from this very church tower that Samuel Pepys, one of history’s most notorious diarists, observed the fire spreading. Nowadays, Pepys might be described as an “oversharer,” but it is thanks to his frequent diary entries that we know so much about the events of 1666.
Our tour finishes outside the Tower of London, the medieval fortress that miraculously survived the inferno. Had the fire spread this far, it would have been the mother of all explosions, as this is where one of the nation’s largest collections of gunpowder was stored at the time.
Tour Duration: 2 Hours
Meeting Point: Guildhall Yard
End Point: Milllennium Bridge