Charlestown, a town of about 1,600 people across the Charles from Boston, was burned on 17 June 1775 during the Battle of Bunker Hill. Most residents had already left. When colonists fired on General William Howe's troops from the empty buildings, Howe had the town set alight, by shells from the Copp's Hill battery in Boston and by marines landed from HMS Somerset. Some witnesses said the fire began at the meeting house, others at an old house above the ferry, and it burned for two days or more. Richard Frothingham's history puts the loss at about 400 buildings, everything on the peninsula except a few houses near Mill Street, and the claims came to almost £118,000. City Square was the heart of the old town. The Boston Landmarks Commission records that the Great House, built in 1629 and traditionally identified with John Winthrop and the Massachusetts Bay Company, became the Three Cranes Tavern in 1635 and was destroyed in the fire; in 1780 the town voted to leave the burned block open. Excavations by Harvard's Peabody Museum in 1982 and by the Public Archaeology Laboratory in 1985 and 1987, ahead of the Central Artery project, found the tavern's cellar and drains. Neighbouring house cellars showed the signs of a sudden, intense fire, one of them under a thick charcoal layer full of burned pottery, glass, ceramic wig curlers and Chinese porcelain. The study report notes that the Winthrop identification is not without controversy. Stones from the foundations were reset in City Square Park to mark the outlines.
Getting there
42.3717, -71.0620
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