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London, as it stood on the day before the Great Fire started, was a city moulded by hundreds of years of inhabitants. Its streets were narrow,

formed by closely packed wooden houses with crooked overhangs and swinging shop signs that blotted

out the daylight and caused any on horseback to duck perilously as they passed by. Everywhere there was noise and filth.

Animal and human slot ran on the pavements.

There was overcrowding, fighting, trade, sex.

Even the ancient churches dotted about the city,

each marking a small parish in the disordered

whole, could not regulate this unsanitary and rude, rambling place.

But London was also the envy of Europe, a place of commerce and learning.

There were the gleaming shops of Cheapside and the mighty Thames at its heart.

In the midst of all this was Pudding Lane, set close to the river, and, famously, the street

where the disaster of 1666 sparked. The Lane got its name from the medieval pudding, meaning end trails, and pudding

and pudding lane ran with them, hot with the stench of animals alongside all this colourful human

life.

The day before the fire started was a hot one, one of many such days that summer, in which

the temperate weather had baked the scent of the lane until it was overwhelming.

Not that it would have put off any hungry Londoners looking for a meal in this part of the city,

...