Old London Maps
Free access to scores of rare and detailed maps, plans, articles, information and views of medieval, sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth century London for the genealogist, family historian, student and the curious.

 

 

 

Fireworks in Covent Garden in 1690

 

A spectacular display of fireworks in Covent Garden in the late seventeenth century. The English had always enjoyed a very particular love of fireworks - during the late medieval and Tudor age Parliament had to legislate against people storing gunpowder under beds, and at one point the City of London authorities had to point out to people that it was never a good idea to check stores of said stored gunpowder late at night ... with a candle. During the sixteenth and seventeenth century it was not unknown for people to voice their disapproval of their local parish vicar by setting off a small explosion under the pulpit during Sunday service (which must have enlivened everyone's day). Guy Fawkes' plot to blow up Parliament in 1604 was just another (if much grander) manifestation of the Englishman's easy access to, and willingness to use, gunpowder.

 

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