London on the eve of the Great Fire — a talk by Professor Vanessa Harding
[This is the text, slightly edited, of a talk given at the Historic Towns Trust’s reception on 1 September 2026, commemorating the 360th anniversary of the eve of the Great Fire and updating guests - donors and other interested parties - on methods and progress]
I hope that we’re all here because we are interested in the history of London and its institutions, and open to the idea that historical maps are a good way of visualising and making sense of that history. I’m here to argue that London’s long and complex history is immensely enriched and illuminated by historical mapping, and to explain the present project, an atlas centred on a large-scale map of London in 1666.
I’ll focus on three questions: Why choose to map London on the eve of the Great Fire? What sources make the enterprise possible? And how in practice does the research proceed?
Why choose the eve of the GF?
The Historic Towns Trust has been making historical maps for decades. Our publications include an Atlas of the City of London to c.1520, published in 1989, and more recently two folding maps updating the research in that atlas and completely redoing the cartography, representing Medieval London c.1270-1300, and early Tudor London c.1520.
But that leaves a lot of London history un-covered, though the popularity of these maps suggests a widespread appetite for more. For me, the big gap has been the period between the early 16th century – the date of our reconstructed early Tudor London map - and the late 17th century, when we have the first surveyed maps of the metropolis and a proliferation of plans, views, and other images. From that time on, it’s much easier for London historians and enthusiasts to place themselves spatially and visually, in a known urban landscape.
I taught 16th and 17th century London history for many years and always felt the lack of a good large-scale map. Virtually every book on early modern London has a map, but these are almost always small-scale, and can never take the reader down to the level at which life was actually lived; to the physical spaces and social topography that influenced every aspect of life from religion to politics to social interaction and health.
So the plan to create a map of early modern London, at the large scale and with the cartographic accuracy and elegance that characterises HTT’s publications, is one that’s been close to my heart for many years. It’s taken time to get the project together, and it couldn’t have happened without immense support from within the Historic Towns Trust, and the vital financial contribution that many of the guests here tonight have made, especially the London Topographical Society, with whom this will be a joint publication in 2027.
Within the early modern period - roughly 1500 to 1700 – we’ve settled on the eve of the Fire of 1666 as the date to show. The Fire is itself a big enough reason, given the subsequent changes to the city’s topography, but there are other important reasons for choosing the early 1660s.
Here I stress that our map will cover the whole of London, north and south of the river, as it was at that time; and this was a dramatically different entity from London in 1520. The single most important change was that of scale: London in 1520 had a population of at most 80,000 people; by the 1660s it probably exceeded 400,000. From a dense medieval core with a couple of satellites, it had become one continuous building stretching from Westminster to Wapping, and from Shoreditch to Southwark. That in itself is why we are creating a paginated atlas, not a single-sheet map – that’s simply not feasible.
Within that broader urban spread, many changes of character were visible. The Reformation had swept away the monasteries and nunneries that had studded the medieval city, leaving the parish churches, St Paul’s cathedral and Westminster Abbey, as well as new nonconformist and non-Christian communities. The offices of royal government now sprawled across Whitehall and Westminster; the medieval Inns of Court and Chancery had created a new legal quarter to the west of the City. The city centre, though still densely populated, and the home of many traditional handicrafts and retailers, now also accommodated trading companies, coffee houses and exchanges, business premises and counting-houses. Shipbuilding and maritime industries dominated a new east end.
For the city, 1666 was a year like no other, but for London as a whole the early 1660s were almost equally fraught. The civil war and republican experiment had ended with the seemingly peaceful restoration of the monarchy, and a boost to sociable and fashionable life, but there was still real potential for sedition and insurrection. There was considerable religious tension, as the high-Anglican restored church marginalised both Protestant nonconformists and Catholics. The outbreak of war with our closest continental neighbours, the Dutch republic and France, brought fears of invasion or coastal attack. And in 1665 London suffered the worst plague epidemic for 40 years, in which a fifth of the population died.
So there are many concurrent stories to tell about 1660s London, almost all of which contribute to, and benefit from, an understanding of the topographical detail. And this is our aim: to create a map that will show London in 1666 at a scale that will help the reader to visualise the places and spaces of the metropolis, to locate events, track itineraries, appreciate the fine detail of the urban environment, and see the local impacts of broad developments.
What sources make it possible?
Our choice to focus on 1666 for historical reasons is supported by the convergence of several different sets of sources, some visual and cartographic, some written.
