Shambles Square

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

"Shambles" was a name originally used for a street of butchers shops where meat was slaughtered and sold. It is derived from the Middle English word schamel, which meant a bench, as for displaying meat for sale. A shambles would have had blood, pieces of meat and offal running down the gutter, and although the original meaning of the word fell into disuse, it survived as a word meaning a scene of disorder. There are also streets known as "The Shambles" in other towns in the United Kingdom, such as York, Stroud, Worcester, Sevenoaks, Chesterfield and Armagh, and a public house in Lutterworth which was once a butcher's shop and abbatoir.

The building that is now The Old Wellington Inn was built in 1552 next to Manchester's market square. In 1554, it was purchased by the Byrom family and became part residence and part drapers shop. 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. The customers usually assembled around 6 o'clock and, according to rule, called for "sixpennyworth of punch". John Shaw was a stickler for discipline, having formerly been a trooper and fought in the wars of Queen Anne's reign, and the rules of the establishment were strictly enforced. Eight o'clock was the hour fixed by law for closing and, as soon as the clock struck eight, Shaw would present himself before his guests and proclaim in a loud voice "Eight o'clock gentlemen, eight o'clock!" accompanying the announcement with the suggestive cracking of a horsewhip. This would normally soon clear the house but, if the cracking of the whip failed, his maid, Molly Owen, was ordered to use the contents of her mop bucket to "expedite the movement of the loiterer". When one Colonel Stanley was elected Member of Parliament for the county he took his friends to Shaw's, and when "Eight o'clock" was announced as usual, said that he hoped Mr Shaw would not press the matter on this special occasion. Shaw replied "Colonel Stanley, you are a lawmaker and should not be a lawbreaker, and if you and your friends do not leave the room in five minutes you will find your shoes full of water!" Within that time Molly came in with her mop bucket and the Colonel and his friends were required to beat a hasty retreat. Shaw was master of the punch house for 58 years until he died in 1796 at the age of 83. After Shaw's death the punch house was kept by Peter Fearnhead, with the assistance of Molly under the same rules, until it was sold about twelve years later. The new landlord demolished part of the building and converted the rest into The King's Head Tavern in 1809. It later became known as Sinclair's, until oysters were introduced to the menu in 1845 and it became Sinclair's Oyster Bar, the name it retains to this day.

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