Portpool

The Honourable Society of Gray's Inn, commonly known as Gray's Inn, is one of the four Inns of Court (professional associations for barristers and judges) in London. To be called to the bar in order to practise as a barrister in England and Wales, an individual must belong to one of these inns. Located at the intersection of High Holborn and Gray's Inn Road in Central London, the Inn is a professional body and provides office and some residential accommodation for barristers. It is ruled by a governing council called "Pension," made up of the Masters of the Bench (or "benchers,") and led by the Treasurer, who is elected to serve a one-year term. The Inn is known for its gardens (the “Walks,”) which have existed since at least 1597. Gray's Inn does not claim a specific foundation date; none of the Inns of Court claims to be any older than the others. Law clerks and their apprentices have been established on the present site since at latest 1370, with records dating from 1381. During the 15th and 16th centuries, the Inn grew in size peaking during the reign of Elizabeth I. The Inn was home to many important barristers and politicians, including Francis Bacon. Queen Elizabeth herself was a patron. As a result of the efforts of prominent members such as William Cecil and Gilbert Gerard, Gray's Inn became the largest of the four Inns by number, with over 200 barristers recorded as members. During this period, the Inn mounted masques and revels. William Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors is believed first to have been performed in Gray’s Inn Hall. The Inn continued to prosper during the reign of James I (1603–1625) and the beginning of that of Charles I, when over 100 students per year were recorded as joining. The outbreak of the First English Civil War in 1642 during the reign of Charles I disrupted the systems of legal education and governance at the Inns of Court, shutting down all calls to the bar and new admissions, and Gray's Inn never fully recovered. Fortunes continued to decline after the English Restoration, which saw the end of the then-traditional method of legal education. Now more prosperous, Gray's Inn is today the smallest of the Inns of Court.

The Cittie of Yorke is a grade II listed public house on London's High Holborn, and is listed in CAMRA's National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors. The pub is owned and operated by Samuel Smith's Old Brewery. Although the current building is a rebuilding of the 1920s, the buildings on this site have been pubs since 1430. Some features include the Henekey's long bar located in the grand, hall-like back room, a late-Georgian or Regency era triangular metal stove, and Victorian-style cubicles. The Welsh poet Dylan Thomas penned an impromptu ode to the pub when it was called Henneky's Long Bar. Fred Jarvis, a former general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, found the previously unknown poem in 2014 while going through papers belonging to his late parents-in-law who knew Thomas. The top of the poem reads "This little song was written in Henneky's Long Bar High Holborn by Dylan Thomas in 1951." Orion Publishing Group planned to include the song in a new edition of collected Thomas poems in October 2014.

Holborn ( HOH-bə(r)n 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 roots in the ancient parish of Holborn, which lay on the west bank of the now buried River Fleet, taking its name from an alternative name for the river. The area is sometimes described as part of the West End of London or of the wider West London area. The River Fleet also gave its name to the streets Holborn and High Holborn which extend west from the site of the former Newgate in the London Wall, over the Fleet, through Holborn and towards Westminster. The district benefits from a central location which helps provide a strong mixed economy. The area is particularly noted for its links to the legal profession, the diamond centre at Hatton Garden and Great Ormond Street Hospital.

The Center for Transnational Legal Studies (CTLS) is a global educational center for the study of transnational law. The Center was founded in London in October 2008 as an initiative by Georgetown University Law Center, providing educational services and student resources. It was constituted as a joint venture between several leading law schools from around the world, each contributing faculty and students to the center. The Center's founding partner institutions are Georgetown University Law Center, City University of Hong Kong, King's College London, National University of Singapore, ESADE, Fribourg University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the University of Torino. The Center also has several affiliate institutions, including Bucerius Law School.The CTLS facilities are located in London at Bush House, North West Wing, Aldwych, on King's College London's Strand Campus. Students and faculty have access to King's College Law Library amongst other King's College London facilities. The Center's curriculum was developed by an Academic Council of faculty from all of the founding law schools and all courses address topics in transnational or comparative law, legal theory or legal practice. designed for students intent on transnational careers.Academics from the CTLS have also offered public lectures on international legal topics, and in addition to the Center's main academic term program, offers administrative support for the Georgetown Law summer program in London.

The London Silver Vaults is a large subterranean market that opened as The Chancery Lane Safe Deposit on 7 May 1885. Originally renting out strong rooms to hold household silver, jewellery and documents, it transitioned to housing silver dealers in secure premises a few years later. It is located on Chancery Lane, London, WC2A 1QS. One vault was used to store a farthing, with the owner paying over £100 over the years for the vault.With 1.2-metre (3.9 ft) thick walls lined with steel, the vaults were never broken into. The building above the vaults was struck directly with a bomb during World War II – however, this did not damage the vaults at all, despite the building being destroyed. A new building, Chancery House, was constructed ten years later, and since 1953 it has been in its present format, with shops based underground. All of the shops have been owned for at least 50 years by the same families. It is said that it has "the largest single collection of silver for sale in the world", contained within more than forty shops.

Staple Inn is a part-Tudor building on the south side of High Holborn street in the City of London, London, England. Located near Chancery Lane tube station, it is used as the London venue for meetings of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, and is the last surviving Inn of Chancery. It was designated a Grade I listed building in 1974.

