Tudors History Great Fire of London

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The Great Fire of London 1666

School Workshops for significant events beyond living memory

On the 2nd of September 1666, deep in the heart of the Tudor city of London, a fire broke out in a bakery shop on Pudding Lane. For several days, the fire grew and swept across the city, causing a huge amount of damage. While only a few deaths are thought to have resulted, the destruction of buildings was extensive, with many thousands of houses and dwellings reduced to ashes, and as many as 86 parish churches destroyed.

The Great Fire of London was one of the most significant events beyond living memory to take place in our country's history. The fire took place in a cramped, disorganised, organic city of over three hundred thousand people. A city still recovering from The Great Plague of 1665. Fire-fighting wasn't the highly trained and skilled occupation we have today and efforts to extinguish the fire were frustrated by high winds, people fleeing, and the authorities not taking the situation seriously enough in the early stages.

Study the Great Fire with your class in a number of different ways:

• Meet Thomas Farriner the baker
• Discover how The Great Fire of London started
• Discuss why it spread so quickly through the city
• Find out about the attempts and methods used to tackle the blaze
• Hear reactions from Samuel Pepys
• Think about how Londoners reacted to the fire

These workshops can help you look back at the physical changes to a big area of central London, brought about by The Great Fire. How that changed the way people lived and worked in the area. And explore the cultural impact that still reverberates all these years later.

Link a Great Fire of London workshop to your curriculum topics in History, Events Beyond Living Memory, English creative writing, Citizenship and more.