Page 40 - Social Science.docx

Principles of social science
In his article Facing Up To Catastrophe, Ian Archer discusses the true damages that London faced because of the fire. He explains that the flames destroyed 373 acres within the walls of the city and 63 acres of land beyond the walls, wiping out 13,200 houses. This left up to 80,000 people homeless. Total losses valued at around 8 to 10 million British pounds. With hundreds of acres of land destroyed and thousands of buildings burnt to the ground, the people of London were left completely in the dark, terrified and stranded, having lost their possessions. The flames almost rendered the city desolate (approximately just under four-fifths of the city were left uninhabitable), and Archer describes how the Great Fire left the city of London helpless, ruined, and changed forever (Archer). However, Archer also explains how others argue that the Great Fire of London, although tragic, served as a catalyst for growth and rebuilding; for London to become something greater, remodeled in a safer and more practical way. Archer references the observation that, without the reconstruction and the new building codes set into place after the fire, hundreds of more fires would have just been waiting to break out, and hundreds of lives would have been lost in the future. If something hadn't been done and changes weren't made, putting the rules and regulation into place, the long-term outcome could have been far worse. After the fire, the people of London understood how important and necessary the structural rules and regulations were and understood how, by doing this, they broke through the barriers of urban reconstruction, introducing new concepts and ideas that changed London for the better.1
During the time of the fire, London’s houses were poorly designed and extremely flammable, with the sides of each house pressed close, touching. This meant that if one house
1 Ian Archer, "Facing up to Catastrophe: The Great Fire of London." Faculty of History - University of Oxford. Accessed November 28, 2019.
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