Place:Holborn, London, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

:the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia The Holborn District was created in 1855, consisting of the civil parishes and extra-parochial places of Glasshouse Yard, St. Sepulchre Middlesex, Saffron Hill (which also included Hatton Garden, Ely Rents and Ely Place), and St. Andrew Holborn Above the Bars with St George the Martyr. Holborn was a local government district in the metropolitan area of London to the northwest of the City of London from 1855 to 1900. (At this point the part of Middlesex which included the City of London and the built-up area beyond it was called "The Metropolis".) Although the section outside the City was less densely populated, it was still very urban in nature.

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Holborn District was formed by the Metropolis Management Act 1855 and comprised the Middlesex civil parishes and places listed above. The district was governed by the Holborn District Board of Works, which consisted of forty-nine locally elected "vestrymen" distributed proportionately over the parishes and places. Until 1889 Holborn District was within the area of responsibility of the Metropolitan Board of Works and nominated one member to that Board. The main purpose of the Board during this era was to construct sewerage and drainage to counteract the bouts of cholera which had had such a virulent effect earlier in the century.

In 1889 the area of the Metropolitan Board became the County of London, and Holborn District Board of Works became a local council under the London County Council.

The district was abolished in 1900, when the County of London was divided into twenty-eight metropolitan boroughs. A new Metropolitan Borough of Holborn was created by the merger of Holborn District (less Glasshouse Yard and St. Sepulchre) with the neighbouring St Giles District (St. George Bloomsbury and St. Giles in the Fields) along with two of the Inns of Court: Gray's Inn and Staple Inn. Consequently the centre of Holborn Metropolitan Borough was moved west compared with the centre of the earlier Holborn District.

The parishes of Glasshouse Yard and St. Sepulchre became part of the Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury.

Research tips

The website A Vision of Britain Through Time (University of Portsmouth Department of Geography) provides an interesting description of the whole of Holborn from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72. This covers some of the events that occurred in the district in earlier centuries along with statistics from the 19th century. Emphasis is on the area of St. Andrew Holborn above the Bars, but information about the other parishes further east is also included.

• A boundary map for St. Sepulchre in the 19th century provided by A Vision of Britain through Time shows how urban this area was in both London and Holborn.

Middlesex Research Tips

Parts of Middlesex were absorbed into London in 1889 (Inner London), and some in 1965 (Outer London). Depending on the specific location and the year being investigated it may be necessary to check London records as well as those of Middlesex.

• See wiki.familysearch.org under "Middlesex" for key information about the jurisdictions and records of Middlesex, plus links to indexes, reference aids and Family History Library holdings. As at October 2019 FamilySearch has updated its listings of Parish Registers, 1538-1912 for Westminster.
• The London Metropolitan Archives (40 Northampton Road, Clerkenwell, London EC1R 0HB) holds records relating to the whole of Greater London. Ancestry (subscription necessary) has produced transcriptions and provides images of lists of baptisms, marriages, and burials in churches across Greater London. These lists start in 1813 and stretch into the 20th century.
• The Victoria History of the County of Middlesex is a series of volumes available online through British History Online. The volumes were written over the past hundred or so years by a number of authors and cover various sections of Middlesex. A list of the volumes and what each contains can be found under the source Victoria History of the County of Middlesex
• GENUKI has a long list of websites and archive holders in addition to London Metropolitan Archives above. (The list from GENUKI is not maintained so well that there is never a dead link in it. However, it is often worth googling the title given on the page just in case the contributor has reorganized their website.)
• GENUKI has a separate page for Middlesex references.
• GENUKI also has a list of the Archives and Local Studies Libraries for each of the boroughs of Greater London.
• Registration Districts in Middlesex and Registration Districts in London, are lists of the registration districts used for civil registration (births, marriages and deaths, as well as the censuses). There are linked supporting lists of the parishes which made up each registration district, the dates of formation and abolition of the districts, the General Register Office numbers, and the local archive-holding place. This work has been carried out by Brett Langston under the agency of GENUKI (Genealogy United Kingdom and Ireland) and UKBMD - Births, Marriages, Deaths & Censuses on the Internet.