GREAT FIRE IN LONDON. [From the "Standard," April 3rd.]

Waikato Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1859, 5 June 1884, Page 3

GREAT FIRE IN LONDON. [From the "Standard," April 3rd.]

UNEt»f the mojstjdisftstrous and-extensive fires of "modern times lasfhigtft made a fearful gap in the,wealthiest part) off the City of London. The block,' on therforlh side of Paternoster Row, extending back to Newgate-streetf, and defined east' and west by Queen's Head Passage and Ivy lane, including the spacious rear rpre* miaes of Messrs Faudell, Phillips and Sons, which' face Christ's Hospital and King Edward-street, has been almost totally razed from that locality. The fire, which broke out at Messrs Pardon and Sons, Nos. 1 to 3, Lovells Court, a narrow passage midway between the two scarcely wider thoroughfares above-named, rapidly spread north, east, and west, attacking speedily the eastward corner of the court, opposite Messrs Pardon's, and in the occupancy of Mr B. Williams, music pub* lisher. When the flames had laid firm hold on all the buildings which were doomed ultimately to fall a prey, the sight was as extraordinary as it was terrible. The body of fire reached far over the tops of the highest*? buildings ; and its fierceness was denoted by huge and appalling sheets of detached flame, high up amid the lurid smoke, changing into fantastic shape with every pnff of souti.* west wind, and often mounting above the level of the , outer gallery round the dome of St. Paul's, while the bright spark 3, like floating stars amid the red brown clouds of rolling smoke positively reached above the ball and cross. It seemed to those who surveyed the scene from a near point of view that the drift of these burning flaUes in a direction away from the cathedral was a happy accident. So accustomed are Londoners to regard St. Paul's as a natural feature of London, standing rock-like and unassailable on " the city's highest ground," that the very appearance of danger seemed like a fearful revelation. Not one man in a hundred, piobably in a thousand, knows or thinks that the vast cupola is a wooden shell, masking a biiek cone which is the real support of the stone lantern above, the space between this fun-nel-like substructure, and the graceful exterior " dome," as it has been called e\er since the time of Wren, being occupied by a forest of diy timber beams, crossing this way and that. If burning sparks feom a neighbouring conflagration can assail an inflammable roof so high, and seemingly so far reiiuned from harm's way as this majestic coveiing of London's basilica, a new terror may, without undue stretch of imagination, be dreaded. So thought many who watched the spread of last night's disastrous fire, and who congratulated themselves as Londoners and Englishmen that the great cathedral was not immediately tlneatened, seeing that tht breeze was driving the flakes of incandescent matter north instead of south.