Fire Engines
The Great Fire
caused a quickening in the development of the Fire Engine, but
the early machines were very crude; merely a pair of plunger
pumps on wheels or a sledge with a cistern below that had to be
filled by a bucket chain. The wheels were often solid and even
when spokes were fitted they were so
small that speedy transport was difficult and in
the seventeenth century no horse shafts were normally
fitted.
In 1672, fire engine manufacturers received a great impetus from Holland. By the end of the seventeenth century the manufacture of fire engines was being carried out by several makers and competition was becoming keen.
Ten years after the Great Fire the south side of London’s river suffered severely; six hundred houses were burnt in a fire that started in an oilman’s premises. Contemporary accounts refer to fire engines with leather pipes being in use at this fire and they are said to have stopped the fire at St Thomas’ hospital.
The Great Fire caused a quickening in the development of the Fire Engine, but the early machines were very crude; merely a pair of plunger pumps on wheels or a sledge with a cistern below that had to be filled by a bucket chain. The wheels were often solid and even when spokes were fitted they were so small that speedy transport was difficult and in the seventeenth century no horse shafts were normally fitted.
In 1672, fire engine manufacturers received a great impetus from Holland. By the end of the seventeenth century the manufacture of fire engines was being carried out by several makers and competition was becoming keen.
Ten years after the
Great Fire the south side of London’s river suffered 
severely; six hundred houses were burnt in a fire
that started in an oilman’s premises. Contemporary accounts
refer to fire engines with leather pipes being in use at this
fire and they are said to have stopped the fire at St
Thomas’ hospital.
In November 1682, London suffered another great fire, this time in Wapping, when over a thousand houses were blown up or burnt down. There is a report of fire engines at work, but the fire was apparently checked by blowing up houses just before a great brewhouse and woodyard.
Until the end of the century, gun-powder was used more often than the new engines when a fire assumed serious proportions. The new engines were however improving and the beginning of the eighteenth century brought great advances, one of which was the incorporation of an air vessel so that the pulsating jet became a steady stream.
The parish engines (compulsory by this time) had already run into a difficulty when faced with a large fire making it necessary for a number of them to work in unison. They and their ancillary gear had been brought from various makers, there was no standardisation, and the hose couplings of one parish would not join up with those of its neighbours. A state of affairs which was to persist in Britain for the next 200 years.
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