John Evelyn
Books
- Pudding Lane The Great Fire of London, Hour by Hour · Liszt Think
In the early hours of September 2, 1666, a spark in Thomas Farriner’s Pudding Lane bakehouse ignited a catastrophe that consumed medieval London.
- The City of Wood and Pitch…at ground level, but maximised their use of land by ‘encroaching’ on the street with the gradually increasing size of their upper storeys. John Evelyn had seen this clearly five years before. In 1661 he published Fumifugium, a pamphlet addressed to Charles II that described the cloud of se…
- The Wind as a Mechanism…released vapors that ignited in rolling bursts. This was not arson. This was chemistry and physics, proceeding according to their own laws. John Evelyn, the diarist and royal courtier, would later describe what he saw when he came to the scene. He had been awakened by the noise and light, t…
- The River as Battleground (Daylight Hours, 2 September 1666)…h citizens and their possessions. The Thames was a working artery, not a floodwall, and it could not hold back what the wind drove forward. John Evelyn, observing from the river that evening, reported that it was ‘covered with barges and boats making their escape piled with goods.’ Samuel P…