[Sundae]

Today I learned a lot more about The Great Fire of London than I ever did at school.
It's the class topic for both the classes I volunteer in, and today we had an ICT session where the learning objective was internet research (on monitored computers of course!)

Depending on the age/ abilities of the child they had different objectives to meet. For some of them, I had to read out the text of the websites they'd found. For others I simply had to steer them away from videos and games. And others had trouble working out the difference between the When, Where, Who questions that they needed to answer.

FTR, gleaned from this afternoon (all memory so forgive if it's slightly off, otherwise it would negate the title of the thread):
The fire started in Pudding Lane at approx 02.00 on Sunday 2nd Jan, raging through until Thursday 6th.
It started in the bakery of Thomas Farriner [various spellings], the King's Master Baker
The ovens had not been completely damped down and sparks ignited in the flour filled air.
Droughts had left London dry, and a wind quickly carried the fire to the wharves, stacked with oil, hemp (try explaining that to a six year old), coal and timber
The houses were made of timber and pitch and crowded closely together
Despite the massive conflagration less than 10 people died (estimates vary)
Dropping winds and natural and man-made boundaries meant the fire burned itself out in 4 days - although by this time every horse, carriage and boat for hire had already left the city.