Holborn Tourist Information from Online Discounted Hotels

Bounded by Kingsway to the west, the City to the east, the Strand to the south and Theobald’s Road to the north, Holborn (pronounced “Ho-bun”) is a fascinating area to explore. Strategically placed between the royal and political centre of Westminster and the mercantile and financial might of the City, this wedge of land became the hub of the English legal system in the early thirteenth century. Hostels, known as Inns of Court, were established where lawyers could eat, sleep and study English Common Law (which was not taught at the universities at the time).

Even today, every aspiring English barrister must study (and eat a required number of dinners) at one of the four Inns - Inner Temple, Middle Temple, Lincoln’s Inn and Gray’s Inn - in order to qualify and be called to the Bar. It’s an old-fashioned system of patronage (you need contacts to get accepted at one of the Inns) and one that has done much to keep the judiciary overwhelmingly white, male and Oxbridge-educated to this day.

Hidden away from the general hubbub of London, the Inns are nevertheless open to the public and make for an interesting stroll, their archaic, cobbled precincts exuding the rarefied atmosphere of an Oxbridge college, and sheltering one of the city’s oldest churches, the twelfth-century Temple Church. Close the Inns, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, one of the most memorable and enjoyable London’s small museums, the Sir John Soane’s Museum, is packed with architectural illusions and an eclectic array of curios, while, opposite, the Hunterian Museum houses freakish medical Curiosities. for fantastic hotel deals in Holborn London at great discounted rates see this page from Online Discounted Hotels.