I think I first recall hearing that phrase uttered in some old Ealing Studios, black and white, Sunday afternoon classic. Which one exactly it came from? Phhhhht. Good luck asking me that one. Long gone. Possibly said by some Army type referring to fellow squaddies with biting, scathing, world-weary emphasis placed on the last word? Maybe. I’ll never know, I think. But the source really doesn’t matter. I still remember it and it’s still such a useful phrase, don’t you think?
“Shambles” is a now archaic term for an open-air slaughterhouse and meat market from which butchers, since “time immemorial” (which is, apparently a phrase with legal significance. Who knew? “…beyond the reach of memory, record, or tradition, indefinitely ancient, ancient beyond memory or record“) have killed and dressed various animals for sale and onward consumption. One site I found suggested that the term derives from “shammel“, an Anglo-Saxon word for shelves, that these shops used to lay out their wares with another indicating that by AD 971 (no idea why that date is so significant, sorry!) “shamble” had mutated to mean a ‘bench for the sale of goods’ and by 1305, it had further changed to indicate a ‘stall for the sale of meat’.
It’s also suggested that the overhanging sections of medieval buildings would have given some measure of protection — to any goods lying on these sills — from both any inclement weather and also anything thrown out from above (piss pots being the most obvious culprits here). The last such street we saw so named, was this one in York.
Here endeth today’s history lesson 🙂
