Everything about The Second Great Fire Of London totally explained
The night of
29 December/
30 December 1940 was one of the most destructive
air raids of the
London Blitz, destroying many
Livery Halls and gutting the medieval Great Hall of the City's
Guildhall.
This night was quickly dubbed
The Second Great Fire of London and destroyed an area arguably greater than that of the
Great Fire of London of
1666. Some 1500
fires were started, including three major conflagrations. Whereas in 1666 the devastation was overwhelmingly within the City proper, in 1940, it extended far beyond. The largest continuous area of Blitz destruction anywhere in
Britain occurred that night, stretching down from
Islington to the very edge of St Paul's Churchyard.
St Paul's Cathedral itself was only saved by the dedication of its volunteer firewatchers and by the London firemen who fought to keep the flames from spreading to its roof, and that the
Luftwaffe pilots used the Cathedral as a navigation marker on their bombing runs.
Aftermath
Although the 'Second Great Fire of London' has been almost forgotten among the raids that happened later in the war (including the much more deadly
Dresden raid), it's commemorated in a famous photograph taken from the roof of the
Daily Mail building by
Herbert Mason, in which the dome of St Paul's Cathedral rises above
clouds of black smoke.
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