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
Great Fire of Whitstable, 1869 Great Fire of Whitstable, 1869 The Great Fire of Whitstable in 1869 devastated the coastal town of Whitstable in Kent, England. On the evening of Wednesday, 16 November 1869, the fire swept through the closely built area along The Wall, west of the town's harbour. Given that the population of the town was a little under 2,000, the disaster that befell the little fishing harbour must have been big news across the region, as the fire drew a crowd of 10,000 spectators. It was the local coastguard, Edwin George Lane, who on 16 November at about 10.45pm spotted flames coming