Hello, friend, and welcome to the Renaissance English History podcast, a part of the Agora Podcast network and the original Tudoror podcast telling stories of Tudor England since 2009.

I am Heather Tesco, I am your host.

I'm a storyteller who makes history accessible because I believe it's a pathway to understanding who we are,

our place in the universe, and being much more deeply in touch

with our own humanity. This is episode 234, 35, something around there. And we are talking about

something very basic, very primal today, and that is fires fires fire was a major part of life for pre-modern people before there were

stoves it's how you cooked there was always the risk of fire damaging your home homes were wooden

there were great fires we're all familiar with the

Great Fire of London. There were other fires before then. So we're just going to put it all

together today and just talk about fire. So thank you for being here with me. This episode is

on fire. I just had to say that I couldn't pass it up.

Sometimes things like that are just presented to you on a platter, and you have to take it.

So here we go.

Let us get right into it.

Today, like I said, we are exploring an element that has shaped civilizations, sparked innovation,

and also brought devastation.

Fire.

Before the advent of modern fire management technologies and practices, fire was both a vital resource

and a perilous threat. It just said the word perilous, which is going to take us to today's random Monty Python quote. Let me have just a little bit more peril. No, it's too perilous. We were in the nick of time. You were in great peril. I don't think I was. Yes, you were in terrible peril. Look, let me go back in there and face the peril. No, it's too perilous.

So there we go. We got today's random Monty Python quote out of the way we can continue. So today we're going to delve into the indispensable role that fire played in daily life during the medieval and tudor period, the major fires that marked

these eras, and the early methods developed to combat these fierce lazes. In the days before

gas heaters and electric stoves, fire was the heart of the home and the engine of industry.

...