Year 2: Great Fire of London Part 2 !!

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In Year 2 we have been focussing on the Great Fire of London. The fire started on Sunday 2nd September 1666. The fire spread easily because Tudor houses were wooden and they were built close together. A famous man called Samuel Pepys buried his important letters, cheese and wine in a metal box and buried it in his garden to keep it safe from the fire. There was no fire brigade. No one is quite sure how many people died but most archaeologists think it was between four and ten people. 

The children have recounted the re-enactment:

We made some lovely Tudor houses out of cardboard because if we made them out of wood we would have got hundreds of splinters. We stuck on long strips of paper to make it look like the beams and we put diamonds on the windows and straw on the roof for thatch. We chose Rufus’, Beas’ and Oliver’s house to be the bakery. In the bakery Thomas Farriner ( this means flour in Italian) didn’t put his fire out properly and the fire began.

All of us went to the Year 6 base and built London. We had the River Thames and a tin box. In the tin box we had parmesan cheese and a special letter that we had all written on in ink using a feather. We buried the box under London.

We had special rules because fire is dangerous. We had to sit in special places we were not allowed to run around.

Mrs T lit the fire. First we saw smoke and then the fire shot up from the bakery. Suddenly the house next to it caught fire too, the Great Fire of London had begun!

In about five minutes all of our houses were destroyed apart from Maiya’s and Clem's because it was on the other side of the River Thames.

We tried to put out the fire by standing in a line. Oliver filled a bucket with water and we passed it along to each other. We used bucket, pans and dog bowls. Charlotte got Mrs Clark very wet!!

Finally the fire was out. We could smell the lingering smell of smoke and we could see all the burnt ashes .

We all had fun learning about the Great Fire of London. It was a great success.