Great Fire of London general; and more particularly in this business of the fire, laying it all upon him." Pepys was a senior official in the Navy Office by then, and he ascended the Tower of London on Sunday morning to view the fire from a turret. He recorded in his diary that the eastern gale had turned it into a conflagration. It had burned down several churches and, he estimated, 300 houses and reached the riverfront. The houses on London Bridge were burning. He took a boat to inspect the destruction around Pudding Lane at close range and describes a "lamentable" fire, "everybody
Milk Street, London Milkstrete and Bread Street" in 1264. Sir Thomas More, author of "Utopia" (1516) was born in Milk Street in February 1478 and a plaque at the north end of the street marks the approximate spot. The south end of the street was the site of the parish church of St Mary Magdalen before the church was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. The parish was then merged with the adjacent St Lawrence Jewry and Honey Lane Market built on the site which at one time had 105 butchers' stalls. Edward Hatton noted in 1708 that the market