The Shambles is generally accepted as being the only “street” recorded in York’s Domesday entry of 1086; listed as in the ownership of the Count of Mortain are ii bancos in macello nr ecclesiam St Crucis, i.e. two butchers’ stalls near Saint Crux. Now a narrow street running south-east from King’s Square to Pavement, there is likely to have been infilling of a more open area of markets. The name Marketshire was still used in the 14th century and was applied to the Shambles and to Pavement. By 1240 the street had the name of Haymongergate, possibly because of the hay used by butchers for their livestock, and was later called Nedlergate (1394), derived perhaps from the craft of making needles from the bones of animals. In 1426 both these alternatives and the more usual name of the Great Flesh Shambles, eventually abbreviated to the Shambles, were used.
The Anglo-Saxon word fleshammel refers to the wooden shelves on which the butchers displayed their meat; some still survive in the street, along with beams and hooks used in hanging meat. There is a continuous tradition of occupation by butchers. In 1798, 19 and, in 1830, 25 out of 88 butchers listed in the city had shops here. To the rear of the shops were slaughterhouses. The Shambles was a place to avoid on days when the butchers washed the offal out of their premises, allowing a river of blood to run down the cobbled channel in the centre of the street. Despite this, the picturesque qualities of the narrow street with its timber-framed jettied houses have been appreciated for centuries; the Shambles is mentioned in 19th-century gazetteers and guide books as one of the key sights in the city.
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