by Brickchick
John Farynor was just a
humble tradesman when he was given the honor to serve as royal baker to King
Charles II, who had recently attained his throne after his exile to France.
He had served his King for 5 years when one evening in 1666, he made what
could well have been the biggest mistake of his life. He left his bread oven
on.The flames grew and grew until it engulfed most of his establishment, before setting fire to a stack of hay in the courtyard of the nearby Star Inn. This area of old London was overcrowded, and a big group of people rushed out to watch the mighty blaze, none of them worried by it because flames appeared often here, thanks to the pitch-soaked timbers and lathe and plaster constructions of most of its buildings. Why, just the year before, King Charles II had issued stricter laws regarding fire regulations. Most of the time the flames would die down by themselves after a while anyway, so there was nothing to worry about. Or so they thought.
The blaze did not die down, moreover spreading close to the main road and towards the London Bridge, alerting the mayor of it. The mayor, however, was similarly unimpressed with the blaze, thinking, like many of the other inhabitants, that it would simply die down by itself.
It was only on the afternoon of the next day that any thoughts of the fire going off by itself was dispelled. The fire had reached the River Thames, slowly burning the warehouses filled with timber, oil, brandy and coal that lined its banks, all of them exploding one after the other, fuelling the fire even more.
It was by a sheer miracle
that only 8 people perished in the fire, all the other citizens having had
enough time to pull their belongings together to flee the burning city.The blaze continued until Wednesday, destroying approximately 13,000 houses, 87 churches and 300 acres of land. By Wednesday night the fire was contained, although London smouldered for weeks afterwards and some cellars were still burning six months after that.