Holborn Bridge

Neither of the landmarks mentioned in Thomas Hosmer Shepherd’s title for this work – ‘Holborn Bridge, Church of St. Andrew’ – are prominent. Indeed Holborn Bridge had been removed a hundred years before this drawing was made when the Fleet River, which it crossed, was culverted (covered over). The view looks west up Holborn with Farringdon Street at the left. Shepherd, who drew this view for his book ‘London in the Nineteenth Century’ (1829-31), commented that ‘It would be difficult [...] to select any single point of the metropolis better calculated to convey to the mind of a stranger some idea of its unceasing bustle and traffic’. The area has changed considerably with the construction in the 1860s of Holborn Viaduct.