Episode 234 was all about Fire in Tudor and Medieval England. Fire is an element that was very basic and primal, completely necessary, but could also destroy your life and your home in minutes. It completely destroyed cities. It was a constant necessity that was also incredibly dangerous. Let’s discuss!
Hello, friend, and welcome to the Renaissance English History Podcast, a part of the Agora Podcast Network and the Original Tudor Podcast, telling stories of Tudor England since 2009. I am Heather Teysko. I am your host. I’m a storyteller who makes history accessible because I believe it’s a pathway to understanding who we are, our place in the universe, and being much more deeply in touch with our own humanity.
This is episode two hundred and thirty four, thirty five, something around there. And we are talking about something very basic, very primal today, and that is fires. Fire was a major part of life for pre modern people, uh, before there were stoves, it’s how you cooked. There was always the risk of fire damaging your home, homes were wooden.
There were great fires, we’re all familiar with the Great Fire of London. Uh, there were other fires before then. So we’re just going to put it all together today and just talk about fire. So thank you for being here with me. This episode is on fire. I just had to say that I couldn’t pass it up. Sometimes, sometimes things like that are just presented to you on a platter and you have to take it.
So here we go. Let us get right into it. Today, like I said, we are exploring an element that has shaped civilizations, sparked innovation, and also brought devastation. Fire. Before the advent of modern fire management technologies and practices, Fire was both a vital resource and a perilous threat. It just said the word perilous, which is going to take us to today’s random Monty Python quote.
Let me have just a little bit more peril. No, it’s too perilous. So there we go, we got today’s random Monty Python quote out of the way. We can continue. So today we’re going to delve into the indispensable role that fire played in daily life during the medieval and Tudor period, the major fires that marked these eras, and the early methods developed to combat these fierce blazes.
In the days before gas heaters and electric stoves, fire was the heart of the home and the engine of industry. Essential for cooking, it transformed raw ingredients into nourishing meals, bringing warmth and the ability to preserve food through methods like smoking and drying. Beyond culinary uses, fire provided heat through harsh winters, combating the damp and cold of stone and timber houses across Europe.
It also served as a critical light source. The flames of the fireplaces and torches pierced the pervasive darkness of night you extending productive hours beyond the limits imposed by the sun. Yet for all its benefits, fire was a double edged sword. In medieval and Tudor towns, where houses huddled closely in narrow streets, the risk of fire was a constant specter.
Buildings, frequently constructed from timber and thatch, offered perfect kindling for flames. A single spark could escalate into a raging inferno capable of devouring entire neighborhoods. The catastrophic potential of fire was well known and it shaped the very layout and laws of towns. Streets were often narrow not just to conserve space but also to contain the spread of fire attempting to limit it to one unfortunate block or district.
So today we’re going to explore not only how fire served as a critical component of daily life but also how it influenced the development of early urban planning and fire safety measures. We’ll also delve into the stories of major fires and the evolving strategies to manage this indispensable yet unruly force and we’ll uncover the resilience and ingenuity of our ancestors.
So the Tudor period, we talked about this when we talked about the Tudor home. This was several years ago. I did episodes on, uh, like a Tudor home tour. We talked about The innovations and the architectural changes of this time, one of the most transformative advancements of this period was the introduction and widespread adoption of the chimney.
Before the 16th century, homes and buildings had a central hearth with just a simple hole in the roof to allow the smoke to escape. Leaving interiors sooty and smoky. The development of chimneys changed this dramatically. By effectively directing smoke outside, chimneys made living spaces cleaner and safer.
They also allowed for the design of multi story buildings, with several fireplaces supporting more elaborate architectural designs and the vertical expansion of buildings. So, we really dug into that, like I said, during that Tudor Home Tour series I did, I think it was around 2020. I will find the episodes and link to them below as well in the, uh, in the notes for this episode.
This period also saw changes in the materials used for the building of homes, particularly with the gradual shift from wood to brick and stone. These materials were more resilient to fire. reflecting a growing awareness and response to the destructive potential of urban fires. The design of streets also began to change, becoming broader to act as fire breaks and to accommodate the needs of a growing population.
Despite these advances, the basic methods for starting and maintaining fires remained relatively primitive by modern standards. Matches, as we know them today, of course were not yet invented, Instead, people relied on flint, steel, and tinder to ignite a flame. A skilled individual could strike a spark onto a piece of tinder, such as charred cloth or dried moss, and then carefully blow it into a flame.
Keeping a fire going required continuous attention, as letting a fire die out meant going through the laborious process of reigniting it, which was not always a guaranteed success. The introduction of the chimney also led to changes in social customs and domestic routine. Rooms could now be individually heated, leading to the development of more private, separate living spaces.
