Saffron Hill, Hatton Garden, Ely Rents and Ely Place

Hatton Garden is a street and commercial zone in the Holborn district of the London Borough of Camden, abutting the narrow precinct of Saffron Hill which then abuts the City of London. It takes its name from Sir Christopher Hatton, a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I, who established a mansion here and gained possession of the garden and orchard of Ely Place, the London seat of the Bishops of Ely. It remained in the Hatton family and was built up as a stylish residential development in the reign of King Charles II. For some decades it often went, outside of the main street, by alternative name St Alban's Holborn, after the local church built in 1861. St Etheldreda's Church in Ely Place, all that survives of the old Bishop's Palace, is one of only two remaining buildings in London dating from the reign of Edward I. It is one of the oldest churches in England now in use for Roman Catholic worship, which was re-established there in 1879. The red-brick building now known as Wren House, at the south-east corner of Hatton Garden and St Cross Street, was the Anglican church for the Hatton Garden development. It was taken over by the authorities of a charity school, and the statues of a boy and girl in uniform were then added. Hatton Garden is famous as London's jewellery quarter and the centre of diamond trade in the United Kingdom. This specialisation grew up in the early 19th century, spreading out from its more ancient centre in nearby Clerkenwell. Today there are nearly 300 businesses here in the jewellery industry and over 55 shops, representing the largest cluster of jewellery retailers in the UK. The largest of these businesses was De Beers, the international family of companies which dominated the international diamond trade. Their headquarters were in an office and warehouse complex just behind the main Hatton Garden shopping street. Sir Hiram Maxim had a small factory at 57 Hatton Garden and in 1881, invented and started to produce the Maxim Gun, a prototype machine gun, capable of firing 666 rounds a minute. Hatton Garden has an extensive underground infrastructure of vaults, tunnels, offices and workshops. The area is now home to many media, publishing and creative businesses, including Blinkbox and Grey Advertising. Surrounding streets including Hatton Place and Saffron Hill (the insalubrious setting for Fagin's den in Oliver Twist) were improved during the 20th century and in modern times have been developed with blocks of 'luxury' apartments, including Da Vinci House (occupying the former Punch magazine printworks) and the architecturally distinctive Ziggurat Building.

The Hatton Garden safe deposit burglary occurred in April 2015, when an underground safe deposit facility in Hatton Garden, London, owned by Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Ltd., was burgled. According to official sources, the total stolen had an estimated value of up to £14 million (equivalent to £16 million in 2020), of which only £4.3 million (equivalent to £4.9 million in 2020) has been recovered. The heist was planned and carried out by six elderly men who were experienced thieves, all of whom were arrested, pleaded guilty and received prison sentences in March 2016. Four other men were also tried on suspicion of involvement; three were found guilty and sent to prison, while the fourth was cleared.

The London Diamond Bourse is a diamond exchange based in London's Hatton Garden area. As of 2016, it had been trading for 76 years, and with rising property costs in the Hatton Garden area, the bourse was considering a move out of the center of London to a new location in the suburbs.

Baird & Co. is the largest gold refiner and the only full-service bullion merchant in the United Kingdom. Founded by Tony Baird in 1967; Baird & Co. initially dealt in numismatic coins expanding into bullion bars and jewellery as time progressed. The company is headquartered in Hatton Garden, London, operating out of a 30,000 sq foot high-security refinery in Beckton and an international branch in Singapore.

Bleeding Heart Yard is a cobbled courtyard off Greville Street in the Holborn area of the London borough of Camden. The courtyard is probably named after a 16th-century inn sign dating back to the Reformation that was displayed on a pub called the Bleeding Heart in nearby Charles Street. The inn sign showed the heart of the Virgin Mary pierced by five swords.Urban legend has it that the courtyard's name commemorates the murder of Lady Elizabeth Hatton, the second wife of Sir William Hatton, whose family formerly owned the area around Hatton Garden. It is said that her body was found here on 27 January 1646, "torn limb from limb, but with her heart still pumping blood."

Saffron Hill is a street and ward in the south eastern corner of the London Borough of Camden, between Farringdon Road and Hatton Garden. The name of the street derives from the fact that it was at one time part of an estate on which saffron grew. The ecclesiastical parish was St Peter, Saffron Hill, a daughter parish of Holborn, which is now combined with St Alban (the Martyr), Holborn.In 1850, it was described as a squalid neighbourhood, the home of paupers and thieves. In Charles Dickens's novel Oliver Twist (1837), the Artful Dodger leads Oliver to Fagin's den in Field Lane, the southern extension of Saffron Hill: "a dirty and more wretched place he [Oliver] had never seen. The street was very narrow and muddy, and the air was impregnated with filthy odours".

St Etheldreda's Church is a Roman Catholic church in Ely Place, off Charterhouse Street in Holborn, London. The building is one of only two surviving in London from the reign of Edward I, and dates from between 1250 and 1290. It is dedicated to Æthelthryth, or Etheldreda, the Anglo-Saxon saint who founded the monastery at Ely in 673. It was the chapel of the London residence of the Bishops of Ely. In the early 17th century it served briefly as an embassy chapel for the Spanish Ambassador, and a haven for English Catholics. The chapel was purchased by the Catholic Church in 1874 and opened in 1878 and is one of the oldest churches in England to be in current use by the Catholic Church.

Leather Lane is a street west of Hatton Garden, in the Holborn area of London. It is home to a well-used weekday market which specialises in clothing, footwear and fruit and vegetables. There are now many food retailers capitalising off the lunchtime trade offering a range of different foods from falafel wraps and burritos to hog roasts and jacket potatoes. The lane was laid out in the medieval period following old fields and property boundaries.The Bourne Estate is a group of well-regarded Edwardian tenement blocks on the west side of the Lane.

The Farringdon Road drill hall is a military installation at 57A Farringdon Road in Finsbury, London.

The Ye Olde Mitre is a Grade II listed public house at 1 Ely Court, Ely Place, Holborn, London EC1N 6SJ.It is on the Campaign for Real Ale's National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors.Historic England documents indicate that the pub was built about 1773, and remodelled internally in the early 20th century.The pub's website reports the original build year as 1546 with building expansion occurring in 1782, and remodelled in the early 1930s. It is run by Fuller.

Ely Place (listen) is a gated road of multi-storey terraces at the southern tip of the London Borough of Camden in London, England. It hosts a 1773-rebuilt public house, Ye Olde Mitre, of Tudor origin and is adjacent to Hatton Garden. It is privately managed by its own body of commissioners and beadles. Ely Place sits on the site of the London residence of the Bishops of Ely who regularly lived there from 1290 to 1772. The bishop's palace and surrounding land was then sold and redeveloped into Ely Place, with only the bishop's medieval chapel being preserved.

L-13 Light Industrial Workshop is a contemporary art studio and publisher that opened in May 2009 in Clerkenwell, London. Operated by Steve Lowe, it is a revised incarnation of his previous galleries and small presses, ‘the aquarium’ and The Aquarium L-13, and works with a small group of artists known for their unorthodox stances, in developing, exhibiting and publishing their work.