n on p. 28. This street runs roughly north
and south throughout the district selected, and dividing it east and
west is the great highway, which begins as New Oxford Street, becomes
High Holborn, and continues as Holborn and Holborn Viaduct.

The tradition that Holborn is so named after a brook--the Old
Bourne--which rose on the hill, and flowed in an easterly direction into
the Fleet River, cannot be sustained by any evidence or any indications
of the bed of a former stream. Stow speaks positively as to the
existence of this stream, which, he says, had in his time long been
stopped up. Now, the old streams of London have left traces either in
the lanes which once formed their bed, as Marylebone Lane and Gardener's
Lane, Westminster, or their courses, having been accurately known, have
been handed on from one generation to another. We may therefore dismiss
the supposed stream of the "Old Bourne" as not proven. On the other
hand, there have been found many springs and wells in various parts of
Holborn, as under Furnival's Inn, which may have seemed to Stow proof
enough of the tradition. The name of Holborn is probably derived from
the bourne or brook in the "Hollow"--_i.e._, the Fleet River, across
which this great roadway ran. The way is marked in Aggas's map of the
sixteenth century as a country road between fields, though, strangely
enough, it is recorded that it was paved in 1417, a very ancient date.
Malcolm in 1803 calls it "an irregular long street, narrow and
inconvenient, at the north end of Fleet Market, but winding from Shoe
Lane up the hill westward."

Holborn Bars stood a little to the west of Brooke Street, and close by
was Middle Row, an island of houses opposite the end of Gray's Inn Road,
which formed a great impediment to the traffic. The Bars were the
entrance to the City, and here a toll of a penny or twopence was exacted
from non-freemen who entered the City with carts or coaches.

The George and Blue Boar stood on the south side of Holborn, opposite
Red Lion Street, and it is said that it was here that Charles I.'s
letter disclosing his intention to destroy Cromwell and Ireton was
intercepted by the latter; but this is very doubtful.

On Holborn Hill was the Black Swan Inn, which has been described as one
of the most ancient and magnificent places for the reception of
travellers in London, and which Dr. Stukeley, with fervent imagination,
declared dated from the Conquest. Another ancient inn in H