The Monument to the Great Fire of London

“To preserve the memory of this dreadful visitation, be it further enacted That a column or pillar… be erected on or as near unto the place where the said fire so unhappily began”.

The Monument was designed by the architect Christopher Wren and his chief assistant, Robert Hooke. Wren masterminded the rebuilding of over 50 churches destroyed by the Great Fire of London, including St Paul’s Cathedral. Like St Paul’s, the Monument was also built with Portland stone. It was constructed between 1671 and 1677.

It sits just north of London Bridge on the site of the first church burned by the fire, St Margaret New Fish Street. You’ll find it at the junction of Fish Street Hill and Monument Street, a road created in the 1880s and named after the Monument to the Great Fire. The Monument also gave its name to the nearby Tube station that opened in 1884.

The Monument is an impressive 61.6 metres tall. In fact, it’s one of the tallest free-standing stone columns in the world. It’s positioned so that if it was laid horizontally, its tip would touch Thomas Farriner’s bakery in Pudding Lane – the spot where the fire started.

Mainly, it’s a Doric column, a type of architectural column from ancient Greece. At the top, there’s a flaming urn covered in gold. At the base, a sculpture tells the story of the City of London’s destruction and reconstruction, depicted in this drawing. Charles II is on the right, depicted as a Roman emperor. On the left, a winged ‘Father Time’ helps a woman representing the City get back on her feet.

The Monument was built as a permanent reminder of the 1666 disaster. But it was also designed for scientific experiments. Wren and Hooke built a small laboratory under the Monument. From here, if you looked up through the column, its hollow tube structure could be used as a ‘zenith telescope’ to measure the position of the stars. But the vibrations from nearby traffic meant it never gave accurate readings.

There are 311 steps up to the viewing platform, which is almost 50 metres above ground. The Monument has been a popular tourist attraction for hundreds of years. This souvenir box, which says “A Present from London” and features an image of the monument, dates from the late 1700s.