HOLBORN, a metropolitan borough of London, England, bounded north-west by St. Pancras, north-east by Finsbury, south east by the City of London, south and west by the City of West minster and St. Marylebone. Pop. (193r) , 38,816. Area 406 acres.
The name of Holborn was formerly derived from Old Bourne, a tributary of the Fleet. Of the existence of this tributary there is no evidence, and the origin of the name is found in Hole bourne, the stream in the hollow, in allusion to the Fleet itself. The fall and rise of the road across the valley before the con struction of the viaduct (1869) was abrupt and inconvenient. In earlier times a bridge here crossed the Fleet, leading from Newgate, while a quarter of a mile west of the viaduct is the site of Hol born Bars, at the entrance to the City, where tolls were levied. The residential district is mainly within the parish of St. George, Bloomsbury (derived from William Blemund, a lord of the manor in the 15th century). In the 18th century Bloomsbury was a wealthy residential quarter. From the 17th century until modern times the parish of St. Giles in the Fields was notorious as a home of crime and poverty. Here occurred some of the earliest cases of the plague. The neighbouring thoroughfare of Hatton Garden, leading north from Holborn Circus, is a centre of the diamond trade.
Ely Place takes its name from a palace of the bishops of Ely, who held land here as early as the 13th century. The property was acquired by Sir Christopher Hatton, lord chancellor under Queen Elizabeth, though the bishopric kept some hold upon it until the 18th century. The chapel of St. Etheldreda, the only remnant of the palace, is a Decorated structure with a vaulted crypt, itself above ground-level. The present parish church of St. Giles in the Fields, between Shaftesbury avenue and New Oxford street, dates from 1734. Here was a leper's hospital founded by Matilda, wife of Henry I., in 11o1. Its chapel be came the parish church on the suppression of the monasteries. The church of St. Andrew was built by Wren, but there are traces of the previous Gothic edifice in the tower. Close to this church is the City Temple (Congregational) .
Two of the four Inns of Court, Lincoln's Inn and Gray's Inn, lie within the borough. Of the first the Tudor gateway opens upon Chancery Lane. To the west lies the square, with public gardens, still called, from its original character, Lincoln's Inn Fields. Gray's Inn, between High Holborn and Theobald's Road, and west of Gray's Inn Road, is of similar arrangement. Of the former Inns of Chancery attached to these Inns of Court the most noteworthy buildings remaining are those of Staple Inn, of which the timbered and gabled Elizabethan front upon High Holborn is a survival of its character in a London thoroughfare; and of Barnard's Inn, occupied by the Mercer's School. Bbth these were attached to Gray's Inn. Among other institutions in Holborn are the British Museum, north of New Oxford Street, the Royal College of Surgeons, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, with the Royal Colleges of Organists, and of Veterinary Surgeons. Holborn returns one member to parliament.