The Monument to the Great Fire of London, more commonly known simply as
the Monument, is a fluted Doric column in the City of London, near the northern
end of London Bridge, which commemorates the Great Fire of London.
It stands at the junction of Monument Street and Fish Street Hill, 202 ft tall
and 202 ft from the spot in Pudding Lane where the Great Fire started on 2
September 1666. Another monument, the Golden Boy of Pye Corner, marks the
point near Smithfield where the fire was stopped. Constructed between 1671 and
1677, it is the tallest isolated stone column in the world and was built on the
site of St. Margaret's, Fish Street, the first church to be burnt down by the
Great Fire. The Monument comprises a fluted Doric
column built of Portland stone topped with a gilded urn of fire. It was
designed by Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke. Its height marks its distance
from the site of the shop of Thomas Farynor, the king's baker, where the
Great Fire began. The top of the Monument is reached by a
narrow winding staircase of 311 steps. A mesh cage was added in the mid-19th
century at the top to prevent people jumping off, after six people had
committed suicide from the structure between 1788 and 1842.
Three sides of the base carry inscriptions in Latin. The one on the
south side describes actions taken by King Charles II following the fire. The
one on the east describes how the Monument was started and brought to
perfection, and under which mayors. Inscriptions on the north side describe
how the fire started, how much damage it caused, and how it was eventually
extinguished. In 1681, the words "but Popish frenzy, which wrought such
horrors, is not yet quenched" were added to the end of the inscription. Text on
the east side generally blames Roman Catholics for the fire, and this
prompted Alexander Pope to say of the area that it is:
The words were chiselled out in 1830. The west side of the base displays a
sculpture, by Caius Gabriel Cibber, in alto and bas relief, of the destruction
of the City; with Charles II and his brother, James, the Duke of York,
surrounded by liberty, architecture, and science, giving directions for its
restoration. The nearest London Underground station
is Monument. It is a Grade I listed building, the
highest designation possible. History
The first Rebuilding Act, passed in 1669, stipulated that "the better to
preserve the memory of this dreadful visitation", a column of either brass or
stone should be set up on Fish Street Hill, on or near the site of Farynor's
bakery, where the fire began. Christopher Wren, as surveyor-general of
the King's Works, was asked to submit a design. Wren worked with Robert Hooke on
the design of the monument. It is impossible to disentangle the
collaboration between Hooke and Wren, but Hooke’s drawings of possible designs
for the column still exist, with Wren’s signature on them indicating his
approval of the drawings rather than their authorship. It was not until 1671
that the City Council approved the design, and it was another six years
before the 202 ft column was complete. It was two more years before the
inscription was set in place. "Commemorating — with a brazen disregard
for the truth — the fact that 'London rises again...three short years complete
that which was considered the work of ages.'"
Hooke’s surviving drawings show that several versions of the monument were
submitted for consideration: a plain obelisk, a column garnished with tongues
of fire, and the fluted Doric column that was eventually chosen. The real
contention came with the problem of what type of ornament to have at the top.
Initially, Wren favoured a statue of a phoenix with outstretched wings rising
from the ashes, but as the column neared completion he decided instead on a 15 ft
statue either of Charles II, or a sword-wielding female to represent a
triumphant London; the cost of either being estimated at £1,050. Charles
himself disliked the idea of his statue atop the monument and instead preferred
a simple copper-gilded ball "with flames sprouting from the top", costing a
little over £325, but ultimately it was the design of a flaming gilt-bronze urn
suggested by Robert Hooke that was chosen.
The total cost of the monument was £13,450 11s 9d., of which £11,300 was
paid to the mason-contractor Joshua Marshall.
The Edinburgh-born writer James Boswell visited the Monument in 1763 to climb
the 311 steps to what was then the highest viewpoint in London. Halfway up,
he suffered a panic attack, but persevered and made it to the top, where
he found it "horrid to be so monstrous a way up in the air, so far above London
and all its spires". The area around the base of the column,
Monument Street, has now been pedestrianised in a £790,000 street
improvement scheme. The Monument closed in July 2007 for an
18-month, £4.5 million refurbishment project and re-opened in February 2009.
Between 1 and 2 October 2011, a Live Music Sculpture created especially for
the Monument by British composer Samuel Bordoli was performed 18 times during
the weekend. This was the first occasion that music had ever been heard inside
the structure and effectively transformed Wren's design into a
gigantic reverberating musical instrument.
As a scientific instrument Wren and Hooke built the monument to
double-up as a scientific instrument. It has a central shaft meant for use as a
zenith telescope and for use in gravity and pendulum experiments that connects
to an underground laboratory for observers to work. Vibrations from heavy
traffic on Fish Hill rendered the experimental conditions unsuitable.
A hinged lid in the urn covers the opening to the shaft. The steps in the
shaft of the tower are all six inches high, allowing them to be used for
barometric pressure studies. Panoramic camera system
During the 2007–2009 refurbishment, a 360-degree panoramic camera was
installed on top of the Monument. Updated every minute and running 24
hours a day, it provides a record of weather, building and ground activity in
the City. In fiction
William Godwin, in his novel Deloraine, suggests that, like "the man we are told
of, who climbed over the rails at the top of the Monument of London, and clung
to them for a while on the outside, there was not room for repentance",
meaning that there was no way for the hero, who has just killed his rival, to
go back. Charles Dickens, in his novel Martin
Chuzzlewit, published in 1844, describes the Monument thus:
if the day were bright, you observed upon the house–tops, stretching far
away, a long dark path; the shadow of the Monument; and turning round, the
tall original was close beside you, with every hair erect upon his golden head,
as if the doings of the city frightened him.
The Monument is a prominent setting in The System of the World, the third book
in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. George, the hero of Charlie Fletcher's
children's book about unLondon Stoneheart, has a fight at the top of
the Monument with a raven and a gargoyle.
The Monument is a key location in The Bloodless Boy, a novel by Robert J
Lloyd. Robert Hooke, who designed the Monument with Christopher Wren,
investigates the sinister murder of a blood drained boy discovered on the
banks of the River Fleet. Harry Hunt, Robert Hooke's assistant, is chased up
to the top of the monument after witnessing a murder.
See also History of London
References Godwin, William. Deloraine in Collected
Novels and Memoirs of William Godwin vol. 8. ed. Maurice Hindle. London:
William Pickering, 1992. Further reading
On a Grander Scale: The Outstanding Career of Sir Christopher Wren
External links Official Monument website
City of London Monument page The Monument panoramic camera system,
contains an archive of images. History of The Monument with some
account of the great fire of London, which it commemorates, by Charles Welch
3D photoscan of the base or the Monument showing Latin inscription