The Shambles (York)

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The Shambles (York)

The Shambles (official name Shambles) is an old street in York

York

York is a walled city, sited at the confluence of the rivers River Ouse, Yorkshire and River Foss in North Yorkshire, England. The city status in the United Kingdom is noted for its rich heritage and it has played an important role throughout much of its almost 2,000 year existence....
, England

England

Timber framing

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The Shambles (official name Shambles) is an old street in York

York

England

Timber framing

Timber framing , or Half-timbering, is the method of creating framed structures of heavy timber jointed together with pegged mortise and tenon joints....
buildings, some dating back as far as the fourteenth century. It was once known as The Great Flesh Shambles, probably from the Anglo-Saxon Fleshammels (literally 'flesh-shelves'), the word for the shelves that butchers used to display their meat. As recently as 1872, there were twenty-five butchers' shops in the street, but now there are none, although there is still a butcher in the adjacent Little Shambles which leads to York's open-air Newgate Market.

Among the buildings of the Shambles is a shrine to Saint Margaret Clitherow, who was married to a butcher who owned and lived in a shop there.

Although the butchers have now vanished, a number of the shops on the street still have meat-hooks hanging outside and, below them, shelves on which meat would have been displayed. The shops currently comprise a mixture of eateries and souvenir shops, but there is also a bookshop and a baker.

Five Snickelways

Snickelways of York

The Snickelways of York are a collection of small streets and footpaths in the city of York, England. The word Snickelway was coined by local author Mark W Jones in 1983 in his book A Walk Around the Snickelways of York, and is a portmanteau of the words snicket , ginnel and alleyway ....
lead off the Shambles.

Origin of name

"Shambles" is an obsolete term for an open-air slaughterhouse

Slaughterhouse

A slaughterhouse, also called an abattoir ,or freezing works , is a facility where animals are killed and processed into meat foods....
and meat

Meat

In modern English usage, meat most often refers to animal biological tissue used as food, mostly skeletal muscle and associated fat, but it may also refer to offal, including livers, skin, brains, bone marrow, kidneys, in some countries lungs, and a variety of other internal organs as well as blood....
market

Market

A market is any one of a variety of different systems, institutions, procedures, social relations and infrastructures whereby persons trade, and goods and services are exchanged, forming part of the economy....
. There are streets named "The Shambles" in other UK

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
town

Town

A town is a type of human settlement ranging from a few to several thousand inhabitants, although it may be applied loosely even to huge metropolitan areas; the precise meaning varies between countries and is not always a matter of legal definition....
s (e.g., Worcester, Whitby

Whitby

Whitby is a town and civil parish in the Scarborough district of North Yorkshire on the north-east coast of England. Nowadays it is a fishing port and tourist destination....
, Sevenoaks

Sevenoaks

Sevenoaks is a town situated in the west of Kent, England. It gives its name to the Sevenoaks , of which it is the principal town, and lies 21.5 miles south-east of the centre of London, at the southern end of one of the principal commuter rail lines from the capital....
, Chesterfield

Chesterfield

Chesterfield is a market town and a Borough status in the United Kingdom of Derbyshire, England. It lies north of the city of Derby, on a confluence of the rivers River Rother, South Yorkshire and River Hipper....
, Manchester

Manchester

Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. Manchester was granted City status in the United Kingdom in 1853....
), as well as in Ireland (Armagh

Armagh

The city of Armagh is an ancient religious site of worship of both Celtic paganism and Christianity, the oldest of the five City status in the United Kingdom in Northern Ireland, and the county town of County Armagh....
). They also got their names from having been the sites on which butcher

Butcher

A butcher is someone who prepares various meats and other related goods for sale. Many butchers sell their goods in specialized stores, although in the Western world today most meat is sold through supermarkets....
s killed and dressed animal

Animal

Animals are a major group of multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the Kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life....
s for consumption. The Shambles in Stroud

Stroud, Gloucestershire

Stroud is a town and civil parish in the county of Gloucestershire, England. It is the main town in Stroud District.Situated below the western escarpment of the Cotswold Hills at the meeting point of the Five Valleys, the town is noted for its steep streets and cafe culture....
still has the hinged wooden boards attached to the shops, and hosts a regular local market.

During that period there were no sanitary facilities or hygiene

Hygiene

Hygiene refers to practices associated with ensuring good health and cleanliness. Such practices vary widely and what is considered acceptable in one culture may be unacceptable in another....
laws as exist today, and guts

Gastrointestinal tract

The digestive tract is the system of Organ s within multicellular animals that takes in food, digestion it to extract energy and nutrients, and expels the remaining waste....
, offal

Offal

Offal is the entrails and internal organs of a butchered animal. The word does not refer to a particular list of organs, but includes most internal organs other than muscles or bones....
and blood

Blood

Blood is a specialized bodily fluid that delivers necessary substances to the body's Cell s ? such as nutrients and oxygen ? and transports waste products away from those same cells....
were thrown into a runnel

Gutter

Gutter may refer to:* Rain gutter, a narrow channel which collects rainwater from the roof of a building and diverts it away from the structure, typically into a drain....
down the middle of the street or open space where the butchering was carried out. By extension, any scene of total disorganisation and mess is now referred to as "a shambles".

Sources

External links

Quicktime virtual reality image of the Shambles
on Flickr
Flickr

Flickr is an and video hosting service website, web services suite, and online community platform. In addition to being a popular Web site for users to share personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers as a photo repository....