Presteigne
The Great Fire of 1681
A time of disaster
Presteigne may be said to have experienced more than
its fair share of misfortune in the course of its eventful history.
As if the terrible privations of the recurring outbreaks of the
plague, which ravaged the town on several occasions, were not
enough for one small market town, it also suffered a disastrous
fire.
The fire broke out on the night of September 12th, 1681, and it is believed that over sixty houses in the High Street and in St David's Street were completely destroyed. As far as is known only one of the inhabitants, a blind woman, died in the fire.
of the town.
The ever present danger
Towns were always 
at some risk from fire in these times
because most houses were built of wattle and daub around timber
frames, often with thatched roofs. They were also grouped very
tightly together, so fires could spread rapidly from house to
house.
The end of the summer would have been a time of even greater
risk from fire, when roofs and walls would be tinder dry
and households would be lighting the first fires with the onset
of the colder weather of the autumn.
As well as destroying so many houses, the 1681 fire also wiped out the "schoole and schoolehouse" which was the free grammar school founded by John Beddoes in 1565. The school, which lives on in the John Beddoes High School of today, was then situated in St David's Street, opposite the church.
An entry in the Burials Register for the parish of Topsham in Devon dated March 18th,1682, noted "Collected towards the Inhabitants of Presteigne in Wales who suffred by ffire. 11s. 5 1/2d".
