holborn viaduct london

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Holborn Viaduct is a road bridge in London and the name of the street which crosses it (which forms part of the A40 road). It links Holborn, via Holborn Circus, with Newgate Street in the City of London, passing over Farringdon Street and the subterranean River Fleet. It was built between 1863 and 1869, at a cost of over £2 million, and was the first flyover in central London.1] It replaced a much older structure; Holborn Bridge, which crossed the River Fleet already culverted to the Thames a century earlier.2] The viaduct spanned the steep-sided Holborn Hill and the River Fleet valley at a length of 1,400 ft, and 80 ft wide. City surveyor William Haywood was the architect, engineer was Rowland Mason Ordish,3] and it was opened by Queen Victoria at the same time as Blackfriars Bridge. Four statues on the parapets represent commerce and agriculture on the south side, both by sculptor Henry Bursill, and science and fine art on the north side, by the sculpture firm Farmer & Brindley. Staircases provide pedestrian access from the bridge to Farringdon Street