The Golden Boy at Pye Corner

The lowdown

High on a corner at Smithfield sits a small gilded statue of a chubby boy, easy to miss but rich with meaning. It marks Pye Corner, the spot where the Great Fire of London finally stopped in 1666 after destroying much of the city. Because the fire had started in Pudding Lane and ended at Pye Corner, some moralising Londoners blamed the disaster on the sin of gluttony, and the well-fed Golden Boy was put up as a warning.

An inscription beneath spells out the gluttonous moral. It is free to find, a quirky and very London piece of seventeenth-century finger-wagging perched above the street.