Great Turnstile, Little Turnstile and New Turnstile are

alley An alley or alleyway is a narrow lane, path, or passageway, often reserved for pedestrians, which usually runs between, behind, or within buildings in the older parts of towns and cities. It is also a rear access or service road (back lane ...

s between

High Holborn High Holborn ( ) is a street in Holborn and Farringdon Without, Central London, which forms a part of the A40 route from London to Fishguard. It starts in the west at the eastern end of St Giles High Street and runs past the Kingsway and ...

and

Lincoln's Inn Fields Lincoln's Inn Fields is the largest public square in London. It was laid out in the 1630s under the initiative of the speculative builder and contractor William Newton, "the first in a long series of entrepreneurs who took a hand in develo ...

in London. They originally had

turnstile A turnstile (also called a turnpike, gateline, baffle gate, automated gate, turn gate in some regions) is a form of gate which allows one person to pass at a time. A turnstile can be configured to enforce one-way human traffic. In addition, a ...

s to prevent cattle from straying. They later became busy lanes and were built up with shops and housing. Numerous businesses were established there including booksellers, publishers and makers of scientific instruments.

Names

Great Turnstile, Little Turnstile and New Turnstile link the highway of

and the open ground of

. They are named after the

s which were put there in Tudor times to prevent cattle grazing on the fields from escaping into

Holborn Holborn ( or ) is a district in central London, which covers the south-eastern part of the London Borough of Camden and a part ( St Andrew Holborn Below the Bars) of the Ward of Farringdon Without in the City of London. The area has its root ...

. The New Turnstile is so-called because it was created later in 1685. Other names for the Great Turnstile include Turngatlane, Turnstile Alley, Turningstile Lane and Turnepike Lane. It was recorded as Turngatlane in 1522 and records show that it was not built up with shops and housing until after 1545.

Shops

Shops and other businesses set up in the Great Turnstile. These included a bookseller,

milliner Hat-making or millinery is the design, manufacture and sale of hats and other headwear. A person engaged in this trade is called a milliner or hatter. Historically, milliners, typically women shopkeepers, produced or imported an inventory of ...

, printer, sempster and shoemaker. In 1829, Brayley wrote that the Great Turnstile's businesses then included a butcher, cutler, fruiterer, pastry-cook,

tobacconist A tobacconist, also called a tobacco shop, a tobacconist's shop or a smoke shop, is a retailer of tobacco products in various forms and the related accoutrements, such as pipes, lighters, matches, pipe cleaners, and pipe tampers. More specia ...

and manufacturer of

bonnet A Bonnet is a variety of headgear, hat or cap Specific types of headgear referred to as "bonnets" may include Scottish * Blue bonnet, a distinctive woollen cap worn by men in Scotland from the 15th-18th centuries And its derivations: ** Fea ...

s, dresses and gloves, while the Little Turnstile had

broker A broker is a person or firm who arranges transactions between a buyer and a seller for a commission when the deal is executed. A broker who also acts as a seller or as a buyer becomes a principal party to the deal. Neither role should be confu ...

s and petty chandlers, and the New Turnstile had a variety of small shopkeepers.

Scientific instruments

In 1750, the first civil engineer,

John Smeaton John Smeaton (8 June 1724 – 28 October 1792) was a British civil engineer responsible for the design of bridges, canals, harbours and lighthouses. He was also a capable mechanical engineer and an eminent physicist. Smeaton was the fi ...

, made philosophical instruments at the Great Turnstile. Another instrument maker to set up business there was William Ford Stanley, who rented number 3, Great Turnstile in 1854 and made wooden drawing instruments. This business was not successful initially but Stanley was a resourceful inventor and became a pioneer of making such instruments from aluminium with accurate scales, and expanded his product line to include surveying instruments such as

theodolite A theodolite () is a precision optical instrument for measuring angles between designated visible points in the horizontal and vertical planes. The traditional use has been for land surveying, but it is also used extensively for building an ...

s. In ten years, he had several factories in the area and two more shops in the Great Turnstile. The business went on to become the largest instrument maker in the world so that, in 1914, the ''American Machinist'' acclaimed his first shop as a landmark in engineering.

Booksellers and publishers

Both the Great and Little Turnstiles were well known for their booksellers and publishers. In 1636, George Hutton was at the "Sign of the Sun within the Turning Stile at Holborne" and published works such as ''Europæ Speculum'' by Sir Edwin Sandys.

