York and the Shambles
The street of the
Medieval Butchers
The Yorkshire Museum, St Mary’s Abbey,
The Minster Grounds
This webpage
is still to be written but meantime you can visit the existing webpage on York.
The
Street of the Medieval Butchers
The Shambles
are the medieval streets of the butchers. The street is narrow, with many
timber-framed buildings with jettied floors that overhang the street by several
feet. "Shambles" is an obsolete term for an open-air slaughterhouse
and meat market. 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. By 971 CE "shamble" meant a
'bench for the sale of goods' and by 1305, a 'stall for the sale of meat'.
Although not
recorded directly in the Domesday Book of 1086, it has been identified through
an entry which lists two butchers' stalls near the church of St Crux, ii
bancos in macello nr ecclesiam St Crucis, being in the ownership of the
Count of Mortain.
The naming
of the street after butcher stalls has stuck since the fourteenth century
because the association of the street with butchers has been a large part of
its history and character. This was because of a continuous tradition of
butchers occupying the street that was upheld for centuries. This is probably
in large part due to the favourable architecture of the street towards butcher
practices of the past. The rears of the shops were slaughterhouses and the fact
the buildings shade the narrow street from direct sunlight meant that the meat
on display could stay fresh for longer. Also, when butchering took place, the
guts, offal and blood were thrown into the street runnels that had a natural
slope which helped it wash away after rain. These butchering practices long
predated basic modern standards of hygiene and the street would have been
incredibly unhygienic in these days.
The area
around the Shambles was known as Marketshire into the fourteenth century.
The Shambles
preserves a large amount of original medieval built fabric, with many buildings
dating from circa 1350–1475.
Johannes Fenedill
(c1378 to c1448) was a butcher made freeman of York in 1408.
Although
none of the original frontages have survived, some properties still have
exterior wooden shelves, remnants from when cuts of meat were served from the
open windows. The street was made narrow by design to keep the meat out of
direct sunlight. The smell and vibrancy can be imagined when the Shambles was
packed with people and awash with offal and discarded bones.
Even by
1885, thirty-one butchers' shops were still located along the street, but none
remain today. The last
butcher shops on the street closed in the early 20th century.
The Shambles
were probably the inspiration for Diagon Alley from the film adaptation of the
Harry Potter series.
The
Yorkshire Museum
Roman
York
Scandinavian
York
Norman
York
St Mary’s
Abbey
The
Minster Grounds
or
Go Straight to Chapter 9 – the Merchants of York
Go Straight to Eboracum (Roman York)
Go Straight to Eoforwic (Anglo Saxon York)
Go Straight to Jorvik (Scandinavian York)