The Bourne Estate is an Edwardian housing estate in the Holborn district of Central London. It is bounded by Clerkenwell Road to the north, Gray's Inn Road to the west, Leather Lane to the east and Baldwins Gardens to the south. It is also intersected by Portpool Lane, which forms part of the estate itself. The estate is built in a free Classical style, with Arts and Crafts touches, developing the idiom established by the London County Council with the Boundary Estate and Millbank Estate in a formal direction.The estate consists of a number of residential blocks which enclose a number of quiet shady courtyards containing mature trees, mostly London Plane trees. The buildings are constructed in dusky red and yellow bricks and the design incorporates classical pediments and stucco pilasters as well as arts and crafts details such as gabled walls, and casement windows on the inner courtyards and decorative mouldings to the large arches on the access ways.In 2013 planning permission was granted for a £14 million regeneration of the Bourne Estate. Matthew Lloyd Architects’ scheme, developed with Camden Council and Tibbalds Planning and Urban Design, provides 75 new homes across two mixed tenure blocks. Landscaping is to be improved across the southern half of the estate with re-ordered public realm, sports and playspaces by Dally Henderson Landscape Architects.

Baldwin Gardens is an east–west road running between Gray's Inn Road and Leather Lane, in Camden, London, England. The surrounding streets were laid out in the 17th century on an intersecting grid pattern from north to south, east to west. Baldwin Gardens was named after Baldwin, gardener to Queen Elizabeth I.The Bourne Estate is a group of well-regarded Edwardian tenement blocks on the north side of the road.

St Alban's Church, Holborn, is a Church of England parish church in Holborn, central London, for a time becoming one of two churches of its parish which retains the name and St Peter's Saffron Hill to serve the mixed-use zone, notable for jewel-setting and for law firms. It has been Grade II* listed since 1951. This land is commonly – other than mainly to state Holborn, meaning part of Holborn – called Hatton Garden. St Peter's church is defunct, rationalising the number of churches in line with population changes of the district.

Chancery Lane is a London Underground station on the Central Line between Holborn and The City in Central London, England. It has entrances within both the London Borough of Camden and the City of London. It opened in 1900 and takes its name from the nearby Chancery Lane. The station is located between St Paul's and Holborn stations, within fare zone 1. It is located at the junction of High Holborn, Hatton Garden and Gray's Inn Road, with subway entrances giving access to the ticket office under the roadway. Chancery Lane is one of the few London Underground stations which have no associated buildings above ground.

The Royal Fusiliers War Memorial is a memorial in London, dedicated to the members of the Royal Fusiliers killed in the World Wars, Russian Civil War and subsequent conflicts, along with members of a number of London Regiment battalions killed in the First World War. It consists of a bronze statue on a 16.5 feet (5.0 m) pedestal made of Portland stone. It was erected in 1922 at Holborn Bar, one of the ancient entry points to the City of London, on a traffic island in the middle of High Holborn, on the City's boundary with the London Borough of Camden, denoted by a dragon boundary mark on either side of the street. The site is near High Holborn's junction with Gray's Inn Road, and is close to the historic Staple Inn.

Stone Buildings, Lincoln's Inn were constructed from 1774 to 1780. The architect was Sir Robert Taylor. Stone Buildings is a Grade I listed building. Stone Buildings appear in Anthony Trollope's novel The Prime Minister.Stone Buildings are so-called from the material with which they are constructed. They were constructed in accordance with an ultimately unrealised plan to rebuild Lincoln's Inn entirely in stone. Their construction was the initial step in that plan.The working drawings were made by a young man called Leach, then a clerk in Taylor's office, who later became Master of the Rolls. Leach's drawings are preserved in the Library of Lincoln's Inn. Pitt's chambers appear to have been in Stone Buildings from December 1779. Canning's father was "for some time with a Serjeant Walker who then resided in Stone Buildings". The South end was added from 1844 to 1845 under the direction of Philip Hardwick.Stone Buildings are situated parallel with the west side of Chancery Lane, and the western range of buildings faces the gardens of Lincoln's Inn and the square, with an oblong court between the two buildings. The Chancery Lane side is very plain, but the garden front consists of a rustic basement, with arcades and windows, at the north end of which is a wing consisting of six Corinthian pillars, which support an entablature and pediment. The cornice of the wing is continued through the whole length of the front, which terminates in a balustrade, but the two ranges of windows are entirely plain. The northern entrance is by handsome iron gates in Chancery Lane. The structure is not in keeping with the architecture of the other buildings; but, when viewed through the foliage of the garden, it has a very pleasing effect.On 23 December 1790, by the violence of the wind at noon, the copper covering of the roof of the new buildings was blown off in one sheet, and hung over the front like a large carpet or mainsail. The noise occasioned by this accident made the neighbourhood conclude the building was falling down. Some of the plates composing this covering were torn off and carried into a yard in Holborn.Sir Charles Wetherell had chambers in Stone Buildings. The Duke of Wellington took shelter there when he was attacked by a mob on 18 June 1832.The Registers' and Accountant-General's Offices were at 8, 9 and 11 Stone Buildings.The buildings are faced with Portland stone.The buildings that comprise Stone Buildings are numbered from 1 to 11. 1 and 11 Stone Buildings are opposite separate sides of 76B Chancery Lane. 7 and 8 Stone Buildings are opposite 10 to 12 Old Square.