Out and about in Chesterfield today with some relaxed shopping and market-browsing. Thursdays id the flea market and once a mont (today) holds a farmer's market too.This is a street called...
...Ironside in the shambles and is the inspiration for Dark Passage in Laverstone, where Harold's shop is situated.Above, right The Red Lion Inn, written in stained glass on the upper windows.
This splendid chap is a David Mach Gargoyle
I often wonder what the council thought when the bought a two-headed hermaphrodite demon.
He's tucked out of the way where few people see him.
(see his Dominatrix)This bit appears in Laverstone :)
8 comments:
What wonderful pics today! I take it it is not raining for once?
Why do they call it the shambles. I noted that over at Jelleybeanangel's when she was in York as well.
I can't see the Red Lion Inn in stained glass...where am I suppose to look?
Finally - I can see how you can draw inspiration from this. I suppose for you it is just where you live - but for me these pics put me right in Laverstone! Fantastic!
If you click the photo you cane see... my mistake - it's the Royal Oak and you can make out 'OAK' written backwards (readable from inside)
sham·bles (shmblz)
1.
a. A scene or condition of complete disorder or ruin: "The economy was in a shambles" W. Bruce Lincoln.
b. Great clutter or jumble; a total mess: made dinner and left the kitchen a shambles.
2.
a. A place or scene of bloodshed or carnage.
b. A scene or condition of great devastation.
3. A slaughterhouse.
4. Archaic A meat market or butcher shop.
[From Middle English shamel, shambil, place where meat is butchered and sold, from Old English sceamol, table, from Latin scabillum, scamillum, diminutive of scamnum, bench, stool.]
Word History: A place or situation referred to as a shambles is usually a mess, but it is no longer always the bloody mess it once was. The history of the word begins innocently enough with the Latin word scamnum, "a stool or bench serving as a seat, step, or support for the feet, for example." The diminutive scamillum, "low stool," was borrowed by speakers of Old English as sceamol, "stool, bench, table." Old English sceamol became Middle English shamel, which developed the specific sense in the singular and plural of "a place where meat is butchered and sold." The Middle English compound shamelhouse meant "slaughterhouse," a sense that the plural shambles developed (first recorded in 1548) along with the figurative sense "a place or scene of bloodshed" (first recorded in 1593). Our current, more generalized meaning, "a scene or condition of disorder," is first recorded in 1926.
Mostly because the streets are narrow and run higgledy-piggledy
Yes, I envisaged Laverstone as this long before we moved here - We'd visited Chesterfield a few times and the images stuck. That's just the market are and Shambles - other parts of Laverstone come from other sources.
That's a lovely place, no wonder you made use of it in your stories.
Thanks Nathalie :)
Wow! That's some history for one word isn't it?
So was a butcher's shop there once as well as the roads going every which way? Did they slaughter people in the streets?
I noted over in York that the buildings almost touched at the top in the area called the Shambles. Although she did point out where they use to hang people.....
Since the market is the oldest part of Chesterfield, I would hazard that as being the 'butcher's block' I may be a combination of that and the narrow, cluttered streets that cause the name.
Lovely blog! I'll be back!! :)
Thanks Willow. Nice t see you here :)
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