Mapping the Great Fire of London

350 years ago on September 2nd 1666 the Great Fire of London began in a bakery on Pudding Lane. By September 5th the fire had destroyed 13,200 houses, 87 parish churches and St Paul's Cathedral. The BBC has created an interactive map and the diary entries of Samuel Pepys to recount the four days when London burned.

Retrace Samuel Pepys' Steps in the Great Fire of London shows the extent of the fire in red. The orange lines show the approximate extent of the fire on each day. The grayed out area shows the approximate edge of London in the 17th Century. The map sidebar contains Pepys' diary entries about the fire, in chronological order. If you click on the headline for each entry you can view Pepys' location for that entry on the map.

The BBC map also includes a number of other markers highlighting important buildings which survived the fire and a number of images of London in the 17th Century. The map tiles and labels have been styled to give the map a suitably vintage feel. However, if I had made this map, I would have used an original 17th Century map or at least given the user the option to view an historical map as a map overlay or layer.