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,
Great Fire of 1873 Great Fire of 1873 The Great Fire of 1873 was a major fire which swept through the downtown of Portland, Oregon on August 2, 1873, destroying twenty-two blocks on the west side of the Willamette River, including along Yamhill and Morrison Streets. A mix of mansions, tenements, and commercial property were destroyed. Many businesses were not insured, and many others were only partially insured. At 4:20 am on morning of August 2, 1873 a fire started on First Street near Taylor, behind the Metropolitan Hotel. By 4:40 am, just twenty minutes after its start, the fire had spread a block