The area is particularly noted for its links to the legal profession, for the diamond centre at Hatton Garden and for Great Ormond Street Hospital.

From the Tudor period onwards new local government were introduced in England, and parish areas were obliged to take on civil as well as ecclesiastical responsibilities for the first time, this started with relief of the poor.

This growth, initially limited to Farringdon Without (which includes a part of Holborn) was well underway in the 12th century, leading to the Ward being retrospectively described as the capital's original West End.

This meant that Ye Olde Mitre, a pub located in a court hidden behind the buildings of the Place and the Garden, was licensed by the Cambridgeshire Magistrates.

[17][18] St Etheldreda's is the oldest Roman Catholic church in Britain, and one of two extant buildings in London dating back to the era of Edward I.

[19][20][21] Henry VII paid for the road to be paved in 1494 because the thoroughfare "was so deep and miry that many perils and hazards were thereby occasioned, as well to the king's carriages passing that way, as to those of his subjects".

Charles Dickens took up residence in Furnival's Inn (later the site of "Holborn Bars", the former Prudential building designed by Alfred Waterhouse).

Dickens put his character "Pip", in Great Expectations, in residence at Barnard's Inn opposite, now occupied by Gresham College.

The unit is nicknamed the Devil's Own, a name given by George III, not due to ferocity in battle, but rather to his dislike of lawyers.

[25] In the 18th century, Holborn was the location of the infamous Mother Clap's molly house (meeting place for homosexual men).

The Holborn Empire, originally Weston's Music Hall, stood between 1857 and 1960, when it was pulled down after structural damage sustained in the Blitz.

A plaque stands at number 120 commemorating Thomas Earnshaw's invention of the Marine chronometer, which facilitated long-distance travel.

Just to the west of the circus, but originally sited in the middle, is a large equestrian statue of Prince Albert by Charles Bacon, erected in 1874 as the city's official monument to him.

It was presented by Charles Oppenheim, of the diamond trading company De Beers, whose headquarters is in nearby Charterhouse Street.

The district can best be described in reference to the ancient parish and the sub-divisions that succeeded it, however the area is not an administrative unit so contemporary perceptions of its extent can be vague and highly variable.

The curving alignment of Roger Street follows part of the course of that lost brook, and marked the northern boundary of the parish and later borough.

[29] The area extends west from Farringdon Street, for three-quarters of a mile, roughly as far as Southampton Row and Holborn tube station.