Firefighting involved using buckets, axes and water squirts. Instead, people fought fires within their own parishes using equipment stored in the local church. FirefightingĪt that time there were no organised fire brigades. The summer of 1666 had been very dry, leading to a drought, and the wooden houses had dried out, making them extremely combustible. There were also warehouses in the city which stored highly combustible goods, such as oil and tallow. This meant that flames could easily spread from building to building. These buildings were tightly packed together and the upper floors often projected out above the lower floors. There were stone and brick buildings in London before the Great Fire but the majority of buildings were timber-framed or timber with stone or brick elements.
The leather bears the initials SBB and traces of the first three figures of the date painted on it – 166 – but the final digit is unclear.
The bucket may have been used to fight the Great Fire and was probably dropped in the chaos. The cellar and its contents were preserved under collapsed buildings and debris used to build up the ground after the Great Fire of London. The bucket was found in a burned out cellar at the end of Pudding Lane along with the remains of wooden supports for barrels.