Great Fire of London Map – The City after 1666

London after the Great Fire: Reading Emanuel Bowen’s Map

The map’s full engraved title is A Plan of the City and Liberties of London after the Dreadful Conflagration in the Year 1666. It was produced by Emanuel Bowen, one of the leading British mapmakers of the eighteenth century, using a plan made by the Bohemian-born artist and engraver Wenceslaus Hollar soon after the fire. Surviving examples of Bowen’s map are variously dated to around 1740 and to its appearance in William Maitland’s History of London in 1756.

Hollar was exceptionally well placed to record the disaster. He had already drawn London in remarkable detail, and his 1666 Map or Groundplot of the Citty of London became one of the most important cartographic records of the fire’s extent. Bowen adapted this earlier work into a compact, highly legible historical plan. The engraved explanation states that the blank area represents the ruins and extent of the fire, while the buildings drawn in perspective were left standing.

That simple visual device makes the devastation immediately understandable. The pale, emptied heart of the City stretches westwards from the neighbourhood of Pudding Lane towards the Temple, enclosed by surviving districts to the north and by the busy Thames waterfront to the south. London Bridge, the Tower, the city wall, roads, gates and river stairs provide familiar points of orientation. Two inset keys identify remarkable places and the churches of the City and suburbs, turning the engraving into both a record of destruction and a guide to seventeenth-century London.

The fire began at about one o’clock on the morning of 2 September 1666 in the Pudding Lane bakery of Thomas Farriner. A dry summer, strong winds and closely packed timber buildings allowed the flames to spread with frightening speed. Firefighting depended on buckets, hooks, primitive squirts and the demolition of buildings to create firebreaks. When the blaze was finally brought under control four days later, it had consumed four-fifths of the City.

Around 13,200 houses and 87 churches were destroyed, together with the old St Paul’s Cathedral, the Royal Exchange, Guildhall and dozens of livery company halls. Approximately 100,000 people were left homeless. The official death toll was small, but the true number remains uncertain, and the loss of homes, goods, workshops, records and livelihoods was immense. Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn left vivid eyewitness accounts, but maps such as Hollar’s and Bowen’s allow the physical scale of the catastrophe to be grasped at a glance.

The ruins also presented an opportunity to redesign the capital. Christopher Wren, John Evelyn and others proposed broad avenues, formal squares and a more regular street plan. These ambitious schemes proved impractical because property boundaries had to be resolved quickly and Londoners needed to rebuild their homes and businesses. Most streets therefore followed their former courses, although some were widened and improved.

The Rebuilding Act of 1667 required new houses to be constructed in brick or stone and regulated their height and form. A special Fire Court helped settle disputes between landlords and tenants, while Wren and his colleagues reshaped the skyline through the rebuilding of St Paul’s and 51 City churches. By 1676, most of the devastated area had been rebuilt, creating a safer but still recognisably medieval street pattern.

Near Pudding Lane, the Monument became the most conspicuous memorial to the disaster and recovery. Designed by Robert Hooke in consultation with Sir Christopher Wren, the Portland-stone column stands 202 feet high and exactly 202 feet west of the traditional site where the fire began. Its 311 spiral steps still lead to a viewing platform above the City.