I mentioned that the later 17th century saw the production of the first large-scale, surveyed, plan-form maps of London, and though these postdate the Fire, they are invaluable reference points for us. Principally, these are John Ogilby and William Morgan’s map of the city in 1676 – ten years after the fire, when much of the rebuilding had been completed – at the huge scale of 100 ft to the inch; and William Morgan’s larger size but smaller scale map of the whole metropolis in 1682.
In addition to these, there is much more in the way of estate and property plans from the later 17th century. The Fire evidently made landlords and property-holders (including the City and the Livery Companies) appreciate the value of having drawn surveys of their properties: these were comparatively rare before the Fire but proliferate in the later 17th and early 18th centuries. They are useful both for areas burnt in the fire, where they help us to exactly locate the rebuilt properties and understand changes, but also for the areas outside the fire where they may depict much older buildings and developments.
Also important for comparison are the picture-maps of the immediate pre-Fire period. Though their style and scale mean that they are not always reliable in detail, they can be helpful for individual buildings, and certainly for the spread of the built-up area.
When it comes to (largely) written sources, while the Fire of 1666 destroyed tens of thousands of houses and numerous public buildings and churches (and quite a lot of potentially useful documentation), the process of rebuilding stimulated enormous activity in surveying and documenting what had been there and what was changing as the city was rebuilt.
A large-scale cartographic survey of the streets of the burnt city was undertaken, and while the original 6-sheet survey does not appear to have survived, there is a MS version by John Leake in the British Library, which we are using, and one or more versions redrawn and published by Wenceslas Hollar. Leake’s map in particular is important as showing some of the irregularities of the pre-Fire streets ironed out by the post-Fire improvements, street-widths at critical points, and the footprints of the pre-Fire churches.
And the documentation of the rebuilding allows us to edit back from later maps to what was there before. The archives of the City of London include records of street widening and improvements, and the land purchases necessary for that to happen; the written and drawn surveys of individual house-plots, required before the occupants could legally start rebuilding; and the proceedings of the court set up to resolve disputes between ground landlords and lessees about costs and responsibilities for rebuilding. While the Lord Mayor at the time of the Fire, Sir Thomas Bludworth, may not have covered himself in glory, the City’s administrators and bureaucrats, under considerable pressure, achieved a remarkable amount in the management of recovery and rebuilding.
The other major source that helps us envision London on the eve of the Fire is the records of the Hearth Tax, a national property tax imposed from 1662. The tax took the number of fire-hearths or fireplaces in a property as a proxy for its size and value, and charged householders a fixed sum for each hearth. The returns, made by ward or parish, list each householder and the number of hearths in his or her house, and usually the street or alley in which the house stood. Not all the returns are perfect, not all survive, but they do for most of the metropolis, north and south of the river.
They offer us the names of streets and alleys as they were in common use just before the fire; they may confirm the existence and approximate locations of a number of public buildings, company halls, and aristocratic residences; and they give an overview of housing stock and living patterns across the metropolis.
In addition to these there are many written sources of various kinds. Perhaps the principal of these – not least because it’s available in an excellent online edition – is John Strype’s 1720 edition of John Stow’s Survey of London. Stow’s Survey is invaluable for London c.1600, but Strype brings together the texts of Stow and his 17th-century continuators, adds plentiful detail on the pre-Fire city, and gives important information on the Fire, the rebuilding legislation, and the resulting development of London.
How the historical research proceeds
So moving on to how the historical research is proceeding. With a teeming metropolis of 400,000 people, sprawling over several square miles, how do you even begin? Well, as the old joke about how do you eat an elephant goes, the answer is one bite at a time. In practice, we have moved between generating resources for the project as a whole, and implementing them bit by bit.
Thanks to generous grants from the LTS, British Academy, the City of London Archaeological Trust, and now other donors to the project, we have been able to assemble an excellent team, comprising Giles Darkes, HTT’s cartographic editor, researchers Michael Powell-Davies, Joe Saunders, and, until January this year, Richard Asquith, and volunteer project manager Dr Adele Sykes. Last year Michael, Joe and Richard focused on compiling a working directory of street- and place-names from the later maps, and researching and creating a bibliography of the multiple sources for the archaeology and building history of early modern London. At the same time, they undertook a couple of pilot mapping projects to see how this would work in practice; a very useful exercise for us all.
Since early 2026, Joe and Michael, and I when I can, have been researching individual areas and features and remitting information to Giles to put on the map. Integrated with the area-level research is deeper research on more complex archaeological and historical sites, specifically funded by the City of London Archaeological Trust.
