Pudding Lane

Jane called us up about three in the morning, to tell us of a great fire they saw in the City... So down, with my heart full of trouble to the Lieutenant of the Tower, who tells me that it begun this morning in the King's bakers house in Pudding Lane.
Samuel Pepys, Sunday 2 September 1666


In 1666, Pudding Lane was a narrow thoroughfare running between Little Eastcheap and Thames Street. Thomas Farriner's house would have been timber-framed and jettied out over the street, with a brick oven in the bakehouse on the ground floor. Farriner maintained that the oven had been cool when he raked up the coals in the hearth on Saturday 1 September, but a few hours later he was woken by a blaze.

Farriner denied any responsibility at all after the Fire, and was one of the signatories on the indictment against the Frenchman, Robert Hubert, who had made a false confession.