Hatton Garden is a street and area near Holborn in London, England. Its name is derived from the garden of the Bishop of Ely, which was given to Sir Christopher Hatton by Elizabeth I in 1581, during a vacancy of the see.
The area around Hatton Garden has been the centre of London's jewellery trade since medieval times. The old City of London had certain streets, or quarters, dedicated to types of business, and the area around Hatton Garden became a centre for jewellers and jewellery.
Nearly 300 of the businesses in Hatton Garden are in the jewellery industry and over 55 shops represent the largest cluster of jewellery retailers in the UK.[citation needed] The nearby streets including Hatton Place and Saffron Hill have become more residential in recent years with the building of several blocks of 'luxury' apartments.
Michael Flanders and Donald Swann (humorists of the 1960s and 1970s), celebrated its connection with the jewellery trade in their song of a sewage worker, "Down Below":
- Hatton Garden is the spot, down below
- Where we likes to go a lot, down below,
- Since a bloke from Leather Lane,
- Dropped a diamond down the drain,
- We'll be going there again, down below."
A building with statues of charity school children is former chapel and parish school, now known as Wren House.
Hatton Garden features in the 1967 children's novel Smith by Leon Garfield, where the main character tries to elude two pursuers through the crumbling streets of 18th century Holborn.
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Coordinates: 51°31′12.42″N 0°06′30.27″W / 51.5201167°N 0.1084083°W
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