London’s pub culture was significantly influenced by the Great Fire of London, which took with it numerous taverns and inns that might otherwise still be serving the capital’s drinkers to this day. The fire began just after midnight on Sunday 2nd September 1666 at a bakery on Pudding Lane – this road is located in EC3 near Monument tube station. The Monument, after which the station is named, was designed to commemorate the Great Fire that almost destroyed the entire city. As much of London was made from wood in the 17th century, the fire swept across the city and raged for three days until Wednesday 6th September. Unfortunately on the night that the fire started there was a considerable wind and this fanned the flames so that traditional fire fighting techniques were almost completely useless. Rumours in the streets of ‘suspicious foreigners’ setting the fires made the public panic and order was lost as the fire continued consuming businesses and homes all over the city. In total, around 13,200 houses were burned down during the fire – these had housed around 70,000 of the 80,000 inhabitants of the City at the time.The Great Fire burned down many of London’s great monuments, including St Paul’s Cathedral, the Royal Exchange, the Custom House, the Bridewell Palace and three gates in the west of the city - Ludgate, Newgate, and Aldersgate. Surprisingly, deaths from the fire were thought to have been few and only single figure casualties were recorded at the time. Essentially everything within the Old City was destroyed, from the Tower of London to Holborn and the start of The Strand. Some of the few buildings in the area to survive the fire included the St Bartholomew's Gatehouse, some parts of which date back to the 1200s. 41 Cloth Fair – the oldest house in the City – was also shielded from the flames by St Bartholomew's nearby and many of the houses on Long Lane also survived as the road was protected from the fire by the St Bartholomew's priory walls.A number of historic London pubs did manage to survive the Great Fire, albeit in spirit. Ye Old Cheshire Cheese and The George Inn Yard were two of the pubs that the fire took but which were rebuilt on the same site whereas others, such as the Seven Stars behind the Royal Courts of Justice, actually managed to remain in tact. Of course London’s pubs have been through many trials over the years and The Great Fire was only one of them – religious upheavals and disasters such as the Bubonic Plague had an equally negative effect. However, there has always been a special place in the hearts of the British for the pub – as Queen Victoria once said “Give my people plenty of beer, good beer, and cheap beer, and you will have no revolution among them.”