Sheffield History Posted February 8, 2022 Share Posted February 8, 2022 Can't beat a good gennel for a shortcut between streets/houses etc! Any gennels that you know of in Sheffield? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Athy Posted February 8, 2022 Share Posted February 8, 2022 Sure enough. Ours was known as "The Cinder Path" though it wasn't paved with cinder, perhaps it once had been. It cut through from Gleadless Avenue to (I suppose) Hollinsend Road. There's a rich range of names for such paths around the country. They're twitchels n Herts, twitterns in Sussex,, slipes in Bedfordshire, entries in Newcastle, and ginnles, alleys and jitties in other places which I'm not sure of. There's even, thanks to our colonial influence, a Slipe Road in Kingston, Jamaica. I assume that "gennel" is a corruption of "general", as in "general right of way", but I don't actually know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lysanderix Posted February 8, 2022 Share Posted February 8, 2022 The OED suggests it is possibly derived from the French….chennelle…channel. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lemmy117 Posted February 8, 2022 Share Posted February 8, 2022 Also known as "eight foot"s 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
History dude Posted February 8, 2022 Share Posted February 8, 2022 In my experience most of the Gennels tend to be ancient paths that have to be left in. With one or two exceptions. Such as the Gennels that are on the Woodthorpe estate that lead up from Kilvington Crescent to the High Noon public house. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Athy Posted February 9, 2022 Share Posted February 9, 2022 It's occurred to me that I've also heard one called a snickel or snickle. Dunno where that's from, it sounds West Country somehow. Lemmy, "eight foot" is a new one on me. Is that used in Sheffield? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
History dude Posted February 9, 2022 Share Posted February 9, 2022 10 minutes ago, Athy said: It's occurred to me that I've also heard one called a snickel or snickle. Dunno where that's from, it sounds West Country somehow. Lemmy, "eight foot" is a new one on me. Is that used in Sheffield? I have heard "eight foot" being used in that context by Sheffield people. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Athy Posted February 9, 2022 Share Posted February 9, 2022 56 minutes ago, History dude said: I have heard "eight foot" being used in that context by Sheffield people. Possibly by railway people who also spoke of the "four foot" and the "six foot". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Russell Posted February 9, 2022 Share Posted February 9, 2022 22 hours ago, Lysanderix said: The OED suggests it is possibly derived from the French….chennelle…channel. Which would be quite suprising since 'Gennel' seem unique to Sheffield. The names for a narrow passage between buildings seems to differ whichever city one is in across the UK. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Russell Posted February 9, 2022 Share Posted February 9, 2022 5 hours ago, History dude said: I have heard "eight foot" being used in that context by Sheffield people. I believe 'snicket' is Leeds. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Russell Posted February 9, 2022 Share Posted February 9, 2022 The BBC seems to have covered this subject pretty well: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/ztp9g7h 'Twitten' anyone? They missed 'wynd' which is what they call a gennel in Edinburgh. And 'jitty' is used in the West Midlands. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lysanderix Posted February 9, 2022 Share Posted February 9, 2022 The BBC ,it would seem ,agree with the OED as far as he derivation of gennel is concerned. Four foot, six foot and eight foot refer to the differing distances between rails on a railway, The former being the distance between rails on a standard 4ft 8.5 ins track. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hopman Posted February 9, 2022 Share Posted February 9, 2022 I think they use "drainway" in the West Country and I've heard "Ginnel" in Leeds (with a hard G) 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Athy Posted February 10, 2022 Share Posted February 10, 2022 7 hours ago, John Russell said: 'Twitten' anyone? Yes indeed, mentioned on here yesterday afternoon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Calvin72 Posted February 10, 2022 Share Posted February 10, 2022 I grew up in Sussex and can confirm 'twitten' as the local term Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
