Dare you explore York’s dark and narrow passages?
What is a snickelway? Well, according to the man credited with coining the term, it is “a narrow place to walk along, leading from somewhere to somewhere else, usually in a town or city, especially in the city of York.”
A portmanteau word, it combines snicket, ginnel, and alleyway and came into common usage in Mark W Jones’s 1983 book A Walk Around the Snickelways of York. With its pen-and-ink drawings guiding you round some of York’s lesser-known routes and corners, this popular paperback has never gone out of print.
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Address York City Centre, www.snickelways.co.uk | Public Transport To follow Mark Jones’s route, start at the Hole in the Wall, on High Petergate. 3-minute walk from Bootham Row car park. Closest bus stop: Exhibition Square | Tip The Snickleway Inn was so named in 1994 to associate itself with the history in Jones’s book, although the spelling is wrong. Found on Goodramgate, it’s a great traditional York pub.
Much of the city mapped out in the original book has changed considerably, requiring the publication of several updated editions. Jones’s book is still the best way to discover all the snickelways. Some of the odd places it will take you to are the Hole-in-the-Wall (the shortest of all, this passageway leads you past the pub of the same name and out to the Minster); Penny Lane (nothing to do with Paul McCartney, this is a little cut-through from St Andrewgate to Spen Lane); Patrick Pool, a short cut-through to the market (here you’ll find Ernest Roy, a tiny electrical shop filled floor-to-ceiling with gadgets, cables, and whatnot); Coffee Yard (formerly known as Langton Lane, it was renamed when the first coffee house opened in the 17th century, and was home to early newspapers York Mercury and York Courant); Finkle Street (as with many York streets, the origins of its name is unclear – one suggestion is that it comes from the Germanic word winkel, meaning “corner”); and Black Horse Passage (you’d struggle to get a horse of any colour down this ancient alley), which leads to Hungate, an area of great poverty in Victorian times, where Joseph Rowntree set up a soup kitchen in 1846.
Other great names to look out for are Straker’s Passage, Cheat’s Lane, Hornpot Lane, Le Kyrk Lane, and one of the narrowest, Pope’s Head Alley.
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