page_title: Great Fire of London
section_title: Monday
hierarchical_section_title: Great Fire of London / Development of the fire / Monday
caption_attribution_description: English: Spread of the Great Fire of London, by Monday, Sept 3, 1666. Drawn by myself in Corel Draw.
context_page_description: The Great Fire of London swept through the central parts of the city from Sunday, 2 September to Thursday, 6 September 1666. The fire gutted the medieval City of London inside the old Roman city wall. It threatened but did not reach the City of Westminster, Charles II's Palace of Whitehall, or most of the suburban slums. It destroyed 13,200 houses, 87 parish churches, St Paul's Cathedral, and most of the buildings of the City authorities. It is estimated to have destroyed the homes of 70,000 of the city's 80,000 inhabitants.
  The death toll is unknown but generally thought to have been relatively small; only six verified deaths were recorded. Some historians have challenged this belief claiming the deaths of poorer citizens were not recorded and that the heat of the fire may have cremated many victims, leaving no recognisable remains. A melted piece of pottery on display at the Museum of London found by archaeologists in Pudding Lane, where the fire started, shows that the temperature reached 1,250 °C.
context_section_description: The fire was principally expanding north and west by dawn on Monday, 3 September, the turbulence of the fire storm pushing the flames both farther south and farther north than the day before. The spread to the south was mostly halted by the river, but it had torched the houses on London Bridge and was threatening to cross the bridge and endanger the borough of Southwark on the south bank of the river. Southwark was preserved by a pre-existent firebreak on the bridge, a long gap between the buildings which had saved the south side of the Thames in the fire of 1632 and now did so again. Flying embers started a fire in Southwark but it was quickly stopped.
  The fire's spread to the north reached the financial heart of the City. The houses of the bankers in Lombard Street began to burn on Monday afternoon, prompting a rush to get their stacks of gold coins, so crucial to the wealth of the city and nation, to safety before they melted away. Several observers emphasise the despair and helplessness which seemed to seize Londoners on this second day, and the lack of efforts to save the wealthy, fashionable districts which were now menaced by the flames, such as the Royal Exchange—combined bourse and shopping centre – and the opulent consumer goods shops in Cheapside. The Royal Exchange caught fire in the late afternoon, and was a smoking shell within a few hours. John Evelyn, courtier and diarist, wrote:
  The conflagration was so universal, and the people so astonished, that from the beginning, I know not by what despondency or fate, they hardly stirred to quench it, so that there was nothing heard or seen but crying out and lamentation, running about like distracted creatures without at all attempting to save even their goods, such a strange consternation there was upon them.
  Evelyn lived in Deptford, four miles (6 km) outside the City, and so he did not see the early stages of the disaster. He went by coach to Southwark on Monday, joining many other upper-class people, to see the view which Pepys had seen the day before of the burning City across the river. The conflagration was much larger now: "the whole City in dreadful flames near the water-side; all the houses from the Bridge, all Thames-street, and upwards towards Cheapside, down to the Three Cranes, were now consumed".
  In the evening, Evelyn reported that the river was covered with barges and boats making their escape piled with goods. He observed a great exodus of carts and pedestrians through the bottleneck City gates, making for the open fields to the north and east, "which for many miles were strewed with moveables of all sorts, and tents erecting to shelter both people and what goods they could get away. Oh, the miserable and calamitous spectacle!"
caption:      Approximate damage by the evening of Monday, 3 September
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