John Bagford John Bagford (1650/51, Fetter Lane, London – 5 May 1716, Islington) was an English antiquarian, writer, bibliographer, ballad-collector, bookseller, and biblioclast. Life Originally a shoemaker by trade, his premises were in the Great Turnsti ...

was a shoemaker in the Great Turnstile who went on to become a bookseller and collector there. He made two great collections – one of ballads and another of title pages and other parts of books, which was to form a history of printing. The latter collection of fragments caused him to be suspected, perhaps unfairly, of breaking up books and so he was excoriated as a "wicked old biblioclast" in William Blades' '' The Enemies of Books''. Other booksellers included Crozier in the Little Turnstile and Tregaskis on the corner of the New Turnstile and High Holborn. For much of the 20th century, the ''

New Statesman The ''New Statesman'' is a British Political magazine, political and cultural magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first connected with Sidney Webb, Sidney and Beatrice ...

'' magazine was published from offices at number 10, Great Turnstile. This progressive periodical, which had been founded by the

Webb Webb most often refers to James Webb Space Telescope which is named after James E. Webb, second Administrator of NASA. It may also refer to: Places Antarctica * Webb Glacier (South Georgia) * Webb Glacier (Victoria Land) * Webb Névé, Victor ...

s and other Fabians, was often referred to by its location as "Great Turnstile". Number 10 has since been redeveloped and is now used by the

Mary Ward Centre The Mary Ward Adult Education Centre is part of the Mary Ward Settlement, in Queen Square, London. History The centre was founded by Mary Augusta Ward, a Victorian novelist and founding president of the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League, be ...

to provide adult education and legal advice.

References

{{reflist, 30em, refs= {{citation , first=Edward , last=Rimbault , title=Turnstile Lane, Holborn , page=72 , work=The History of the United Parishes of St. Giles in the fields and St. George Bloomsbury , year=1834 , authorlink=Edward Francis Rimbault {{citation , page=513 , title=Handbook of London: Past and Present , volume= 1 , first=Peter , last=Cunningham , publisher=J. Murray , year=1850 {{citation , title=Great Men of Great Britain , editor=Elihu Rich , publisher=D. Appleton , year=1866 , page=276 {{citation , journal=Notes and Queries , page=372 , author=Edward Rimbault , year=1860 , volume=Series 2, Vol. 10 , title=Turnstile Alley , publisher=Bell & Daldy , url=https://archive.org/details/notesqueries2102unse/page/372 , accessdate=18 June 2019 {{citation , title=Survey of London , year=1912 , page=3 , chapter=XXII High Holborn from the Parish Boundary to Little Turnstile , volume=5 The Parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields part II , publisher=London County Council , author=William Edward Riley , url=http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol5/pt2/pp3-9 {{citation , title=American Machinist , volume=40 , publisher=McGraw-Hill , year=1914 , page=1021 {{citation , title=Stanley, William Ford Robinson (1829–1909) , author=Anita McConnell , url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36250 , work=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , year=2004 , doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/36250 {{citation , title=The Book-Hunter in London , author=William Roberts , year=1895 , publisher=Elliot Stock , location=Pasternoster Row , pages=204–205 {{citation , title=Londiniana , volume=2 , author=Edward Wedlake Brayley , publisher= Hurst, Chance & Co. , year=1829 , pages=125–126 , chapter=Great and Little Turnstile, Holborn {{citation , title=English Book Collectors , chapter=John Bagford , page=129 , editor=Alfred Pollard , author=William Younger Fletcher , year=1902 , publisher=Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. {{citation , chapter=Great Turnstile , title=The London Encyclopaedia , page=348 , publisher=Pan Macmillan , year=2010 , isbn=9781405049252 {{citation , url=http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cb262ad2-7ffb-11e4-adff-00144feabdc0.html , newspaper=Financial Times , date=12 December 2014 , title=My London: Lincoln’s Inn Fields , author=Claire Tomalin {{citation , title=A Very Private Celebrity: The Nine Lives of John Freeman , author=Hugh Purcell , publisher=Biteback , year=2015 , isbn=9781849549455 , page=142 {{citation , title=Our Buildings , publisher=Mary Ward Centre , url=http://www.marywardcentre.ac.uk/about/buildings/ , year=2016 Footpaths in London Holborn Streets in the London Borough of Camden