[115] During the progress of these sheets through the press, we lighted upon the following most interesting account of “Holborn Past and Present,” in the Morning Advertiser Newspaper. Its introduction here, will, we are sure, not be considered inappropriate.
“Perhaps no part of London has undergone such an alteration and business-like remodelling within the last few years as High Holborn, consequent on the construction of the Holborn Viaduct and other contemplated improvements. A few particulars relating to this locality, therefore, may not be thought, perhaps, uninteresting at the present time to our readers.
“Holborn extends from the north end of Farringdon Street to Broad Street, Bloomsbury. It was anciently called Oldbourne, from being built upon the side of a brook or bourne, which Stow says ‘broke out of the ground about the place where now the Bars do stand, and ran down the whole street till Oldbourne-bridge, and into the river of the Wells or Turnemill-brook.’ Holborn was first paved in 1417, at the expense of Henry V., when the highway ‘was so deep and miry that many perils and hazards were thereby occasioned, as well to the King’s carriages passing that way as to those of his subjects.’ By this road criminals were conveyed from Newgate and the Tower to the gallows at St. Giles’s and Tyburn; whither a ride in the cart ‘up the heavy hill’ implied going to be hung, in Ben Jonson’s time. As an instance of the way persons were conducted to the place of execution in by-gone times, we can quote Swift’s lines:—
‘As clever Tom Clinch, while the rabble was bawling,
Rode stately through Holborn to die of his calling,
He stopt at the George for a bottle of sack,
And promised to pay for it when he came back.’
And as to the lessons of morality taught in those days, it is said that an old councillor in Holborn used every execution-day to turn out his clerks with this compliment,—‘Go, ye young rogues; go to school and improve.’
“The average annual amount of traffic between Fetter Lane and the Old Bailey, which has been increasing rapidly during the last thirty years, was in 1838 assumed to be 20,000,000 pedestrians, 871,640 equestrians, 157,572 hackney coaches, 372,470 carts and waggons, 78,876 stages, 82,256 carriages, 135,842 omnibuses, 460,110 chaises and taxed carts, and 352,942 cabs. It was Alderman Skinner, who built Skinner Street, that first proposed to construct a bridge from Snow Hill across the valley to Holborn Hill, and part of the late Mr. Charles Pearson’s plan was to lift the valley seventeen feet.
“On the north side of Holborn Hill, approaching Farringdon Street, is Ely Place. All that remains of this once celebrated Palace, anciently called Ely House, which was then the town mansion of the Bishops of Ely, is the Chapel of St. Etheldreda. The crypt of this chapel during the interregnum became a kind of military canteen, and was subsequently used as a public cellar to vend drink in. It is now a Welsh Church, at the entrance being written—
‘Y.R. E.G.L.W.Y.S. C.Y.M.R.A.E.G.’
underneath
‘St. Etheldreda’s Chapel.’