Friday, April 22, 2011

Pox and blocks

The plague ravaged London

in 1665 and the next year

a fire started by Thomas Farynor

on Pudding Lane grew to be a

conflagration: The Great Fire

of 1666 meant more for bricks.

Destroyed were 430 acres of city,

13,000 houses, 89 churches and

52 Guild Halls, burned and gone.

King Charles II said no more would

wood be used to build: all must

be masonry, a stone and brick fiat.

Wren ruled and masons tooled

when London was rebuilt.

A booming new and prosperous industry

made lots and lots and lots of brick.

So much brick they stacked them thick

in holds of ships as ballast sailing for

New England from the new London

of olde England, so American masonry

owes its infancy to the Great Fire of 1666,

which ended the Black Death finally.


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