Holborn and Bloomsbury

by Walter Besant; G. E. Mitton

There were Bridewell Bridge, Fleet Bridge, Fleet Lane Bridge, and Holborn Bridge across the Fleet River. Holborn Bridge was the most northerly of the four. It was a bridge of stone, serving for passengers from the west to the City by way of Newgate. The whole thoroughfare of Oxford Street and Holborn is the result of the diversion of the north highway into the City from the route by Westminster Marshes.

The antiquities of Holborn and its streets north and south are not connected with the trade or with the municipal history of London. On the other hand, the associations of this group of streets are full of interest. If we take the south side of the street, we find ourselves walking past Shoe Lane, St. Andrew's Church, Thavies' Inn, Fetter Lane, Staple Inn, Barnard's Inn, Chancery Lane, Great and Little Turnstiles, Little Queen Street, Drury Lane, and St. Giles's. On the north side we pass Field Lane, Ely Place, Hatton Garden, Brooke Street, Furnival's Inn, Gray's Inn, Red Lion Street, and Tottenham Court Road. All these will be found described in detail further on. Of eminent residents in Holborn itself, Cunningham mentions Gerarde, the author of the "Herbal"; Sir Kenelm Digby; Milton, who lived for a time in one of the houses on the south side, looking upon Lincoln's Inn Fields; and Dr. Johnson, who lived at the sign of the Golden Anchor, Holborn Bars. There were also the Bishops of Ely, Sir Christopher Hatton, Francis Bacon, Sir Thomas More, Charles Dickens, Fulke Greville, Thomas Chatterton, Lord Russell, Dr. Sacheverell, and many others.

It is necessary now, however, to leave off generalization, and to begin with a detailed account of the parishes which fall within the district; of these, St. Giles-in-the-Fields is the most interesting.

ST. GILES-IN-THE-FIELDS.

The name of the parish is derived from the hospital which stood on the site of the present parish church, and was dedicated to the Greek saint St. Giles. It was at first known as St. Giles of the Lepers, but when the hospital was demolished became St. Giles-in-the-Fields.

In a plan dated 1600 St. Giles's is shown to consist largely of open fields. The buildings, which before the dissolution had belonged to the hospital, form a group about the site of the church. A few more buildings run along the north side of the present Broad Street. There are one or two at the north end of Drury Lane, and Drury House is at the south end. Southampton House, in the fields to the north, is marked, but the parish is otherwise open ground. In spite of many edicts to restrain the increase of houses, early in the reign of James I. the meadows began to be built upon, and, though a little checked during the Commonwealth, after the Restoration the building proceeded rapidly, stimulated by the new square at Lincoln's Inn Fields then being carried out by Inigo Jones. To St. Giles's may be attributed the distinction of having originated the Great Plague, which broke out in an alley at the north end of Drury Lane. Several times before this there had been smaller outbreaks, which had resulted in the building of a pest-house. Even after this check the parish continued to increase rapidly, and by the early part of the last century was a byword for all that was squalid and filthy. Its rookeries and slums are thus described in a newspaper cutting of 1845: "All around are poverty and wretchedness; the streets and alleys are rank with the filth of half a century; the windows are half of them broken, or patched with rags and paper, and when whole are begrimed with dirt and smoke; little brokers' shops abound, filled with lumber, the odour of which taints even that tainted atmosphere; the pavement and carriage-way swarm with pigs, poultry, and ragged children.... But in the space called the Dials itself the scene is far different. There at least rise splendid buildings with stuccoed fronts and richly-ornamented balustrades.... These are the gin-palaces." Naturally, among so much poverty gin-palaces and public-houses abounded. It is curious to note how many of Hogarth's pictures of misery and vice were drawn from St. Giles's. "Noon" has St. Giles's Church in the background, while his "Gin Lane" shows the neighbouring church of St. George, Bloomsbury; the scene of his "Harlot's Progress" is Drury Lane, and the idle apprentice is caught when wanted for murder in a cellar in St. Giles's.

The gallows were in this parish from about 1413 until they were removed to Tyburn, and then the terrible Tyburn procession passed through St. Giles's, and halted at the great gate of the hospital, and later at the public-house called The Bowl, described more fully hereafter. From very early times St. Giles's was notorious for its taverns. The Croche Hose (Crossed Stockings), another tavern, was situated at the corner of the marshlands, and in Edward I.'s reign belonged to the cook of the hospital; the crossed stockings, red and white, were adopted as the sign of the hosiers. Besides these, there were numerous other taverns dating from many years back, including the Swan on the Hop, Holborn; White Hart, north-east of Drury Lane; the Rose, already mentioned. In the parish also were various houses of entertainment, of which the most notorious was the Hare and Hounds, formerly Beggar in the Bush, which was kept by one Joe Banks in 1844, and was the resort of all classes. This was in Buckridge Street, over which New Oxford Street now runs. In the last sixty years the face of the parish has been greatly changed. The first demolition of a rookery of vice and squalor took place in 1840, when New Oxford Street was driven through Slumland. Dyott (once George) Street, Church Lane, Buckridge and Bainbridge, Charlotte and Plumtree, were among the most notorious streets thus wholly or partially removed.

In 1844 many wretched houses were demolished, and in 1855 Shaftesbury Avenue drove another wedge into the slums to let in light and air. There are poor and wretched courts in St. Giles's yet, but civilization is making its softening influence felt even here, and though cases of Hooliganism in broad daylight still occur, they are less and less frequent.

So much for a brief history of the parish. Its soil was from very early times damp and marshy. To the south of the hospital was a stretch of ground called Marshlands, probably at one time a pond. Great ditches and fosses cut up the ground. The most important of these was Blemund's Ditch, which divided the parish from that of Bloomsbury. This is supposed to have been an ancient line of fortification. Besides this, a ditch traversed the marshlands above mentioned, another encompassed the croft lying by the north gate of the hospital, and there were several others of less importance.

The Hospital of St. Giles was the earliest foundation of its kind in London, if we except St. James's Hospital. Stow sums it up thus: "St. Giles-in-the-Fields was an hospital for leprous people out of the City of London and shire of Middlesex, founded by Matilde the Queen, wife to Henry I., and suppressed by King Henry VIII." The date of foundation is given by Leland and Malcolm as 1101, though Stow and others give 1117, which was the year before the foundress died. Before this time this part of London had apparently been included in the great estate of Rugmere, which belonged to St. Paul's.