St Giles, St George (patron saint of Bloomsbury) and St Andrew (patron saint of Holborn) were depicted on the borough seal. The several constituent parishes were illustrated in the arms granted to Holborn in 1906, while the supporters, the Lion and the Griffin are from the arms of Lincoln's Inn and Gray's Inn (Inns of Court).
Charges from these arms were used, together with charges from the coats of arms of Hampstead and of St. Pancras, when the new coat of arms of the London Borough of Camden was designed in 1965.
Visible legacy
Several of the street name signs in the British Museum/Senate House area still bear the "Borough of Holborn" area designation. Holborn Town Hall, built in 1894, still exists, on High Holborn, and still has the coat of arms in the façade.[2] The entrance gate piers to the church of St Giles-in-the-Fields commemorate the Borough when it was amalgamated in 1965, and bear an inscription to this effect, although the arch that bore the borough's arms has since been removed. [3]
Population and area
Holborn was the smallest of the twenty-eight metropolitan boroughs of the County of London, with an area of between 405 and 407 acres (1.6 km2). Therefore, it was even smaller than the City of London. It also had the smallest population of any of the boroughs throughout its existence. The populations recorded in National Censuses were:
A map showing the wards of Holborn Metropolitan Borough as they appeared in 1952.
The borough was divided into nine wards for elections: Central St Giles, Lincoln's Inn, North Bloomsbury, North St Andrew, North St Giles, Saffron Hill, South Bloomsbury, South East St Andrew and St George the Martyr.[7][8]
Borough council
Parliament constituency
For elections to Parliament, the borough was represented by one constituency:
^GB Historical GIS / University of Portsmouth, Holborn CP through time | Census tables with data for the Parish-level Unit, A Vision of Britain through Time. http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/unit/10234116 Date accessed: 19 February 2015
