Holywell Street
Holywell Street proper noun: a former street in central London, famed for selling pornography in Victorian times.
Proper noun
Holywell Street
- A former street in central London, famed for selling pornography in Victorian times.
- There are plenty of filthy books sold outside of Holywell-street, differing from many Holywell-street books, too, as having indecent insides as well as covers.1857, William Acton, Prostitution considered in its moral, social, and sanitary aspects
- To impute to those who do not care for the Holywell Street literature of any time "the Puritanic squeamishness of an extremely moral undetected Tartuffe, acting as Aristarchus," is to be too zealous for unrighteousness.1877, The Academy and Literature, volume 12, page 82
Origin of Holywell Street
Named after one of the local holy wells, “the sweet and sacred waters of St Clements Church that still survives on the Strand today, and gave Holywell Street its nickname of the Backside of St Clements”.
Questions about Holywell Street
- What does Holywell Street mean?
- Holywell Street means a former street in central London, famed for selling pornography in Victorian times.
- What part of speech is Holywell Street?
- Holywell Street is a proper noun.
Words near Holywell Street in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: Holywell Street (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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