Bloomsbury, Lamb's Conduit Street, WC1 - geograph

Lamb's Conduit Street is a street in

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 ...

in the West End of

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. The street takes its name from ''Lambs Conduit'', originally known as the ''Holborn Conduit'', a dam across a tributary of the

River Fleet The River Fleet is the largest of London's subterranean rivers, all of which today contain foul water for treatment. Its headwaters are two streams on Hampstead Heath, each of which was dammed into a series of ponds—the Hampstead Ponds a ...

Lamb's Conduit

Lamb's Conduit was named after William Lambe, who in 1564 made a charitable contribution of £1,500, an enormous sum in those days, for the rebuilding of the Holborn Conduit. The Conduit (a cistern) was fed by a dam across a tributary of the River Fleet. The Conduit also supplied water to the nearby Snow Hill area by a system of pipes. Lambe also provided 120 pails to enable poor women to make a living selling the water. The tributary ran west to east along the north side of Long Yard, followed the curved course of Roger Street and joined the Fleet near Mount Pleasant. This formed the boundary with the Ancient Parishes of

(to the south) and St Pancras (to the north). The importance of the conduit diminished when the New River opened in 1613 and the conduit was demolished in 1746. The remains of the head of the conduit can be seen on the side of a 1950s building on the corner between Lamb's Conduit Street and Long Yard. On the stone, an inscription reads: "''Lamb's Conduit, the property of the City of London. This pump was erected for the benefit of the Publick''". Water feature, Guilford Place WC1 - geograph

Water feature, Guilford Place WC1 - geograph

A fountain at the north end of Lamb's Conduit Street, at the junction with

Guilford Street Guilford Street is a road in Bloomsbury in central London, England, designated the B502. From Russell Square it extends east-northeast to Gray's Inn Road. Note that it is not spelt the same way as Guildford in Surrey. It is, in fact, named after ...

, on the boundary between the former Metropolitan Boroughs of

and St Pancras, was built to commemorate the social benefit of the conduit.

Townscape

Notable buildings include The Lamb public house, and The People's Supermarket food cooperative. There are many independent traders along the street. Adjoining streets include Rugby Street, Guilford Street and Great Ormond Street.

Notable residents

Notable residents have included

John Lind John Lind is the name of: * John Lind (barrister) (1737–1781), English lawyer and political writer * John Lind (politician) (1854–1930), US politician * John Lind (female impersonator) (1877–1940), female impersonator See also

*Jon Lind, ...

(1737–1781), the barrister, political activist and pamphleteer;

John Haslam Sir John Haslam (27 February 1878 – 21 May 1940) was a Conservative Party politician in England. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Bolton Bolton (, locally ) is a large town in Greater Manchester in North West England, forme ...

(1764–1844), the apothecary, physician and medical writer, known for his work on mental illness; and

Henry Revell Reynolds Henry Revell Reynolds (26 September 1745 – 22 October 1811) was an English physician. Life He was born in Laxton, Nottinghamshire, the son of John Reynolds, one month after the death of his father, and was brought up by his maternal great-un ...

(1745–1811) the physician.

John Mason Neale John Mason Neale (24 January 1818 – 6 August 1866) was an English Anglican priest, scholar and hymnwriter. He worked and wrote on a wide range of holy Christian texts, including obscure medieval hymns, both Western and Eastern. Among his most ...

(1818–1866), the Church of England clergyman, author, ecclesiologist, hymnologist, and poet, was born at 40 Lamb's Conduit Street.

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born i ...

used the architecture of Lamb's Conduit Street to arouse her "historic sense" in the 1922 novel ''

Jacob's Room ''Jacob's Room'' is the third novel by Virginia Woolf, first published on 26 October 1922. The novel centres, in a very ambiguous way, around the life story of the protagonist Jacob Flanders and is presented almost entirely through the impressi ...

'': "The bitter eighteenth century rain rushed down the Kennel."

References

{{Coord, 51.5220, -0.1186, type:landmark_region:GB-CMD, display=title Streets in the London Borough of Camden Bloomsbury