Erection date: 2016
{below a copy of part of an etching showing Old St Paul's engulfed in flames:}
East of this tablet on 2nd September 1666 was the baker's oven & woodpile where "began that dredfull fire, which is described & perpetuated on & by the neighbouring pillar".
The words used on a plaque here in 1681 - since 1887 beneath the cobbles of Monument Street, marked again to commemorate three hundred & fifty years since the fire began.
This plaque appears to be that oddest of things, a plaque commemorating a lost plaque but it's not lost, it's in the Museum of London.
Site: The Monument (4 memorials)
EC3, Monument Street
Built 1671-7, designed by Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke as a monument to the Great Fire and as a scientific instrument. Each step is exactly 6 inches high. The very top of the edifice has a hinged lid and the spiral staircase surrounds a void (rather than a solid shaft) so the whole height can be used by a giant pendulum, or as a telescope, or (and who does't want to do this?) for dropping things.
'Hooke’s laboratory' is a room below ground not normally open to the public but Londonist (who have an 'access all areas' pass) have been there.
The column is 62m high, and it stands that same distance from the supposed site of the start of the fire.
The column stands on a plinth, three faces of which carry Latin texts with translations. This all amounts to a lot of text but the inscriptions are not very photogenic so we have treated each pair of faces as a memorial: west and north together, east and south together.
In all this verbiage we draw your attention to the reference to "Popish frenzy" at the end of the (English version) of the inscription on the north face. This is explained at The Monument, which is an excellent resource.
2016: Great post from Londonist re The Monument suicides showing fascinating contempory newspaper reports with quite surreal drawings.
In George Gissing's 1894 novel 'In the Year of Jubilee' a young man shows a lady, whom he does not know very well, around the City, in which he works, and takes her to the top of the Monument, where they enter into a sort of engagement, dependent on the success of his career.
2021: The City of London must have had some money sloshing around - they've installed a few random plaques in the paved area at the base of The Monument, two of which are commemorative. We noticed them in 2021 but they could have been there for years. The area was pedestrianised in 2006 and refurbished 2007-9.