As opposed to the communal hall of earlier times. People could have their own rooms. Before it was like one big hall where everybody slept together. Servants and the Lord might have had like a little bit curtained off. But the idea of privacy as we know it did not exist. But once you’ve got these chimneys and these multiple fireplaces.
You can heat up a sitting room just for the family, and then a different area for the servants, and you can separate people. People can have more privacy. That really started to, to shift the family dynamics and social interactions. People became more separate. Uh, classes became more separate. You start to see the whole upstairs, downstairs, Downton Abbey thing.
Very, very early version of that, but, but that is where that starts. These innovations during the tutor period set the stage for further advancements. in fire management and urban planning. By improving the efficiency and safety of fire use, the Tudors laid the foundational changes that would resonate well beyond their time, subtly steering the course of future developments in domestic living and urban infrastructure.
So let’s go back and talk about some major fires from the medieval and Tudor period. And we’re not going to talk about the Great Fire of London. Um, maybe sometime I’ll do an episode on that just because there is so much information. It’s so fascinating. And, you know, it kind of is responsible for much of the skyline of London today with St.
Paul’s and all of those wonderful, uh, Wren churches that were built around the city in the decades after the fire. Um, but we’re not going to do that today. We are going to start with another great fire of London, the very famous Great Fire of London of 1212. Of course, this is often overshadowed by the more famous one of 1666, but it was still a catastrophic event that had profound implications for the city’s future development.
It originated on the south bank of the Thames. And the fire spread rapidly across packed wooden structures of medieval London. A combination of strong winds and the city’s densely populated timber buildings created a recipe for disaster, allowing the fire to devour much of the area between London Bridge and Southwark.
The scale of the 1212 fire was immense, with contemporary accounts suggesting a significant loss of life. Some people said 10, 000 people. Some people said 3, 000 people. The entire population of London at the time was only 50, 000 people. So you can imagine, even if the lower end of 3, 000 is correct, it’s close to 10 percent of the population.
It was massive. It claimed the lives of thousands. That’s significant destruction of property. It was a tragic toll that was exacerbated by the fire breaking out near the bridge. Many people were trapped on the bridge as they attempted to flee the flames. What happened was, people in Southwark, the fire was coming, so they went onto the bridge to try to get away from it.
Meanwhile, fire brigades were coming from the other side, from the city, across, and of course they met and got squished because we did an episode on London Bridge. The entire bridge itself was only something like eight feet across, uh, after you factor in the buildings on either side. So it was just barely enough for a cart to get through, much less, you can imagine, these fleeing, panicked people, and then the fire brigade, such as it was, coming from the city on the other side.
So people were trapped, people got squished, um, got trampled, and this really started to highlight the vulnerabilities in urban infrastructure. and the urgent need for effective fire management strategies. In the aftermath, the 1212 fire led to crucial changes in urban planning and building regulations.
Recognizing the risks posed by timber construction, authorities began to promote the use of more fire resistant materials, such as stone and brick, in new constructions. Additionally, the disaster prompted the city’s to rethink the layout of streets and the design of buildings to improve fire safety.
These changes aimed to curb the rapid spread of fire, making it easier to manage and less likely to cause extensive damage. The 1212 Great Fire of London thus served as a harsh lesson in urban resilience, highlighting the need for better prepared cities. Capable of withstanding similar catastrophes, its impact on the regulations concerning building materials and city planning set precedents that would influence the development of London and other burgeoning cities across Europe.
Next up, 300 years later, the Palace of Westminster caught fire in 1512, and this was a pivotal moment in the architectural and political landscape of Tudor England. It started. With a carelessly tended stove in the chambers of the old royal palace, and the fire quickly escalated, fueled by the largely wooden construction of the complex.
The flames consumed the King’s and Queen’s chambers, along with the House of Commons, rendering significant portions of the historical structure unusable. The extent of the damage was considerable, and it forced Henry VIII to relocate his primary residence, and this would influence future royal accommodations in England.
So, Henry had been looking for a new place. He knew that he couldn’t stay at the Palace of Westminster anymore, and then as Cardinal Wolsey, you know, 15 years later, began to fall from grace, Henry saw an opportunity and he took over York Place, which had been Cardinal Wolsey’s home. And then he expanded that and transformed it into the Palace of Whitehall.
