Finsbury St Barnabas, Middlesex Genealogy

FINSBURY, a borough, a division, and a sub-district, in Middlesex. The borough is an integral part of the metropolis; lies between the Tower Hamlets and Marylebone; took its name, which signifies "fen-town, " from a marshy common, now partly occupied by Finsbury square; and was constituted a borough by the act of 1832. The marshy common was the burial-place of many victims of the great plague; was made traversable by causeways to Hoxton and Islington in 1415; and was first drained in 1527. The borough contains the parishes, townships, liberties, or places of St. George-Bloomsbury, St. George-the-Martyr-Holborn, St. Giles-in-the-Fields, St. Luke, Stable-Inn, Stoke-Newington, Charter-House, Glasshouse-Yard, Grays-Inn, Lincoln's-Inn, Islington, Rolls, Saffron-Hill, Hatton-Garden, Ely-Place, and Ely-Rents, and parts of Clerkenwell, St. Andrew-Holborn, St. Sepulchre, and Furnivals-Inn. Acres, 2,513. Real property, £1,904,039. Pop. in 1841, 265,043; in 1851, 323,772; in 1861, 387,278. Houses, 44, 410. The borough is within the jurisdiction of the Clerkenwell and Worship-street police courts, the Clerkenwell, Shoreditch, and Bloomsbury county courts, the Clerkenwell Session's court, and the Central criminal court; and it sends two members to parliament, and had 25,491 electors in 1868. Its limits include the British museum, the Middlesex house of correction, the Pentonville model and city prisons, St. Luke's hospital, New River head, the Metropolitan market, the new militia barracks, and many other buildings and places of note. The places of worship in it, in 1851, were 46 of the Church of England, with 48,879 sittings; 1 of the Church of Scotland, with 600 s.; 2 of the Presbyterian Church in England, with 1,500 s.; 24 of Independents, with 15,070 s.; 19 of Particular Baptists, with 8,661 s.; 1 of other Baptists, with 30 s.; 1 of Unitarians, with 200 s.; 9 of Wesleyan Methodists, with 6,804 s.; 3 of Primitive Methodists, with 1,230 s.; 3 of the Wesleyan Association, with 659 s.; 1 of Wesleyan Reformers, with 200 s.; 1 of Lady Huntingdon's Connexion, with 2,000 attendants; 1 of the New Church, with 520 s.; 7 of isolated congregations, with 1,766 s.; 3 of Latter Day Saints, with 700 s.; 1 of the Catholic and Apostolic church, with 300 s; and 4 of Roman Catholics, with 2,010 s. -The division is part of Ossulstone hundred; and excludes part of the borough, but includes Old Artillery Ground, Fryern-Barnet, Finchley, and Hornsey. Acres, 11,492. Pop. in 1851, 239,788. Houses, 30,863. -The sub-district is part of the parish and district of St. Luke, and consists of the portions known as East and West Finsbury liberties. Acres, 58. Pop. in 1861, 12,931. - Finsbury public park was formed in 1866-9, at a cost of £94,698.

(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))