Harben’s Dictionary (or just ‘Harben’ as it tends to be called) is one of the most useful London reference books ever to have been compiled and published. Yet scarcely anyone has heard of it. Copies of it surface very rarely. When a copy does, dealers charge the earth for it, selling it to the few who are in the know.

‘Harben’ appeared in 1918. Its compiler, Henry Andrade Harben, was born in 1849, graduated from the University of London in 1868, and called to the Bar by Lincoln’s Inn in 1871. He was a Justice of the Peace for Buckinghamshire and the County of London. In 1879 he became a director of the Prudential Assurance Company, and in 1907 its Chairman. He was a member of the Paddington Vestry and became Mayor of Paddington. In 1898 he was elected a member for South Paddington of the London County Council, on which he served as Chairman of the Public Control Committee. He was Chairman of the Central Hospital Council for London, and in 1903 became Chairman of the Board of Management of St Mary’s Hospital.*

In addition to being a lawyer and involving himself in London government, Harben was a scholar. He was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries on 9 March 1893. In c.1888 he began the labour of compiling a new edition of John Stow’s Survey of London. Stow’s book, a written survey, not a plan, which systematically described London district by district, had first appeared in 1598. Periodically it had been revised. In the eighteenth century it had been totally overhauled by John Strype who published his greatly extended version of it in two large volumes in 1720 and 1755. Henry Harben resolved to follow in Strype’s footsteps.

Harben’s work was meticulous and thorough, and progress painfully slow. In 1908, to his horror, Charles Lethbridge Kingsford brought out a. new edition of Stow’s Survey with a volume of notes. On seeing it Harben abandoned his own attempt but resolved to re-cycle the information he had amassed in a new form. Hence the Dictionary of London. The information in his Dictionary would consist of place-names arranged alphabetically. Each entry would describe the street or building’s precise location, give other forms of the name, and provide the earliest reference to it in original records. It would also state the cartographic survey on which the place was first named - Ogilby and Morgan’s, 1676; John Rocque’s, 1746; Richard Horwood’s, 1792-1799, and the Ordnance Survey, mid-1870s. Then would follow a skeletal history of the place – this could sometimes be quite extensive - and finally it would give explanations as to why the place came by its name. There would be a volume for the City of London, and one or more volumes for Southwark and the City of Westminster. In the future the work might be extended to include all the Metropolitan Boroughs within the boundaries of the London County Council, and even some places beyond its boundaries. For the moment, however, he concentrated on the City of London.

On 18 August 1910 Harben died. He was buried in Hampstead Cemetery. His London prints, maps, drawings, and books were left to the LCC. Subsequently the volume covering the City of London for the Dictionary was completed by Harben’s long-time friend and associate, I I Greaves. In 1916 Greaves supplied the manuscript with a Preface, and in 1918 the work was published by Herbert Jenkins Ltd, of York Street, St James’s. It consisted of a bulky volume of 641 pages, with John Norden’s map of the City in 1593 serving as frontispiece, plans of the Priory of Blackfriars, the Holy Trinity Priory, and of the Precinct of White friars tipped in, and three newly compiled maps of the City housed in a pocket inside the back cover..

Harben’s Dictionary provides a remarkably thorough listing of all the streets, lanes, courts, alleys, rows, passages, and yards within the City of London and a few on the fringes. Besides these it also includes all the churches, chapels, gates, wharves, schools, and commercial buildings, the major taverns and private houses in the City, and the railway termini. It occasionally betrays its original intention of being a new Stow with entries for such subjects as conduits, compters (small prisons), London markets, London privileges, London sanctuaries, and endowments to churches.

*          Information in this paragraph has been supplied by the London Metropolitan Archives, successor to the Archives of the LCC. Their sources were the minutes of the LCC and presented papers.

COPYRIGHT

The copyright of the digitised index and text is owned by Motco. They may only be copied for personal use, which specifically excludes use on a website. If you require access for commercial or other use, in hard copy or digital form, please contact Motco.

___________________________

Copyright 2003 MOTCO Enterprises Limited