So, Cardinal Woolsey had had York Place, Henry thought, you know what, that’ll be a great replacement home for me, and I’m starting to dislike Cardinal Woolsey anyway. Let me take over York Place, boom, Palace of Whitehall. All of this also then changed the architectural styles and preferences within royal circles before the Palace of Westminster had been this medieval gothic structure and then The palaces became more renaissance style that characterized Whitehall.
The fire’s aftermath also prompted a broader reconsideration of building materials and techniques in significant important structures, particularly those of importance to the crown and the government. People stopped using wood, and began using brick and stone as the preferred materials for key important buildings, reflecting again the growing awareness of fire safety and durability.
A few decades later, we have the Nantwich Fire of 1583. This was a major catastrophic disaster in the small market town of Nantwich, located in Cheshire. This fire, like many urban fires of the era, began accidentally And spread rapidly, fueled by the timber framed buildings thatched with straw, typical of the period.
The fire began accidentally on December 10, 1583. A Nantwich brewer, living in the Waterlode, accidentally started the fire. The fire actually burned for almost three weeks, 20 days before it was finally put out. Destroyed 150 homes and inns and buildings. It made about half the population, 900 people homeless.
But only two people died. One of the major exports of Nantwich was salt. And the transporting of salt was stopped for a while. The use of the town as a military staging point was also stopped. Everything basically had to stop. The support of the town by trade and industry concerned Queen Elizabeth and her Privy Council.
The destruction was so widespread that she actually allowed the town to collect alms nationwide to rebuild. And she herself contributed a thousand pounds to that. They actually mark her support in a plaque on a building in the square in Nantwich, which is now called the Queen’s Aid House. The plaque itself reads, and this is the modern version, God grant our royal queen in England long to reign, for she has put her helping hand to build this town again.
The event not only demonstrated the vulnerability of towns during this period of fire disasters, but also highlighted the adaptive responses that could emerge from such tragedies. The community’s ability to organize and rebuild, rebuilding the town in just three years, supported by national policies and royal interventions, serves as an early example of disaster recovery and mitigation efforts.
That would pave the way for more formalized approaches in later centuries. So how did they fight fires during the Tudor period? Was there a fire brigade? Was there a fire department? Firefighting was rudimentary and community based, primarily relying on the collective effort of townsfolk to combat blazes.
The methods used to fight fires were simple yet vital for the survival of urban centers. One common technique was the bucket chain, where residents formed lines from a water source to the fire. passing leather buckets filled with water hand to hand to douse the flames. This method required significant manpower and was limited by the speed at which buckets could be filled and passed along the line.
Another early firefighting tool was the water squirt, which was essentially a large syringe that could shoot a jet of water towards the flames. Although more effective than simple buckets due to its ability to direct the water to specific areas, the water squirt had limited range and capability, making it useful for only smaller fires or fires that were within reach from a safe standpoint.
The squirt itself looked like a bicycle pump. The nozzle was dipped into water and it would only hold about a liter of water. And then the charged squirt, the filled up squirt, was directed at the fire and plunger, pushed to eject the water. Apparently squirts were used in fires all the way up including the 1666 fire in London.
The organization of firefighting efforts during this time often fell to local guilds or community groups. In many towns, guilds played a crucial role, not just economically, but also in the management of municipal responsibilities, including fire safety. Members of these guilds, who were craftsmen or merchants, would have had a vested interest in protecting their properties and, by extension, the wider community’s assets.
Alongside these community efforts, some of the first legislative measures to prevent or combat fires began to appear. For instance, after repeated devastating fires, London enacted a building regulation that mandated the use of stone in certain districts and regulated the storage of flammable materials like hay and wood.
Similarly, city ordinances might include the establishment of night watches, who not only looked out for criminal activity, but also monitored for signs of fire. Ready to rally townspeople at the first sign of smoke. These early firefighting methods and the associated organization efforts reflect a period when community solidarity and mutual aid were key to disaster response.
While these systems were far from perfect and failed to prevent the spread of large fires, they did lay the groundwork for more sophisticated firefighting operations in future centuries. emphasizing the need for organized response and improved technologies in urban fire management. So there we have it, my friends.
We will leave it there talking about early fires, fire management, the importance of fire. Thank you so much for being here and spending the last 15 20 minutes with me. I do appreciate it. I hope it was worth your time. Let me know what you thought about this. If you’ve ever thought about fire before in the context of the Tudors and what it was like for people before the modern period began.
Thank you again for listening. I will be back next week and until then have a wonderful week. And I will talk to you soon. Bye.
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Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast,  the original Tudor history podcast, started in 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. In 2019 she created Tudorcon, which is now a yearly event, in addition to writing books, and running TudorFair.com - a whimsical Tudor Merch shop. She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 20 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history.