As long as people have made York their home, they have carved out their own paths between places.
These paths have often taken people to worship and work, provided access to businesses hidden away in courtyards or provided short cuts to avoid the hustle and bustle of traffic and tourists.
As the city has grown, some, often centuries-old paths, have joined the modern city. These paths with an array of names – snickets, ginnels, alleyways, courts, yards and lanes – are often grouped together today as ‘Snickelways’ – a modern word only applying to such pathways in York.
The word was first published by author Mark W. Jones in 1983 in his book Snickelways of York. Jones defines a Snickelway as ‘a narrow passageway or alley between walls, fences or buildings’.
Whilst one word is convenient, their individual development suggests they have had a much more varied and diverse past. Some started out as much wider paths for driving animals to market, entrances to now-lost church grounds and elements of street pattern of both Roman and medieval York and the surrounding countryside.
Some may well have been once small streets laid out 2,000 years ago in the Roman fortress of Eboracum.
Walking along Coffee Yard through the medieval Barley Hall or entering The Slug and Lettuce bar from Grape Lane you may be following in the footsteps of Roman residents.
Approaching St Sampson’s Square along Finkle Street from today’s Back Swinegate you may hear the echoes of the squeals of medieval pigs being brought to market.
Once known as the Thursday Market, the square was the city’s second most important marketplace after Pavement and home to York’s main meat market. Wide with an elbow at its middle, its name may reflect an Anglo-Saxon origin.
Its neighbour, the straighter Nether Hornpot Lane, may also have its origins in early medieval York. It was probably a place for soaking horn in large pits or ‘pots’ to free the horn’s bony core from its outer keratin layer. This could then be used as a very versatile material akin to modern-day plastic, even making medieval spectacle frames – the original horn-rimmed glasses.
It is not the only Hornpot Lane in York; a second exists by following a surprising entrance on the left of Poundland on Low Petergate to the peaceful and well-hidden Holy Trinity Church.
Three Snickelways between Market Street and High Ousegate – Peter Lane, Pope’s Head Alley and Le Kirk Lane – once led to the now lost St Peter the Little Church (not to be confused with its bigger namesake The Cathedral and Metropolitical Church of St Peter in York).
As buildings were constructed on the periphery of the church’s ground and the church was demolished and built over, the public desire to continue the tradition of using the churchyard’s three entrances to move between the markets at Pavement and Thursday Market (St Sampson’s Square) formalised three new pedestrian routes in the city. The alternative route provided by Parliament Street did not appear until 200 years later in the 1830s.
These are just some of the snickets, ginnels, alleyways, courts, yards and lanes that are freely accessible today – there are many more. Each with its own history and story.
As the city has changed, many remnants of others have become private, often surviving as part of city-centre shops, somewhere to keep the bins, or closed off at either end they have disappeared into the building itself.
A varied and personal past for many of these Snickelways can be found in their names, often hand painted on surviving street name plates; Lady Peckett’s Yard, Straker’s Passage or Malt Shovel Yard, to name three.
Snickelways are not restricted to the City Centre – such pathways exist across the whole of York. If you are shopping at Clifton Green a narrow entrance in the middle of the parade of shops will take you down perhaps the longest Snickelway in York that follows the route of a footpath that has been in use for at least 300 years.
Next time you are walking the dog, stretching your legs away from the office or simply idling time then turn into somewhere different and perhaps discover a new path to a part of York’s story.
By Andrew Morrison
For the York Press