Great Fire molten glass fragments

These pieces of glass were excavated by archaeologists in the cellar of a shop on Pudding Lane, which had burnt down during the Great Fire of London. They were originally flat, clear panes of window glass but they have buckled, broken and gone cloudy with the heat. Samuel Pepys walked through the ruins of the City on 4 September 1666 and wrote in his diary: '[I] took up a piece of glasse in the streete, where much more was, so melted and buckled with the heat of the fire'. He 'also did see a poor cat taken out of a hole in the chimney the hair all burned off the body, and yet alive'.