Buildings in the City of London after the Great Fire of 1666

Abstract

This paper describes features of secular buildings, mostly houses, shops, and warehouses, standing in the City of London in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; buildings in some cases constructed after the Great Fire of September 1666, and in other cases buildings from before the fire which stood in the zone outside it until the nineteenth century. Some prevalent types of smaller house in the rebuilt city are described; and, to compare with them, some houses in the area outside the fire which are known from historic plans and antiquarian drawings. Briefly some archaeological aspects are outlined: prospects for reconstructing the interiors of houses, London’s incipient involvement in slavery, and the houses of some prominent seventeenth-century citizens who financed slavery. Other matters raised are criticism of scholars who have habitually described the city after the fire as totally rebuilt in brick, which it was not; and the statement, also often made, that after the fire London became a modern city. This is questioned.