Test Your Knowledge: Great Fire Of London Quiz
Updated: Mar 4
Alright, everyone, brains at the ready! Let's see how well you do in our quiz on the Great Fire of London in 1666.
Each question has a few answers to choose from. Make a note of all of your answers to the questions, then once you're done, check which ones you got right at the bottom of the article.
Question 1:
Where did the Great Fire of London start?
A: In a Butchers
B: In a Bakers
C: In a Candlestick makers
Question 2:
Who should you get help from if there was a fire in your house in 1666?
A: Pop round to your next-door neighbour’s house
B: Call the Fire Brigade using your mobile phone
C: Get the help of your imaginary friend
Question 3:
What did the Mayor of London do when he was first told about the fire in the early hours of the morning?
A: He panicked, packed his bags and got out of the city as quickly as he could
B: He didn’t think it was important and went back to bed
C: He immediately jumped into action to save the city
Question 4:
Why did the fire spread so easily?
A: Because the houses around Pudding Lane were filled with stuff that caught fire really easily
B: Because the houses in London in 1666 were built from wood and straw
C: Because the buildings were built really close together
D: Because it had been a long, dry summer and a strong wind was blowing
Question 5:
People tried to pull down houses with hooks to make a fire break. Why didn’t this work very well?
A: People in London weren’t strong enough to pull down the houses
B: They kept pulling down the wrong houses
C: The wind kept blowing the fire over the fire breaks
Question 6:
Soon the King came up with a quicker way of making better fire breaks. What did he order the people to do?
A: Throw a bucket of water on the burning building
B: Blow up the houses with gunpowder
C: Get the big bad wolf to huff and puff and blow the houses down
Question 7:
What happened when the fire reached St Paul’s Cathedral?
A: The fire caused the lead in the roof to melt and flow like a river down the streets of London
B: The fire stopped spreading and the Cathedral survived untouched
C: The fire cooked lots of corn kernels hidden in the crypt, causing popcorn to explode out of the cathedral windows
Question 8:
How long did the Great Fire burn for?
A: Four days
B: Only a few hours
C: 11 long months
Question 9:
Who wrote about the Great Fire Of London in their diary?
A: Samuel Pepys
B: James the Duke of York
C: The Baker, Thomas Farriner
Question 10:
After the fire, what did the people of London do to make sure this disaster wouldn’t happen again?
A: They made sure everyone had gunpowder in their houses to quickly make a fire break
B: They learned how to control the weather so that the wind would never blow fire across the city
C: They rebuilt their houses with stone and bricks and built them further apart
Answers:
Finished the quiz? Find out how you did with the answers below:
Question 1:
Where did the Great Fire of London start?
Answer:
B: In a Bakers
The fire started in a bakery on Pudding Lane belonging to Thomas Farriner. Historians believe a spark from the bakery oven started the fire.
Question 2:
Who should you get help from if there was a fire in your house in 1666?
Answer:
A: Pop round to your next-door neighbour’s house
There’s no fire brigade in London in 1666 and no mobile phones either. They hadn’t been invented yet! So if there was a fire nearby, you had to work with your friends and neighbours to put it out.
Question 3:
What did the Mayor of London do when he was first told about the fire in the early hours of the morning?
Answer:
B: He didn’t think it was important and went back to bed
Fires happened a lot in London in 1666. So when the Lord Mayor of London, Thomas Bloodworth was woken up and told about the fire, he thought the fire would be put out quickly. He went back to bed thinking it wasn’t a big deal.
Question 4:
Why did the fire spread so easily?
Answer:
A: Because the houses around Pudding Lane were filled with stuff that caught fire really easily
B: Because the houses in London in 1666 were built from wood and straw
C: Because the buildings were built really close together
D: Because it had been a long, dry summer and a strong wind was blowing
That's right, all of them! There were lots of reasons why the fire spread so quickly in London in 1666. The wooden houses (and the stuff inside them) set on fire really easily! There hadn’t been any rain in ten months so everything was very dry. Plus, the houses were built really close together so the strong wind could easily blow the flames from house to house.
Question 5:
People tried to pull down houses with hooks to make a fire break. Why didn’t this work very well?
Answer:
C: The wind kept blowing the fire over the fire breaks
The wind was so strong that the fire was even being blown over rivers and large streets. At first, the Mayor of London didn’t want to pull people’s houses down to make fire breaks. By the time fire breaks were made, the fire was spreading too quickly for them to work.
Question 6:
Soon the King came up with a quicker way of making better fire breaks. What did he order the people to do?
Answer:
B: Blow up the houses with gunpowder
Pretty dangerous huh? But it worked! The King also changed the law so he didn’t have to ask for permission before blowing up people's houses. Blowing up the houses was much faster than pulling the houses down with big hooks (but it probably upset a lot of people!).
Question 7:
What happened when the fire reached St Paul’s Cathedral?
Answer:
A: The fire caused the lead in the roof to melt and flow like a river down the streets of London
People put all of their belongings inside St Paul's cathedral because it was made of stone and they thought it wouldn't catch fire. But the roof was made of lead. The lead melted, setting fire to everything inside the cathedral. The melted lead ran in a river down Ludgate Hill.
Question 8:
How long did the Great Fire burn for?
Answer:
A: Four days
The fire started at around 1am on Sunday 2nd September 1666. The fire spread quickly through Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. By the evening of Wednesday 5th September, most of the fire was finally put out.
Question 9:
Who wrote about the Great Fire Of London in their diary?
Answer:
A: Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys kept a diary for ten years. He wrote about lots of important events, including the Great Plague, the Great Fire of London and the Second Anglo-Dutch War. His diary is a valuable source to find out more about what life was like in England during this time.
Question 10:
After the fire, what did the people of London do to make sure this disaster wouldn’t happen again?
Answer:
C: They rebuilt their houses with stone and bricks and built them further apart
In the fire, 13,200 houses were burned down in 400 streets. 87 churches, including St Paul’s Cathedral, were destroyed and up to 80,000 people were left homeless. Re-building London in a safer way was a big job and took a long time.
