Quick ideas for a bit of great fire of London sightseeing

[foxatthewindow]

DC1 has Christmas homework to learn about the great fire of London and I was thinking of popping up to London today to have a look. Apart from the obvious (pudding lane, monument), what else would you recommend we see?

Also - as it’s a Sunday and the trains are chaos because of the strikes we will probably drive. Any good suggestions for parking somewhere cheap and convenient to hop on the tube from?

Thanks!

St Paul’s and the Museum of London.

Definitely museum of London...and it's walking distance from Monument.

Thanks - I was wondering about St Paul’s, but it looks like you need to pay to go in. I’m wondering if it will be worth it/whether the kids will get anything out of it?

Great Fire of London Walk for Children

I wouldn't. I would walk past. Or at the back of St Paul's is a shopping building called 1 New Change - you can get the lift up to the top and go on the roof terrace and look over St Paul's. (I'm sure St Paul's is amazing inside but unless kids are really bothered it's very pricey). -- when you are near Museum of London look out for all the bits of Roman Walls (from far before the great fire but amazing history).

Thanks - good that it’s not just me being cheap, and great tip about getting a view of it from elsewhere. The school homework is really simple (though I can’t find the sheet) but the point of it is to help the kids get into the topic. So a trip usually works well

How old is DC1? Just to say that DS was 7 when we did similar and he was a bit underwhelmed by pudding lane and monument as I think in his head it would be ‘more’ - I can’t explain it without making him seem like he expects Disney shows wherever we go but it literally is a road called Pudding Lane with some benches (or stones can’t quite remember ) with the London’s burning poem and then monument itself which really is just a tower to climb with a nice view.
Museum of London is a good shout to add extra background to it.
This could be because we go to London a lot so maybe after the Tower of London / South Bank etc it’s not as ‘impressive’ but Pudding Lane and Monument on their own will not take long !

Thanks for the walk info @BikeRunSki - have you done it?

There's a car park just by the Tower of London which is only £1 all day on a Sunday (or it was last time we used it a year or so ago). Loads of the car parks around there are cheap on a Sunday.
Our route when we did this was to start off at The Museum of London (pretty sure it has a section on this in its permanent display) walk down to One New Change for some lunch, continue down Cheapside and then along to Monument, climb Monument, head over around St Paul's, cross the Millenium Bridge, pop into the Tate (my two aren't very tolerant of museums & art galleries but find modern art extraordinary so don't mind a trip there) and the home.
If you do park at the Tower of London, the walk along the South Bank is pedestrianised and wide which gives them a chance to stretch their legs.

Yes, I agree Pudding Lane is distinctly underwhelming. Also worth explaining to your DC that the Monument was large for its time. It's now dwarfed by office buildings.

We did the fire brigade museum as well but it was a good few years ago and you had to pre-book the visit (since then it's moved location so I don't know the deal with it now). That was great fun.

My kids enjoyed walking up the monument as something fun to do. But it's blowey at the top.

The Museum of London is perfect for this, we went when my son did the topic.

I used to work in Bengal Court off Birchin Lane - 1 minute from Bank station. The walking tours used to stop outside my office window because if you look up you can see just how close together the buildings are and how this contributed to the fire spreading so quickly.

@foxatthewindow, a version of it, but the concrete blocks were nit there when I was growing up. I grew up in Central London in the 1970s/80s. My dad was a mad keen amateur historian and loved museums. Whatever we were learning at school, he’d take us for a field trip! He always planned to train to be a tour guide when he retired, but he died at 61 and never got to retire.

www.mummytravels.com/great-fire-of-london-walk-locations/

This might help

You can park for free in the City on Sundays.

I would pop into the Hoop & Grapes at Aldgate after for lunch. It’s one of very few timber framed buildings to survive the fire & the doors & windows are at crazy angles as a result.

As above, we clumbed monument, looked at st pauls (didnt pay just the outside) and did The Museum of London which has a good section. It was a great trip

londonist.com/london/history/buildings-that-survived-the-great-fire-of-london

Thanks guys - we have finally got in the car after 45 mins of faffing. We have a good 90 minutes car journey so keep em coming!

Museum of London (they have an exhibition about it).

Walk up to St. Paul’s and walk around it (you can stick your head in the door for free and there’s a small chapel there - also a cafe in the crypt). Walk down cheap side, through lease hall market and around to the Monument.

I’d then walk to the Thames and do a bit of mudlarking on the shore (but relevant but fun).

We did a walk to pudding lane, up the monument, I showed paternoster row to dd - tiny street by St. Paul’s but in the Middle Ages it was the centre of book production and selling. When the fire began the booksellers worked like crazy moving the previous manuscripts from their timber framed shops into St. Paul’s as they believed it would never burn, being stone.

There is nothing left of that little street now because it was all burned down and we stood there and imagined how the booksellers must have felt watching St. Paul’s burn down after all, with their entire stock in it.

You can go to see where Pepys lived and worked - at the point where the fire stopped - near Aldgate.

We did the little bit of St. Paul’s you can do for free! Stood by the ticket barrier

We used this leaflet www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/things-to-do/visit-the-city/walks/Documents/great-fire-walk.pdf

But if you pop into Paternoster Square you can see the restaurant where they film C4s First Dates. (Not remotely linked to Fire of London!)

Shame the Fearless Girl isn’t there anymore.