Holborn and Bloomsbury | Page 3

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.