300-year-old paper expected to fetch £7,000 at Ludlow auction
It was written while the streets of London were still burning back in 1666 - but a copy of the first ever newspaper report of the Great Fire of London still exists and will go under the hammer next week.
The London Gazette, one of country's oldest newspapers, was less than a year old when the great fire gutted the capital, consuming 13,200 houses, 87 churches, St. Paul's Cathedral and most of the buildings of the City authorities.
Now a rare copy of the paper, which reported the start of the fire, will go up for sale in Ludlow with a price tag of £5,000 to £7,000 - on the very anniversary of the fire itself.
The the date of ancient two-page paper is all-important- covering the week of August 30 to September 3, the report was added at the last minute to the bottom of page two, the morning after the fire broke out.
Ominously, it starts: "London Sept 2: About two-a-clock this morning a sudden and lamentable fire broke out in the City beginning not far from Thames-Street near London Bridge, which continues still with great violence, and hath already burnt down to the ground many houses thereabouts."
The fire is estimated to have destroyed the homes of about 85 percent of the city's population. Only six deaths were recorded, but as paupers and the middle class would not have been officially registered, the true death toll is unknown.
Richard Westwood-Brookes of Mullock's Auctioneers, who is holding the internet-only auction on Tuesday, said: "It is of the greatest rarity and one of the most sought after newspapers by collectors.
"Elsewhere the edition has the usual eclectic mix of news both home and abroad."
Also up for sale at the auction will be a unique archive of military dispatches from the Falklands War in 1982. The 274-page record starts with the first signal issued on May 22 when the British forces arrived in the islands to fight the occupying Argentinians.
Mr Westwood-Brookes said: "It ends on June 15 and includes this signal: 'Maj Gen Menendez surrendered to me all the Arg armed forces in East and West Falkland together with their impediments... The Falkland Islands are once more under the government desired by their inhabitants. God Save the Queen. Signed J J Moore'.
Mr Brookes continued "We understand that these papers were rescued by an islander at the end of the conflict when many other papers relating to the war were destroyed.
"This is considered to be the only such archive currently outside an institution."
The Falklands log is expected to fetch between £3,000 and £40,000.
Other items under the hammer include a 1932 copy of Mein Kampf signed by Hitler valued at £800 to £1,000, and a signed wartime photo of Winston Churchill, at £1,000 to £1,500.
