02/09/2026
360 years ago today, London began to burn.
In the early hours of 2 September 1666, a fire caught in a bakery on Pudding Lane. Over four days it took most of the medieval city. 87 parish churches. More than 13,000 homes. And old St Paul's Cathedral.
That cathedral was a place people walked to. By an old tradition it was the east minster, the counterpart to Westminster in the west. Behind its high altar stood the shrine of St Erkenwald, a 7th-century bishop of London, and for centuries pilgrims made the journey to reach it. Katherine of Aragon left an offering there in 1501, two days before her wedding. In four days, it was gone.
Nine years later, Wren began the St Paul's that stands today. Digging the new foundations, he looked for the temple to the goddess Diana that legend said had stood on this hill since Roman times. He found no trace of it. But as he marked out the centre of the new dome, he sent a workman for a stone from the rubble, and the man came back with a fragment of an old gravestone. One word was still legible on it. Resurgam. I shall rise again.
He had it carved into the new cathedral, beneath a phoenix on the south front, where you can find it now.
Wren dreamed bigger too. He wanted a whole new city of wide avenues radiating from grand squares, but Londoners rebuilt on the old medieval lines and the plan was lost. Rumour has it his design later shaped the streets of Washington DC.
Places we walk to can be lost. The walking to what matters outlives them. Our guided London pilgrimages pass the Monument that marks where the fire began, where stone benches now carry the words of the old round, London's Burning, London's Burning. The next walks are 29 September and 29 October, book online: https://www.britishpilgrimage.org/events/london-michaelmas-pilgrimage-26
Images: The Great Fire of London (ca. 1797), Philip James de Loutherbourg. Old St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, seen from the East (1656–58), Wenceslaus Hollar.
