GREAT FIRE IN LONDON.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 6, Issue 1700, 2 June 1884, Page 2

GREAT FIRE IN LONDON.

(From the "Standard," April 3.)

One of the most disastrous and extensive fives pf modern times last night made a fearful gap in the wealthiest, part of the City of London. The block, on the north aide of Paternoster Row, extending back to Newgate-street, and defined east aud west hj Quoon's Head Passage and Ivy lane; including the spacious rear premises of Messrs Faudel, Phillips and Sons, which faco Christ's Hospital and :King. Edwardstreet, has bean almost totally razed from this locality. The-.fire, which broke out at Messrs Pardon and Sons, Nos. 1 to '3 'liovel's ■ Court, a narrow< passage' nridway between the two scarcely wider thoroughfares abovenamed, rapidly spread north, east, and west, attacking speedily.the eastward comer, of-the court, opposite Messrs Pardon's, and in the occupancy of Mr B. Williams, music publisher. Wheu the flames,-laid' firm hold on,all the buildings which were doomed ultimately to fall a the. sight was "as extraordinary fis it was terrible. ThJ body of fire;.reached far over the: tops of the highest bnildinsis j and- its fierceness ww denoted- by huge ami appalling sheets of high up: amid-tlieivfcdlsmbke, changing ia - fantastic .shape, with : ■/;. every -a puff of south-west wind, arid often mounting above the levol of the outer gallery

round the dome of'St Paul's, while the bright sparks, like floating stars amid the Ted brown clouds of rolling smoke positively reached above the ball ard cross. It seemed to those who surveyed the scene from a near point of view that tha drift of these burning flakes in a direction away from the , cathedral was a happy accident. So accustomed to re-' gard'St. "Paul's as feature of London, - 'standing, ! rock-like and unassailable, on/; the pity's, highest ground,". that the very appearance of danger seemed like a fearful revelation. Not one-man in a huridred/'prbbablyiu ■ a thousand, knows or-Minks'- that tho viist cupola isja. wooden shell, masking a brick cone which is the real support of tbe storib lantern above, tho space between this funhelJike'sufestructure, and the graceful exterior " dome" as it has been called over Biaco'tlie time of Wreity being occupied-by/.inforest of dry timber beams, crossing this way and that. If burning sparks from a neighboring conflagration can assail an inflammalbe roof so high, and ly so far removed from h'armjs way as this fliajestio covering of London's basilica, a new terror ,roay,, without undue stretch of ima«ination,%''dreaded. So thought many who'watched the spread of last night's disastrous fire, and who congratulated themselves as Londoners and as Englishmen, that the great cathedral was liot.immediately .threatened, seeing that the breeze was driving the flakes of incandescent matter north instead of south.