Stone plaque № 51565
Connection to This Location
# Stone plaque № 51565 at 12 Cock Lane Standing before the Golden Boy at Pye Corner, you're witnessing one of London's most grimly ironic monuments, carved into the very flesh of a building that once stood as a macabre crossroads between death and profit. When this rotund gilded cherub was original...
Location
12 Cock Lane
Inscription
The Golden Boy of Pye Corner The Boy at Pye Corner was erected to commemorate the staying of the Great Fire which beginning at Pudding Lane was ascribed to the sin of gluttony when not attributed to the papists as on the monument and the boy was made prodigiously fat to enforce the moral. He was originally built into the front of a public house called 'The Fortune of War' which used to occupy this site and was torn down in 1910. The Fortune of War was the chief house of call north of the river for resurrectionists in body snatching days years ago. The Landlord used to show the room where on benches round the walls the bodies were placed labelled with the snatcher's names waiting till the surgeons at Saint Bartholomew's could run round and appraise them.