After the Fire

They stayed till it was dark almost and saw the fire grow; and as it grew darker, appeared more and more, and in corners and upon steeples, and between churches and houses, as far as we could see up the hill of the city, in a most horrid malicious bloody flame, not like the fine flame of an ordinary fire. . . . It made me weep to see it.

--Memoirs of Samuel Pepys.

On the morning of Sunday, Sept. 2, 1666, in the house of the King's baker in London's Pudding Lane, fire broke out.

Four days long it raged in the scrambled streets and. along the water front; then burned itself out. Of the square mile known as the "City," four-fifths lay dead and blackened. St. Paul's Cathedral, the ancient Guildhall, the Custom House and Royal Exchange were gutted; 87 parish churches, 44 City Companies halls, and 13,200 houses in over 400 streets and squares were destroyed.

With undaunted courage Londoners rebuilt their City. Architects Sir Christopher Wren and John Evelyn drew up what for the 17th Century were model reconstruction plans. The Rebuilding Act of 1667 directed that brick and stone only should be used. A brick-built City slowly arose that was orderly in design and in marked contrast to the picturesque jumble of gabled houses removed by the fire. Only the medieval street plan was retained. A new St. Paul's designed by Wren lifted its massive dome over a new City. Two and a half centuries placed the patina of age on Wren's masterpiece, but Londoners still talked about their Great Fire.

Then on another Sunday foreign youths in sleek black bombers swept over central London and dumped 10,000 incendiary bombs in a coldly calculated Nazi attempt at mass arson. Any modern Samuel Pepys picking his way through the twisted streets of the City last week could have described scenes matching those of 1666.

Fire had eaten great hunks out of the heart of Britain's Empire. Streets were lined with gutted shells of office buildings.

They were mostly three-or four-story structures--musty headquarters for centuries of proud merchant traders, insurance brokers and craftsmen who preferred tradition to comfort. Here & there stood the steel skeleton of a modern building, its girders fantastically warped and bulged by heat. Fleet Street, mecca of British journalism, was badly hit, and behind it stood the blackened hulk of the Associated Press building. St. Bride's white spire, Wren's "madrigal in stone," stood alone over the ruins of the church. Supreme amid wreckage rose the great dome of St. Paul's, saved through the devotion of scores of clerks, journalists and professional men who kept a 24-hour vigil over it. Guarding every foot of the roof, they extinguished firebombs as they landed and doused flaming cinders blown by the wind.

Nine churches, eight of them by Wren, were destroyed. Dr. Samuel Johnson's house in Gough Square was roofless and gutted, but his extra-size chair and first edition of his dictionary had been rescued. Old Bailey, scene of famous and infamous trials, was partially burned; the Temple, already battered by a dozen bombs, was set aflame; and the Inner Temple, sanctum of British law, had five of its buildings burning at once. Its great Gothic library was reduced to rubble.

Britons felt most keenly the destruction of the Guildhall, medieval town hall of London where for six centuries the great and illustrious have been honored with pageantry and much of the history of the British Empire has been made. Within the charred shell of its Gothic walls black-faced workmen pried under massive oaken beams searching for the familiar old figures of Gog and Magog, 14 1/2-foot wooden grotesques who guarded the Guildhall.

Londoners recalled a famous Elizabethan prophecy that if Gog and Magog were ever destroyed, London's City would go too. Lost was the Guildhall's greatest treasure--the 11th-Century parchment charter granted the City of London by William the Conqueror.

A stooped, burly figure wearing a black Homburg hat and puffing a cigar strode through the City's ruins. When he came to a puddle of water several inches deep he waded through it. "Stick to it, Winnie," shouted the people as they recognized their Prime Minister. "We won't crack up!" "No sir," he replied, "we won't crack up."

A grey-haired old newsvendor called her papers in the midst of desolation. "Me move?" she said. "I've 'ad this stand for 50 years and it'll take more than a fire to make me give it up."

Firebomb Fighters. As in 1666, Londoners again rolled up their sleeves and went to work clearing away debris and opening traffic lanes. The fire had revealed plainly the need for more fire-watchers and equipment. Many buildings, including the Guildhall, might have been saved had not the watchers taken Sunday night off.

In a fighting speech to the nation, Minister of Home Security Herbert Morrison roundly condemned "irresponsible property owners" who had not even placed watchers over their own premises and announced that if necessary the Government would use compulsion to acquire an adequate number of spotters. Incendiaries, he emphasized, can be easily extinguished with sand or removed, and this work must be done by civilians in order to leave the fire brigades free to fight bigger blazes. Boy Scouts 15 and 16 years old were mobilized last week as spotters and women were also asked to join the new organization known as "Firebomb Fighters." "Fighting firebombs is dangerous work," said Morrison, "but the time is long gone by when women can be kept away from dangerous work in defense of their country." Eight nights later when the Nazis attempted a repeat performance, men, women and boys swarmed over buildings extinguishing three-pound incendiaries as they landed. "We want more!" they chanted exultantly as the Nazis finally gave up and went home. To insure adequate supplies of water for future fires, plans were under consideration for sealing basements and storing millions of gallons at strategic points throughout the city.

Reconstruction. Londoners were determined to turn Hitler's destruction into a "Heaven-sent" opportunity for civic improvement, and as dynamite squads reduced tottering walls and chimneys, the press blossomed with articles on post-war construction. Wrote Donald Evelyn Edward Gibson, architect assigned to the task of rebuilding Coventry: "[London] was the great magnet, but owing to the misapplication of democratic principles it became a mass of barbarity in which too many sought to better themselves at the expense of others. . . . Meanwhile, looking on impotently was a great body of highly trained architects and planners visualizing rational and ordered plans for living. . . . Will the landowners with their often short-sighted and acquisitive outlook again be allowed to smash the ideas of our 20th-century Wrens?"

The task of national replanning went to stuffy but astute Minister of Works and Buildings Sir John Reith. With the assistance of Consulting Engineer Colonel Howard Humphreys as Director of Works, and Architect Thomas S. Tait as Director of Standardization, he last week submitted a reconstruction plan of vast perspective to the Cabinet. In it he recommended that such Gordian knots as land-tenure complexities and conflicting powers of local authorities be resolutely slashed, that reconstruction be planned on a mammoth scale with decentralized industry, new housing arrangements and social amenities for workers, highway planning, and reapportionment of land on the principle that all land of whatever category must be used for the communities' benefit.

"I want a brighter England," said Architect Tait. "I want to see gloom banished from the grey industrial areas. I want great simplicity in design, good proportion, more light, more color, more lakes and more fountains. . . . Needs and modern materials will dictate our architecture. It will have to be functional but it will not be ugly, cubist or arrogantly advanced."

Britons wondered: Would it look like London?

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