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 Meireki Meireki fire less than three centuries earlier, saw roughly 100,000 deaths, and the destruction of the majority of the city. "The Fire Kimono", a 2008 mystery novel by Laura Joh Rowland, was inspired by the event. Great fire of Meireki The , also known as the Furisode Fire, destroyed 60–70% of the Japanese capital city of Edo (now Tokyo) on March 2, 1657, the third year of the Meireki Imperial era. The fire lasted for three days, and is estimated to have claimed over 100,000 lives. The fire was said to have been started accidentally by a priest who was