London in 1900: Holborn

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Sir Walter Besant, in The Fascination of London, published in 1903, continues his survey of Holborn:

The tradition that Holborn is so named after a brook - the Old Bourne - which rose on the hill, and flowed in an easterly direction into the Fleet River, cannot be sustained by any evidence or any indications of the bed of a former stream.

Stow speaks positively as to the existence of this stream, which, he says, had in his time long been stopped up. Now, the old streams of London have left traces either in the lanes which once formed their bed, as Marylebone Lane and Gardener's Lane, Westminster, or their courses, having been accurately known, have been handed on from one generation to another.

We may therefore dismiss the supposed stream of the "Old Bourne" as not proven. On the other hand, there have been found many springs and wells in various parts of Holborn, as under Furnival's Inn, which may have seemed to Stow proof enough of the tradition.

The name of Holborn is probably derived from the bourne or brook in the "Hollow" - ie, the Fleet River, across which this great roadway ran.

The way is marked in Aggas's map of the sixteenth century as a country road between fields, though, strangely enough, it is recorded that it was paved in 1417, a very ancient date.

Malcolm in 1803 calls it "an irregular long street, narrow and inconvenient, at the north end of Fleet Market, but winding from Shoe Lane up the hill westward."

Holborn Bars stood a little to the west of Brooke Street, and close by was Middle Row, an island of houses opposite the end of Gray's Inn Road, which formed a great impediment to the traffic. The Bars were the entrance to the City, and here a toll of a penny or twopence was exacted from non-freemen who entered the City with carts or coaches.

The George and Blue Boar stood on the south side of Holborn, opposite Red Lion Street, and it is said that it was here that Charles I's letter disclosing his intention to destroy Cromwell and Ireton was intercepted by the latter; but this is very doubtful.

On Holborn Hill was the Black Swan Inn, which has been described as one of the most ancient and magnificent places for the reception of travellers in London, and which Dr. Stukeley, with fervent imagination, declared dated from the Conquest. Another ancient inn in Holborn was called the Rose. It was from here that the poet Taylor started to join Charles I. in the Isle of Wight, of which journey he says,

"We took one coach, two coachmen, and four horses,
And merrily from London made our courses;
We wheeled the top of the heavy hill called Holborn,
Up which hath been full many a sinful soul borne,"

which is quoted merely to show that there is a possible rhyme to Holborn.

Next: Holborn Viaduct