St Magnus-the-Martyr Great Plague of 1665, the City authorities ordered fires to be kept burning night and day, in the hope that the air would be cleansed. Daniel Defoe's semi-fictictional, but highly realistic, work "A Journal of the Plague Year" records that one of these was "just by St Magnus Church". Despite its escape in 1633, the church was one of the first buildings to be destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. St Magnus stood less than 300 yards from the bakehouse of Thomas Farriner in Pudding Lane where the fire started. Farriner, a former churchwarden of St Magnus,
Pudding Lane the current name in the 15th century. Pudding Lane was one of the world's first one-way streets. An order restricting cart traffic to one-way travel on that and 16 other lanes around Thames Street was issued in 1617, an idea not copied for over 180 years until Albemarle Street became a one-way street in 1800. The nearest Underground station to Pudding Lane is Monument, a short distance to the west. The closest main-line railway stations are Fenchurch Street and Cannon Street. According to Stow, the lane had also been known as Rother Lane or Red Rose Lane. Variants include: Red