Hello from Pudding Lane Bakery! I am Mistress Matilda the maid servant. You might have met me if you came to the bakery at Norwich Cathedral? I might be meeting some of you for the first

time and if so, it is great to be with you. Can you see the funny, cartoon picture of my boss, the baker, Thomas Farriner? I do not like thinking about that terrible fire in 1666 because it makes me feel so sad, but I will tell you about a few things. You might know that Baker Farriner baked ship’s biscuits for King Charles 2nd’s Navy. They were sent off to sea in barrels aboard the giant naval ships. He used an oven like this one. Do you know how the oven was heated? What did we put inside it?

Can you see how close together the buildings were in Pudding Lane? What were the frames of the buildings made from? Why did the buildings catch fire so quickly?

Even old St Paul’s Cathedral burned down! It had a wooden roof that had holes in, so the flames easily got inside and the fire spread quickly. Find out what the new St Paul’s cathedral looks like. It was designed by Sir Christopher Wren after the fire.

WATCH A FILM… There are some short films on ‘You tube’ about the great fire. Watch some and make some notes about what you found out. Can you make up a play and act it out to show what happened in the fire? Mistress Matilda’s Story I like my job in the bakery in Pudding Lane, even though it is hard, hot work. I have to get up at 5.00 a.m. every day. I put the sticks and straw in the oven and light it to make a hot fire. Baker Thomas Farriner comes to the bakery at 7.00 a.m. to tell me what we are going to cook.

We always have hundreds of ship’s biscuits to make and bake for the King’s Navy.

Sometimes I have to work until 9.00 p.m. at night because we have so many to make. I need to light my candles so that I can see!

When the fire happened I was working at a different bakery in another street. I saw the smoke and ran outside to look. The wind was blowing so the flames spread quickly. My father ran to Pudding Lane with his long fire hook. He tried to pull straw off the rooves to stop the fire but it did not work. People kept puring buckets of water onto the burning houses but that did not put the fire out either. ‘Run, run’ everyone was shouting and many were going down to the river Thames to get into boats. My family did that. I stayed in the town and helped the blacksmith to move his horses out of the stables. We took them into the middle of the city and tied them up there to keep them safe. My friend Martha was the maid who worked with Baker Farriner back then. I was so sad to hear that she had burned to death in the fire. She would not jump across to the next door building when they escaped up onto the roof. She was the first person to die in the Great Fire. After five days the King’s soldiers made a fire break with gunpowder and blew it up. The wind changed direction too. At last the fire started to go out. Our city of was burned to the ground though! Talk about my story, then look on the next page for things to do…. Use these word mats to help you to write a story about the fire. You could pretend to be someone from Pudding Lane. Tell us what happened to you and your family! Did you find out how they stopped the spreading in the end? Here is a reminder...

Afterwards things were very bad everywhere… Why not design & make your own Pudding Lane house? Use old food boxes and paper.

On ‘You tube’ there is a film: ‘How to make cereal box houses’

Why not make a silhouette collage Look up ‘ship’s biscuits’ or ‘hard tack picture like this biscuits’ on ‘You tube’. There are some films one? to tell you how to make some for yourself (make sure a grown up helps though!) Try writing a poem...

Use each letter to start each line. G______R______E______A______T______F______I______R______E______