The Ship Holborn is situated on a somewhat hidden corner of Gate Street just behind the Holborn Tube Station in central London.
Established as a pub here in 1549 The Ship has a very interesting history intertwined with mystery. English Royalty, the Masons and the Clergy are all involved in it’s interesting past.
The area around The Ship in Holborn, used to be known for being full of notoriously seedy gambling establishments as well as other shady and nefarious (mostly) illegal businesses.
It’s most likely the pub was first constructed to satiate the thirst of farm labourers working the nearby Lincolns Inn Fields. These very fields themselves were also the location of a number of executions in the 16th Century including some of the outlawed Catholic clergy. Those executions would certainly have drawn a decent crowd, and The Ship would have experienced increased patronage after each grisly death sentence had been concluded.