Strike-a-light

This iron strike-a-light or fire steel was used to light a fire or candle. When you strike iron against a flint it makes an extremely hot spark. Most households would have had a tinder box where they kept scraps of material or wood shavings, a strike-a-light and a flint for starting fires. People in the 1600s were experts at fire-lighting. Often glowing embers from the previous day's fire were kept overnight to make starting a new fire easier. This was dangerous - unattended embers could start serious fires. It is speculated that this was the cause of the Great Fire of London itself. It is possible that the baker, Thomas Farriner, in whose Pudding Lane bakery the fire started, may have lied (or been mistaken) when he said he made sure that the fires in his hearths and oven were fully extinguished before he went to bed. In 1633 a third of the houses on London Bridge were burned down after a servant left a box of ashes under the stairs.