After 1976, and this year’s heatwave, we might assume that hot summers are a new phenomenon. Yet, as Samuel Pepys wrote in his diaries, 1666 was one of the hottest and driest on record, with 7 June being, according to Pepys, “the hottest day that I have ever felt in my life”.
July and August brought no relief to a drought that had begun the previous winter. Then, on 2 September, disaster struck: Thomas Farriner, a baker in Pudding Lane near London Bridge, raked his bread oven and went to bed, failing to notice that a coal had fallen out of the hearth.
During the night, the tinder-dry bakery caught fire, which soon spread across much of the City of London, helped by the very dry and warm conditions, and a strong wind. The fire raged for four days, until finally the wind dropped and it began to die out.
In the short term, the Great Fire was a disaster for London. With hindsight, however, we can see that it allowed the modern city we know today to rise from the ashes. All because of an unusually hot, dry summer.
