Past six on High Holborn: the second shift of an office district

The changeover, somewhere around six

Holborn takes its name from the Holebourne, a stream that once ran down to the Fleet, and for most of its modern life it has been a place where people work rather than linger. Insurers, publishers, lawyers, civil servants and students share the broad pavements of High Holborn and Kingsway, and at lunchtime the queues for sandwiches stretch out of the doors. Then, at some point after half past five, the Central and Piccadilly lines swallow most of them, and the district changes shape.

What is left is surprisingly good company. The office towers go dark floor by floor, the side streets fall quiet, and the hotel bars, small restaurants and old pubs that spent the day serving meetings begin serving evenings instead. The pattern follows the working week. Tuesday to Thursday the after work crowd fills the pubs until about eight before thinning out; Friday often empties early, as people head home rather than into town; and Monday is quiet enough to have almost any room to yourselves.

Hotel bars that make an easy meeting point

A hotel bar is the most comfortable place in Holborn to meet somebody for the first time, and the district has a good spread of them. The Holborn house at WC1V 7BD has a huge open lobby that works as a café and laptop office by day and turns sociable as the light goes; it is informal, busy and anonymous, which suits a first drink with no ceremony. A few minutes north, the grand Victorian rooms of WC1B 5BE offer something more polished, with a cocktail bar of its own and the glass roofed Palm Court.

The calmest of the lot sits behind the carriage arch on High Holborn, where the library bar at WC1V 7EN is described in detail in its own entry. Towards the Aldwych, WC2B 4DD and WC2B 4BZ are both within ten minutes on foot. Hotel bars have a practical advantage over pubs after work: there is always a seat, nobody minds how long a drink lasts, and meeting a companion there looks like what it is, two people having a drink.

Sicilian Avenue and the streets between

Walk north up Southampton Row and on the left you will find one of the prettiest oddities in London. Sicilian Avenue is a short pedestrian arcade built in 1910, with stone colonnades at either end, shopfronts in cream terracotta and café tables set out under the arches. It links Southampton Row to Bloomsbury Way and feels, briefly, like somewhere much further south. On a warm evening it is the obvious place for a first glass outside.

Across Southampton Row, look for the slope in the road near the junction with Theobalds Road. It is the northern mouth of the Kingsway tram subway, which carried trams under the street until 1952 and still survives, sealed, beneath your feet. Kingsway itself was cut through a warren of old streets and opened by Edward VII in 1905, and its wide Edwardian frontages are best seen in the low evening light when the traffic eases.

East of here, Red Lion Square is home to Conway Hall, where the Sunday evening chamber music concerts have been running since 1887. Great Queen Street leads to Freemasons' Hall, a vast Art Deco building finished in the 1930s. And Lamb's Conduit Street, a little further north, is the neighbourhood's best street for an evening: independent shops, a Victorian pub with its old snob screens still at the bar, and Noble Rot, where the wine list is the main attraction.

Oddities worth a detour at dusk

Holborn keeps a handful of survivors that are easy to walk past and worth stopping for.

Where to eat once the offices are dark

Holborn's best dining rooms are small and a little tucked away. Lamb's Conduit Street has the most choice within a few steps, from the wine bar at Noble Rot to the long established trattoria Ciao Bella, where the atmosphere is loud and cheerful and nobody minds a long evening. Towards St Giles, the ramen counter that Thea likes is quick, excellent and entirely without ceremony.

For something more formal, the hotel restaurants along High Holborn and the old rooms of Covent Garden are ten minutes away. The one rule is to book ahead for Thursday, when the after work crowd lingers longest, and to keep an eye on closing times, because some of the smaller places run only lunch service or close early on quieter days.

If the evening is heading for a show rather than a table, Kingsway runs straight down to the Aldwych in about ten minutes on foot, and Drury Lane cuts through to the theatres around Catherine Street. It is one of the reasons Holborn works so well as a base: the office district and the playhouses are closer to each other than either likes to admit, and a companion who meets you in a lobby on High Holborn at seven can have you in your seats well before the curtain.

Who knows Holborn after dark

Lucy spends her Holborn afternoons in the strangest museum in London and knows which coffee counters are worth the walk; petite and softly spoken, she prefers the calm of a midweek evening. Samanta likes a serious hotel bar and will choose the one that suits the evening. Thea makes an unfussy supper feel like the best plan in town. And Liana knows Lamb's Conduit Street door by door and will steer you to the right one.

Booking an after work evening

The common Holborn shape is two hours at £500: a drink in a hotel bar, a stroll along Lamb's Conduit Street, and back to the room by nine. Add a sit down dinner and it becomes three hours, £700. Where the day ends late and the morning starts early, a ten hour night at £1,800 saves the evening from being rushed at either end. Hotel visits in the district are described on the hotel calls page.

Send the desk your hotel and the time you expect to be free, and the reply names a companion and a time. The Holborn page covers stations and walking times, Bloomsbury lies just to the north, and the whole rail, hour by hour, is set out under rates.