Writing of St Laurence,  a deacon and martyr who is believed to have died in 258, David Farmer, in his Oxford Dictionary of Saints (3rd edition, 1992),  states that ‘few details of his life are historical’.  Details such as his being roasted on a gridiron ‘are quite unhistorical’.

Stained glass panel, by Charles Eamer Kempe (1837-1907), 1889, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; photographed June 2025.