In AD 60, Boudica, queen of the Iceni tribe in East Anglia, led a revolt against the Romans in Britain.
After sacking Colchester, her tribal army attacked the Roman town of London. The town was defenceless, having sent its soldiers to Colchester where they had been slaughtered. The governor, Suetonius Paulinus, marched to London with a cavalry division before Boudica arrived, but he decided he had insufficient troops to fight her army. Instead he gathered together all the Londoners who wanted to leave and abandoned London to its fate. When Boudica arrived she killed any remaining people and burnt the town to the ground.
Archaeologists excavating Roman sites in London have found a destruction layer between 25 and 60 centimetres deep from this date. The burnt remains suggest a temperature of around 1000 degrees centigrade.
London was rebuilt, only for a large area to be destroyed again during the 'Hadrianic Fire' (cause unknown) of the early 2nd century.