Category:Butchers

Although there is no direct evidence, it is thought that there was once an early settlement towards the top of Beast Banks where drovers, bringing their animals to market, pastured and watered them before continuing into the town. By the C18 the land around the triangular Green adjacent to Cliff Terrace had become a place where animals were routinely slaughtered and butchered.

At that time the law required bulls to be baited - they were tethered to a ring in the ground and terriers were set on them to enrage them and get the blood flowing before they were slaughtered supposedly to improve the quality of the meat.

The practice was abolished in 1791 as it was decided it was cruel and unnecessary and the butchers moved into the purpose-built buildings now known as Old Shambles, off Highgate. The name Shambles comes from the Middle English sceamul for a table. Shambles became a place for the display or sale of meat. The current meaning of 'messy' came from the disorder and unpleasantness implied by the process of slaughter and butchery

In some ways though it was not an improvement. Although blood and offal drained into a sloping central channel supposedly to flow down to the river in practice it collected in a large pool before it got out of the yard as the ground slopes up again to Highgate and it had to be frequently removed in carts. The smell would have been terrible even to those hardened to the process and could not be imagined in current day Kendal.

Around 1804 those butchers left decided to move to a new site, supposedly with better drainage in Watt Lane, running between Market Place and Finkle Street. The lane was renamed New Shambles but, still retaining its obnoxious smell, became known as Stinking Lane. In practice the waste products of the process, although they drained relatively quickly out of the lane, flowed down Finkle Street then down Kent Street to the River Kent.

Fortunately for the residents of Kendal at about the same time the town council built a new slaughterhouse on the corner of the canal basin. Some butchers’ shops remained in New Shambles but by 1885 they became less and less used and the Shambles eventually closed down.

New shops took the places of the butchers and the little lane became a popular small shopping area, which is today one of Kendal’s delightful tourist attractions however the buildings are still similar in form. The shop on the west side nearest the Market Place still looks similar with a mock fold down shutter which would have formed a sales bench and closed the front when shut. There was no glass because of the smell and a second horizontal shutter opened near the eaves to ensure ventilation when the main shutter was closed.

There were other smaller slaughterhouses, including one behind what wa the Golden Lion Inn in Market Place, now Cafe Nero. Until the C19 butchers were also on the main streets, notably on the Butchers Rows on each side of the road from Finkle Street to Lowther Street including those in the New Biggin. Under the projecting upper floor of the Fleece Inn can still be seen hooks, on which it is said meat was hung for sale. A Rick Airey was said to have brought home a calf from a slaughterhouse and butchered it in his spare bedroom!