On this day in 1666, the worst blazes of the Great Fire of London engulfed the City, creating, in the words of Samuel Pepys, “the saddest sight of desolation” he ever saw. Eliot Wilson tells us more

It started in a bakery owned by Thomas Farriner, in Pudding Lane in the City of London. A well-known figure in his early 50s, he held the office of Conduct of the King’s Bakehouse and sold bread and hardtack to the Royal Navy. On 1 September 1666, like every other day, he finished working at around 10.00pm and raked the coals in his bread ovens to subdue the fires. After that, he could go to bed.

Shortly before 2.00 am on Sunday, Farriner and his family (daughter Hanna and son Thomas, as well as a maidservant whose name is not recorded) were woken by thick, choking smoke coming under the doors and filling their bedrooms. One of the ovens had been left too hot and had caught fire, flames and smoke now billowing up the staircase, hungry for oxygen.

The only way to get out, to get to safety, was to climb through the window and out over the roof. Farriner’s maid, afraid of falling, refused to make the journey,........

© City A.M.