Place Name
It may be hard to imagine now but Holborn was once fertile farmland, and mentioned in the Domesday Book (an early census commissioned by William the Conqueror to assess his English dominions in 1086) for its vines. The Normans, preferring wine to beer or ale, were careful to note the location of English vineyards or any new vines planted. However the name of this street probably references the vineyards attached to the former leper colony of St Giles which was established on the outskirts of the City in the early 12thCentury, a time when leprosy was becoming so widespread that the first isolation hospitals were being built. The hospital, run by monks, took care of 14 lepers, and was run like a small monastery, with living quarters, a chapel, a Master’s House, and various outbuildings and orchards. All of which was seized by Henry VIII during his land grab against the Roman Catholic Church, the monastery was dissolved and the land given to Lord Lisle in 1548. Though it has since been rebuilt, the chapel survived as the parish church of St Giles-in-the-Fields. There was also a property called Le Vyne attached to the hospital, which stood on High Holborn from at least the time of Henry VIII. In 1746 this was Vine Street and it ran north via the section today called Stedham Place and Willoughby Street, to Great Russell Street. It was bisected by New Oxford Street in the 1840s.
