The Shambles, Monmouth

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The "shambles", as a name for an area, seems to be quite common on the UK with the most famous in York. I believe the York Shambles was an inspiration for Diagon Alley in Harry Potter (or not), maybe just the movie versions.

And now that I've read what "shambles" actually means my photo and the naming of The Shambles makes sooooo much more sense:
"Shambles" is an obsolete term for an open-air slaughterhouse and meat market. Streets of that name were so called from having been the sites on which butchers killed and dressed animals for consumption (One source suggests that the term derives from "Shammel", an Anglo-Saxon word for shelves that stores used to display their wares, while another indicates that by AD 971 "shamble" meant a 'bench for the sale of goods' and by 1305, a 'stall for the sale of meat'.).
As you may remember from yesterday I was wandering around the back of Market Hall and headed down to Monmouth's Shambles, the 24 arches of the slaughter houses by the river built underneath the buildings at street level.

Whilst it's a tad overgrown and there's not really much down there apart for the many large empty archways that served as slaughterhouses (handy for the river, bet that stunk of a June Friday), it does have a feeling of potential.

I can easily see someone rich woman doing them up, renting them out as craft beer bars, cafés, traders of tat, you know the sort I'm thinking of. In the summer it would go off, awesome view, river flowing by, sheltered by the trees, lahverly.
Black and White edited photo of The Shambles, Monmouth. Large stone arches extend away ending in bush and trees. Above are angular windows of a street level building.
Monmouth NP25, UK

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