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,
Brace's Bakery Brace's Bakery Brace's Bakery is a Crumlin-based Welsh bakery and bakery products brand. It is still family owned, presently run in the hands of the fourth generation. Born in Abercarn, George Brace, an engine house driver at the Cambrian Colliery in Clydach Vale, started with a loan from his family a small bakery in 1902 in Pontllanfraith. Worked by his family, George continued to work at the colliery until the 1905 mining disaster which killed 35 men, after which George left the mining industry and started to build his bakery business. George and his wife had five sons and two