Great Fire of London general; and more particularly in this business of the fire, laying it all upon him." Pepys was a senior official in the Navy Office by then, and he ascended the Tower of London on Sunday morning to view the fire from a turret. He recorded in his diary that the eastern gale had turned it into a conflagration. It had burned down several churches and, he estimated, 300 houses and reached the riverfront. The houses on London Bridge were burning. He took a boat to inspect the destruction around Pudding Lane at close range and describes a "lamentable" fire, "everybody
Early fires of London fire occurred in London in 1087, at the beginning of the reign of William Rufus. It consumed much of the Norman city. St Paul's Cathedral was the most significant building to be destroyed in this blaze, which also damaged the Palatine tower built by William the Conqueror on the banks of the River Fleet so badly that the remains had to be pulled down. Part of the stone from the tower was then used in the reconstruction of the cathedral. Before 1666, the phrase "Great Fire of London" was generally used by Londoners to denote one of two major conflagrations