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Shambles Square

Shambles Square is a square in Manchester in the north of England, created in 1999 to house the rebuilt Old Wellington Inn and Sinclair's Oyster Bar next to the Mitre Hotel

1 Etymology
2 History
3 See Also
4 Bibliography
5 References

[edit] Etymology

“Shambles” was a name originally used for a street of butchers shops where meat was slaughtered and sold - Etymology: Middle English schamel, bench, as for displaying meat for sale. A shambles would have had blood, pieces of meat and offal running down the gutter^[1], and although the original meaning of the word fell into disuse, it survived as a word meaning a scene of disorder.^[2]. There are also streets known as "The Shambles" in other UK towns such as York, Stroud, Worcester, Whitby, Sevenoaks, Chesterfield and Armagh.

[edit] History

The building that is now The Old Wellington Inn was built in 1552 next to Manchester's market square and In 1554 it was purchased by the Byrom family and became part residence and part drapers shop. In the 17th Century a third floor was added and the writer John Byrom was born there in 1692. The premises were licensed in 1862 and became the Vintners Arms, then the Kenyon Vaults and later The Old Wellington Inn. The building was extended in the 18th Century to house John Shaw’s Punch House which, as the name suggests, was licensed for the sale of strong alcoholic punch and became a meeting place for High Tories and possibly Jacobites^[3]. After John Shaw’s death in 1796 it became “Sinclair’s” until oysters were introduced to the menu in 1845 when it became known as “Sinclair’s Oyster Bar”.

Many of the buildings in the market place were demolished in in Victorian times to make way for road improvements. During the Manchester Blitz in 1940 the rest of the buildings were destroyed leaving The Shambles as one of the few pre 19th Century buildings, and The Old Wellington Inn as the only surviving Tudor building in Manchester City Centre.

In 1974 most of the old property between Shudehill and Market Street was demolished to accommodate the new Arndale Shopping Centre. The Shambles was underpinned with a concrete raft and jacked-up 4 feet 9 inches to fit in with this development and was surrounded by concrete buildings in the newly created Shambles Square.^[4]

In 1996 an IRA terrorist bomb was exploded in nearby Corporation Street. Many of the surrounding buildings were badly damaged but the Shambles was protected by the concrete buildings around it and suffered only minimal damage. £12M funding was secured to redevelop The Shambles, provided by the government-sponsored Redevelopment Agency, English Partnerships, as well as private companies, the EC and Manchester City Council.^[5] The buildings were subsequently dismantled and moved 300 yards to their present location. The Old Wellington Inn and Sinclairs were rebuilt at 90 degrees to each other and joined together by a stone extension, to form two sides of the new Shambles Square. The third side of the square is fronted by The Mitre Hotel which dates from 1815.^[6]