For the most part we are working parish by parish. The early modern parish was the prime unit of local government, poor relief, worship, and local and often national taxation. Parishes kept records of baptisms, marriages and burials, as well as of the activities of the vestry and churchwardens. Properties were often identified by parish as well as by street or name, especially for legal purposes.
Early modern London (in its broadest understanding) comprised 130 parishes, though of very different sizes, populations, and complexity. The 97 parishes within the walls averaged less than 5 acres in extent; many of those outside the walls were scores or hundreds of acres in extent. For the parishes within the walls, it often makes sense to work on a group of contiguous parishes at the same time, since most streets run through several parishes; outside the walls, one parish may have to be broken down into several component areas.
But the principle for researching any parish is the same. What the researcher needs to do is twofold: provide the cartographer with information in graphic form that will allow him to map the features of the area in question with accuracy; and draft entries for the Gazetteer of places, streets and features that will accompany the map.
The practice is much the same too:
Begin with reviewing the Working Directory of streets and placenames, to understand what was there in 1676 and 1682.
Study the 17th-century (and later) maps themselves to get a sense of the features and spatial relationships of the parish or area.
Review the Hearth Tax return for the parish in question and extract any useful information.
Check the bibliography of sources for the archaeology and building history of early modern London (which purposely included a field for the parish in which the feature studied lay) and follow these up.
Consult Strype, both for what he says of the parish and its buildings before 1666, and any insights he might give into how it developed afterwards.
For the area burnt in the Fire, check the published sources – foundation surveys, the records of the Fire Court, etc., for placenames and clues to what was there before the Fire.
Review other potential sources – but bear in mind the limited time we have and don’t obsess over minutiae!
Once this material has been assembled, it’s a question of wrestling it into shape; creating a list of the features to be mapped, marking them on a version of the base map, and indicating to the cartographer how certain any item or feature is. For example, you may know that a building was there, but not be sure of its footprint. Every step involves assessment and judgment, and you have to be able to justify your decisions. The markup needs to be as accurate as possible before asking Giles to put in time on mapping it – but at the same time, there are bound to be changes of mind or opinion, or chance finds of information that alter one’s view of things. The first version is never the last.
How the research is put on the map
As with HTT’s other maps and atlases, this project takes a large-scale Ordnance Survey map of the 19th century as a base and overlays on it the historical features we wish to show.
This project uses the 1:1056 or 25-inch OS map surveyed in 1894, acquired as digital files from the National Library of Scotland. This was then professionally vector digitised and georectified, a major element in the cost. The cartographic editor then prepared a cleaned-up base, without the visual ‘noise’ of labels and excess details. Put simply, his task is to take the data submitted by the researchers and turn it into mapped features – but there are many steps and many critical decisions to be taken on the way, some common to all our projects, some specific to this one. A later post will explore the mapping process for this project, but in the meantime, Giles Darkes explains the general principles here.
A selection of sources used for mapping London on the Eve of the Great Fire
Davies, M., Ferguson, C., Harding, V., Parkinson, E., and Wareham, A., London and Middlesex 1666 hearth tax, 2 vols (British Record Society 2014)
Gerhold, D., London Plotted. Plans of London buildings c. 1450-1720 (London Topographical Society 2016)
Jones, P.E., The Fire Court: calendar to the judgments and decrees of the Court of Judicature appointed to determine differences between landlords and tenants as to rebuilding after the Great Fire, 2 vols (1966-70)
Doolittle, I., and Jones, P., The Fire Court: calendar of the judgments and decrees of the Court of Judicature appointed to determine differences between landlords and tenants as to rebuilding after the Great Fire, vol. 3 (2020)
Morgan, William, ‘London &c. Actually Survey’d’ (1682). Reproduced in Peter Barber, Ralph Hyde, Robert Thompson and Ann Saunders
The A to Z of Charles II’s London 1682 (London Topographical Society 2013)
Ogilby, John, & William Morgan, ‘A large and accurate map of the City of London’ (1676). Reproduced in Ralph Hyde, John Fisher and Roger Cline, The A to Z of Restoration London (London Topographical Society 1992)
Schofield, J., ed., The London surveys of Ralph Treswell (London Topographical Society 1987)
The survey of building sites in the City of London after the Great Fire of 1666, by Peter Mills and John Oliver, reproduced in facsimile from Guildhall Library MS. 84, 5 vols (London Topographical Society 1946--66)
