The Shambles on the other hand is one of the oldest medieval shopping street in Britain. It is as well the most photographed street in York. The street is short and narrow and with the timber buildings, they remind me of the Schnoor Quarter in Bremen, Germany. The latter though is much bigger, colourful and more impressive.
The street was popularly known in the early days as a butcher place with meat on display on wooden shelves for sale. The word shambles back then actually mean an open-air meat slaughtering place or market. During the medieval period there were no laws on sanitary and hygiene that existed, thus all the blood, the guts, the innards and everything else that have to do with animal slaughtering were thrown to the gutter down the street, which led to people calling the place ‘a shambles’.
Obviously the Shambles during the medieval period was not the best place to hang out in York. Plagues of all kinds breed here.
There are no butchers nowadays on Shambles street but souvenir shops, confectionary, tearooms, art gallery and other tourist-related shops and activities.
Here are some of my few Shambles snapshots:
Travel Period: May 2011
Destination: York (North Yorkshire – England), United Kingdom