Tutorial: learn the song 'London's burning'
The tutorial: learn the song
Learn the song 'London's burning', which has some specially-written additional words.
Then hear about the start of The Great Fire in Thomas Farrynor’s bakery on Pudding Lane and listen to extracts from the famous diary of Samuel Pepys.
We also make two sound-pictures about the start of The Great Fire using body-percussion, clapping and mouth sounds.
The song: 'London's burning'
Song: 'London's burning!' (vocal)
Song: 'London's burning!' (backing)
The famous nursery song is adapted with specially-written additional words and is sung as a round.
Once you have learnt the song by singing with vocal version polish your performance by singing with the backing track.
Click here for the lyric sheet.
Click here for the music sheet.
Extracts from Samuel Pepys' diary
Listen to Samuel Pepys read extracts from his diary
Listen to Samuel Pepys read from his diary about The Great Fire.
Pepys describes how he is woken in the night by his maid and goes out to find many houses already destroyed. He also describes how he later reports to King Charles II on the fire and the orders given by the king.
Resources
Teacher's Notes. document
Guidance on all the content (pdf)
Meet the famous people. image
Meet the famous people in this slideshow of images
Lyric sheets for pupils. document
All the lyric sheets together (pdf)
Lyrics - London's burning! document
Download / print the song lyrics
Music - London's burning! document
Download / print the song music
More from this series
3. Samuel Pepys and The Great Fire of London - part 1. audio
Finding out about London immediately before the Great Fire including the plague of 1665.
5. Samuel Pepys and The Great Fire of London - part 3. audio
Finding out about rebuilding London with songs based on well-known nursery rhymes.
6. Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart and Haydn - part 1. audio
Exploring great composers with songs based on some of their most famous melodies.
