Historian Arthur R. Nicholls recounts the history of butchers shops in Kendal

TOWARDS the top of Beast Banks at Kendal is a small triangular patch of grass. Although there is no evidence, it is thought that there was once an early settlement on the site where drovers, bringing their animals to market, pastured and watered them before continuing into the town.

By the 18th century it had become a place where animals were slaughtered and butchered.

The law of the time caused bulls to be baited. They were tethered to a ring in the ground and fierce dogs were made to attack them, causing the blood to flow freely through the body and improve the quality of the meat. Cooks do the same to steak today with a hammer.

The practice was abolished in 1791 and the butchers moved into the purpose-built Old Shambles, off Highgate. Shambles does not imply disorder but comes from the Middle English sceamul for a table. Shambles became a place for the display or sale of meat.

The improvement did not last long. Blood and waste drained into a sloping central channel to flow down to the river. However, it collected in pools to be removed in carts from time to time. The smell alone would have been horrendous to modern sensibilities.

By 1804 the butchers felt that enough was enough and they decamped to a new site 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.

The changes came too late as, at about the same time, the town council built a new slaughterhouse on the corner of the canal basin. There were still butchers’ shops in New Shambles in 1885 but 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.

Slaughtering was not confined to the Shambles. There was a slaughterhouse behind the old Golden Lion Inn in Market Place.

Until the 19th century butchers were to be found in some of the main streets, notably on the Butchers Rows on each side of the road from Finkle Street to Lowther Street.

In the old days the shop frontage was covered with wooden shutters, which were drawn down to make a counter.

Under the projecting upper floor of the Fleece Inn can still be seen hooks, on which it is said meat was hung for sale. Rick Airey even brought home a calf from a slaughterhouse and butchered it in his spare bedroom!