History · Years 1–2

The Great Fire of London: KS1 history for parents

By Dave Allen · Updated 5 October 2026 · 5 min read

Drafted and fact-checked with AI help, against the sources below. Not yet reviewed by a teacher. How we write our guides

What it is

Beyond living memory: Something that happened so long ago that nobody alive today remembers it. We find out about it from things people left behind, such as diaries, paintings and buildings.
Source: Anything that tells us about the past, such as a diary, a painting, a map or an old building.
Diary: A book where someone writes what happens to them each day. Samuel Pepys kept a famous diary during the fire.

The fire started in the early hours of Sunday 2 September 1666, in the bakery of Thomas Farriner, the King's baker, on Pudding Lane. His ovens hadn't been put out properly, and his wooden house caught fire.

London then was very different from today. Most buildings were made of wood and stood close together, and it had been a dry summer. Strong winds blew the flames from house to house, so the fire spread fast.

There was no fire service to call. Londoners and soldiers fought the fire with buckets of water, water squirts and fire hooks. They also pulled down houses to make gaps the fire couldn't cross. The fire finally ended on Wednesday 5 September.

More than 13,000 houses burned down, along with many churches and the old St Paul's Cathedral.
Many families lost their homes. Lots of them set up shelters in fields outside the city, such as Moorfields, until they could return.
It took around 50 years to rebuild the city.

How it's taught at school

In KS1 (Years 1 and 2), the national curriculum for England asks children to learn about events beyond living memory that were important for the whole country. The Great Fire of London is one of the examples it gives. Schools don't have to teach this example, but they can choose it, so your child may study it in Year 1 or Year 2.

History at this age is about more than facts. Children learn to put events in order, to spot what's the same and what's different about life long ago, and to understand some of the ways we find out about the past.

Samuel Pepys's diary is a favourite source. Pepys was woken at about three in the morning by Jane, one of his maids, who had seen the fire. Over the next few days he wrote about what he saw. To keep his things safe, he dug a pit in his garden and buried his wine and his Parmesan cheese.

Children also learn how London changed afterwards. New houses had to be built of brick and stone instead of wood, and some streets were made wider. The architect Sir Christopher Wren designed a new St Paul's Cathedral and 51 new churches.

Wren and the scientist Robert Hooke also designed the Monument, a tall stone column that remembers the fire. It was finished in 1677. It is 202 feet tall and stands 202 feet from the spot on Pudding Lane where the fire began.

Tip
Keep the focus on what happened and how London changed. Young children enjoy the story of the bakery, the diary and the buried cheese, and they don't need any frightening detail to understand it.

From Pipkin

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Common mistakes (and how to help)

Thinking the fire happened not long ago, when grandparents were young: Young children find long stretches of time very hard to picture. Line up family members by age, then explain that 1666 was long before anyone in the family, or anyone alive today, was born.
Wondering why nobody called the fire brigade: It's a great question to explore together. There was no fire service to call in 1666. People only had buckets of water, squirts and fire hooks.
Thinking buildings in 1666 were like ours: Look at a picture of old timber houses together and compare it with homes near you. Ask what they're made of, and why wood made the fire spread so quickly.

Three quick activities at home

Then and now

About 10 minutes

Talk about how people put out fires in 1666: buckets, water squirts and fire hooks.
Ask your child what's different about how fires are put out today.
Make two lists together: Then and Now. Add homes, streets and firefighting to both.

Diary of a day

About 10 minutes · You need: Paper and a pencil

Tell your child that Samuel Pepys wrote a diary, which is why we know so much about the fire.
Help your child write or draw three things that happened to them today.
Ask: if someone found this in 350 years, what would it tell them about life now?

Order the story

About 5 minutes · You need: Four scraps of paper

Draw or write four parts of the story, one on each piece of paper: the fire starts in the bakery, it spreads across London, the fire ends, London is rebuilt in brick and stone.
Mix them up and ask your child to put them in order.
Ask them to tell you the story using the words first, next, then and finally.

Try it with your child

Free Pipkin puzzles on this topic. No sign-up. They open on the children's side of Pipkin.

Questions parents ask

Will my child have to learn lots of dates?

No. At KS1 the key date is 1666, and the most useful idea is that it was a very long time ago. Learning to put events in order matters more than remembering exact days.

Can we visit anywhere linked to the fire?

The Monument still stands in the City of London, near Pudding Lane, and St Paul's Cathedral is the one Wren designed after the fire. Looking at pictures of them together works well too.