The Golden Boy of Pye Corner and Cock Lane

Look up at that plump golden boy. He's the Golden Boy of Pye Corner, a 17th-century wooden figure marking the spot where the Great Fire of 1666 came to a halt. His inscription offers an unexpected explanation: the fire, which began in Pudding Lane and ended at Pye Corner, was a punishment for the sin of gluttony. That, the plaque says, is why the boy is so fat.

1Body snatchers

The statue used to sit on the front of the Fortune of War tavern, demolished in 1910. According to the chroniclers, it was the haunt of the ‘resurrection men’, who dug up corpses to sell to the surgeons of St Bartholomew's Hospital, a stone's throw from here.

2The knocking ghost

Now look at the street running off to one side: Cock Lane. In 1762, all London was talking about a house on this street where knocks and scratches were heard at night. The owner, William Parsons, claimed it was the spirit of Fanny Lynes, a former lodger who had died of smallpox, accusing her widower of poisoning her. Crowds came, even aristocrats, to hear the ghost, which was nicknamed ‘Scratching Fanny’.

A committee that included the writer Samuel Johnson concluded that the whole thing was a fraud.

Parsons's daughter, aged about eleven, was making the noises. Parsons was convicted of conspiracy and put in the pillory.

3What to look for

• The golden boy and his belly, ‘made prodigiously fat’.
• The inscription on the plaque below.
• The Cock Lane street sign, the ghost's street.