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The Great Fire Of London



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Wed Sep 17, 2008 5:15 pm
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CastlesInTheSky says...



Okay, I had to write an essay about the Great Fire Of London on 1666, in newspaper article format.
It's really,really horrible. I just have done an awful job of it. Can you suggest ways of improving it?
(The spacing I've done in this version isn't the original, so some of the paragraphs may be dodgy. I had to space it a lot, or people wouldn't be able to read it). Thanks so much. Sarah.


__________

LONDON BRIDGE IS BURNING DOWN

London was obliterated in four days when a huge, raging fire broke out overnight, destroying most of the city.

It spread rapidly through the old, timber-framed buildings of the city, raging ferociously for four whole days. Many were injured and lost their homes. Six people were killed, but the fire was eventually stopped by the pulling down of houses.

The Great Fire began on the night of September 2, as a small fire on Pudding Lane, in the King’s Bakery. It occurred because the baker, Thomas Farynor, had forgotten to close the oven. At one o’clock in the morning, a servant awoke to find the house in flames. The baker and his family escaped, but unfortunately, a maid-servant died, trapped in the building.

Because the houses in London were built out of wood and pitch construction, they were dangerously flammable. The fire expanded quickly, leaping onto the yard of the Star Inn at Fish Street Hill. The weather had been atrocious over the previous months, and the strong wind squalling that night blew sparks out.

This set St Margaret’s Church alight, and then spread to Thames’s street, by the riverside. The warehouses were filled with hay, timber and coal, all food for the flames to consume. The fire brigades had no success in dousing the fire as the only extinguishers they had was buckets of water from the river. By eight o’clock in the morning, the fire had spread halfway across London Bridge. The only thing that stopped the fire from spreading to Southwark, on the other side of the river, was the gap that had been caused by a previous fire in 1633.

As we discovered from onlookers, there was an overwhelming sense of pandemonium; no-one fully understanding the situation or what to do about it. Some people stayed inside their houses until the fire touched them and others deserted their homes and tried in vain to reach a safe place. Nobody attempted to quench the fire in their hurry to get to the waterside, and the emergency fire pump had been trapped in the flames. It was a nightmare.

Many of the townspeople gathered together their belongings and flung them into the river, desperate to protect them. In the midst of this turmoil, there was a strong sense of comradeship and everybody united.

The people who had been as lucky not to have had their houses burnt welcomed the more unfortunate into their home. However, the more disreputable locals took advantage of the chaos and started looting goods from people’s houses that had been abandoned.

We interviewed Samuel Pepys, an eyewitness of the great fire. When describing the atmosphere, he said that, “The streets were full of nothing but people and horses and carts loaden with goods, ready to run over one another. People were removing goods out of one burnt house to another.”

He also recounted that when he was taking refuge in the water, “with one’s face in the wind you were almost burned with a shower of firedrops.”

We also interviewed the baker of the King’s bakery house, who started the whole event. He said, “I was filled with horror when I realised what I had done. I endeavoured to quench the fire but it was far too late and I had to make my escape from the building. I feel unbelievably guilty, having the blood of six people on my hands. It will haunt me forever.” The servant who discovered the fire said, “It was a truly horrific sight, waking up and seeing the whole house blazing. I wish that the maidservant had managed to get out alive.”

We surveyed a portion of the people involved and nearly 80% of these were unaware that the fire was putting them in danger until the second day. That was when panic erupted over London. Most of them ignored the fire and attempted to sleep through the ear-splitting noise, increasing throughout the first night.

The standard procedure to contain a fire had always been to destroy the buildings on the flame’s path. The Lord Mayor had been hesitant about this decision as he was worried bout the cost of rebuilding all the houses. A Royal Command was eventually sent by Samuel Pepys to carry this order out, but by this time the fire was too out of control to stop.

The Trained Bands were called in to demolish houses by blowing them up with gunpowder. This only worked after three days, when it halted near Temple Church. When it sprang to life again, continuing towards Westminster, the Duke of York ordered the Paper House Demolished. This created a fire break and the fire was stopped. The people watching from the waterside had the misfortune of seeing the flames in a great arch over London, and as Pepys said when interviewed, “It made me weep to see it.”

Although the fire’s devastation of London could be generally considered as a disaster, it brought some measure of good to London. The one positive effect was that the plague, which had ravished London since 1665, was wiped out because of the rats that had died in the blaze.

Although hardly anyone died in the fire - sources only report about six deaths - the property loss was staggering. 430 acres of the city was destroyed and thousands of citizens, after escaping across the Thames, found themselves homeless and poor. The Great Fire, which destroyed over 600 houses south of the river, changed London’s face forever.
Had I the heavens embroider'd cloths,
I would spread the cloths under your feet.
But I being poor, have only my dreams,
So tread softly, for you tread on my life.
  








Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.
— Lyndon B. Johnson