Shambles, Pawn Brokers, Hay Market, & Portobello .. evolving street names ...

A shambles is a mess, or a disorder, or a mixup .. or is it? We use it regularly in this context and I know of one family who live in a house called “The Shambles” .. appropriate I thought! Then recently someone advised me regarding a business based in a building called "The Shambles", but qualified it with ‘only in the historical sense’ – so what do I do .. look further.

Now that I’ve started looking my brain is a little shambled too, probably scrambled as well – but in this instance brains is probably more appropriate .. though I hope mine will not be in shambles.

The Shambles is an old street in York (seen here on the right), here in England, with overhanging timber-framed buildings, some dating back as far as the 14th century. It was once known as The Great Flesh Shambles, probably from the Anglo-Saxon “Fleshhammels” (literally ‘flesh-shelves’), where butchers would display their meat.

As recently as 1872 there were twenty-five butchers’ shops in the street – now there are none, although there are meat-hooks hanging outside, and, below them, shelves on which meat would have been displayed. Interestingly the shops now comprise a mixture of eateries and souvenir shops, as well as a bookshop and a baker?!

Shambles is an obsolete term for an open-air slaughterhouse and meat market ... then there were no hygiene laws as exist today, and guts, offal etc were thrown into a runnel or street gutter down the middle of the street or open space where the butchering was carried out. By extension, any scene of disorganisation and mess is now referred to as “a shambles” – makes sense, n’est pas?

One of the Snickelways: The entrance to Lady Peckett's Yard, leading through the buildings to the right of the shop.

Off this flesh spot .. is another interesting area – a recently coined neologism named Snickelways; these are defined as “narrow places to walk along, leading from somewhere to somewhere else” – good thing otherwise presumably they’d be dead ends .. leading to a shambles?

York has many such paths, mostly mediaeval, with quirky names such as Mad Alice Lane, Hornpot Lane Nether and Finkle Street (formerly Mucky Peg Lane) – while snickelways are called “Opes” in Plymouth, “Chares” in north-east England towns, “Jiggers” in Liverpool and “Twittens” here in Sussex.

This portmanteau of a name, "Snickelway” comes from snicket (a passageway between walls or fences), ginnel (a narrow passageway between or through buildings) and alleyway (a narrow street or lane, often called alley).

Names fascinate me .. sometimes they are so obvious: Eastbourne .. the east bourne, (bourne from the Anglo Saxon word for a stream); Smith Street, Pottery Lane or Haymarket – streets where trades were carried out .. blacksmithying , tile and brick making or a street market for animal fodder dating from Elizabethan times; or after people: Denyer Street after Elizabeth Denyer, daughter of John Denyer, a collector of Bibles and missals, founded one of the Chelsea Charities.

Hogarth (1697 - 17 64) print, showing what is believed to be Portobello Lane.

In the 1740s, Green Lane, was renamed, as was the farmstead it served, as Portobello Lane (Road) from the popular victory during the War of Jenkins’ Ear, when Puerto Bello (Portobelo in modern day Panama) was captured from the Spanish.

Pudding Lane, where the Great Fire of London began in 1666, you would have thought baked dessert puddings as we know them today – but no .. like shambles .. ‘puddings’ is the medieval word for entrails and organs, which would fall off the carts coming down the Lane from the butchers in Eastcheap as they headed for the waste barges on the Thames.

Eastcheap surprisingly derives its name from cheap, market, with the prefix “East” distinguishing it from other markets. In medieval times Eastcheap was the City’s main meat market, with butchers' stalls lining both sides of the street. Falstaff Boar’s Head Inn, which features in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part One and Part Two, was located here.

Ludgate in flames during the Great Fire of London, with St. Paul's Cathedral in the distance (square tower without the spire) now catching flames. Oil painting by anonymous artist, ca. 1670. (Ludgate – the western most gate in London Wall)

Lombard Street was named for the goldsmiths from the Lombardy region of Italy, who were originally associated with the street. As the street developed to become the home of London’s money lenders, the name “Lombard Street” came to be associated with the financial industry – pawn brokers in the Middle Ages.

Several cities in the United States, including San Francisco, Baltimore and Philadelphia have a Lombard Street named after the one in London – are they money centres now? I see that Lombard Street in San Francisco is famous for having a steep, one-block section that consists of tight hairpin turns.

Lombard Street, San Francisco

Streets and towns with ‘castle’ in their names .. Castleford named after 'castle' as in a fort, and 'ford', a low crossing point through a river, dating from Roman times. Castlebar in Ireland is named after the settlement around the de Barry castle, built by a Norman adventurer in 1235.

Castle Acre in Norfolk – perhaps should have an acre of castles? Or a number of castles built on an area of land tillable by one man behind an ox in one day. Acre comes from Old English for an “open field”. It has a castle and a priory amongst its earlier settlements.

Castle is derived from the Latin word castellum, which is a diminutive of the word castrum, meaning fortified place The Old English castel, French chateau, Spanish castillo, Italian castello and a number of other words in other languages also derive from castellum.

The word Castle was introduced into English shortly before the Norman Conquest to denote this type of building, which was then new to England. Although they appear to derive from the same root, there are distinctions .. for example the French chateau is used to describe a grand country house at the heart of an estate, regardless of the presence of fortifications.

Castle Acre, The Priory

So in its simplest term, the accepted definition of a castle is “a private fortified residence”. So guess what post comes next .. castles ... – has anyone any preferences .. or shall I just take some pot shots over the summer – and cover a range of castles and their locations?

Dear Mr Postman .. I don’t know about you – but it is still jolly cold – they were saying the temperature is more suited to early March and they’re having snow in Scotland. Mum and I watched the VE Day Service at the Cenotaph, with Prince Charles in attendance, on Saturday, but because she can’t hear .. I couldn’t really explain to her what she was watching!

Just spotted an interesting snippet that I didn’t know courtesy of The Times Online: The Dutch Royal Family annually sends 10,000 tulip bulbs to Ottawa, as a demonstration of the nation’s gratitude, for the sacrifices the Canadians made by their forces during the liberation of the Netherlands in 1945.

To bring us all down to earth – we watched a little of the Spanish Grand Prix on Sunday, Mum used to enjoy watching these .. it makes a change – but she fell asleep & I came home!

Hilary Melton-Butcher
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