antony Posted February 10, 2022 Share Posted February 10, 2022 I lived in Shrewsbury for a while, they are called ‘shuts’ there 🤔 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Athy Posted February 10, 2022 Share Posted February 10, 2022 7 hours ago, Calvin72 said: I grew up in Sussex and can confirm 'twitten' as the local term It certainly waqs in Uckfield, which had several of them. I don't think I ever saw the word written down, so whether it ends in --en, as in listen, or --ern, as in bittern, I'm not sure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WhitbyBrian Posted February 16, 2022 Share Posted February 16, 2022 There are a few gennels on Frecheville and what we called an eightfoot between Silkstone Road and Alport Close. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MartinR Posted February 16, 2022 Share Posted February 16, 2022 I've been thinking about the term "8 foot". I suspect that it is a great deal older than cars. When the terraced houses were built there was no inside sanitation, certainly not WCs. They were built with external "necessaries" which backed onto the communal passageway. The toilets were earth (or cinder) closets which required emptying on a regular basis. At the back of the toilets you can often trace where there was once a hatch, now usually bricked in. Every so often the "night soil" cart would come down the alley and the men would shovel the contents into the cart. Now I have a feeling that an "8 foot" was wide enough for a night soil cart to get down, rather than a car. I've no proof, just an interest in history, so may be completely wrong. Any comments? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
History dude Posted February 17, 2022 Share Posted February 17, 2022 I have found that if you compare these Gennels in Sheffield with 1905 or earlier ordinance survey maps you find that they are old paths that have been left in when the housing estates etc were built. The width of the paths would have been either inherited from the use of the farm machinery than might have used them, or later methods of planning on the estates that were built around them. I suspect the term "eight foot" came from more common usage elsewhere. I doubt that a night soil cart needed as much room as eight feet. I doubt the carts were wider than a modern car. As you can see from this picture the night soil carts are not much wider than two men. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MartinR Posted February 17, 2022 Share Posted February 17, 2022 Not disagreeing. There are two sorts of passageway, those which provide "cuts" from one road to another (which may well be old paths) and those which are simply provided for access to the rear of properties. As regards cart width, make sure you look at the axles, not the bodies. Those in your picture look to be at least a foot each side beyond the tipping body. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lysanderix Posted February 17, 2022 Share Posted February 17, 2022 As an old railway buff coming from a line of “railway engineers”( as drivers were once known) all I can say is that the 4, 6 and 8 ft were used to describe the distances between rails in various circumstances. Later in life I was involved in the scrap industry and we paid an annual bonus to our workmen for their collection ,by hand,of all the stainless steel and non ferrous metals which had “accidentally “fallen between the rails of our rail crane…the four foot! Something which was rarely abused😚 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
History dude Posted February 17, 2022 Share Posted February 17, 2022 2 hours ago, MartinR said: Not disagreeing. There are two sorts of passageway, those which provide "cuts" from one road to another (which may well be old paths) and those which are simply provided for access to the rear of properties. As regards cart width, make sure you look at the axles, not the bodies. Those in your picture look to be at least a foot each side beyond the tipping body. I did actually look around Google to see if I could see the dimensions of horse drawn carts and though there are plenty of drawings of them they did not have any measurements on them. Most sources are about the size of things to go around the horse pulling carts, which of course would still be of use these days. Many of the old paths did lead from farm to a road, or farm to farm. No-doubt they would have been wide anyway to take the various sized farm carts. You are quite right about the paths to the back of houses. The night soil carts would have needed to get around to the bottom of the garden or back yard to get to the toilets. Of course by the 1920's housing estates did have flushed toilets. So estates with gennels built after that date were not wide for the use of night soil carts. The odd farm did sometimes survive in the middle of these estates. Stand House farm on the Manor can be seen left in for a time on the early aerial photos of the estate on the Britain From Above website. And the whole of Windy House Lane was converted from track to full tarmac road. There are some paths that wouldn't be wide at all. I suspect these were bridal ways used by people on single horses, mostly and somebody walking from place to place. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MartinR Posted February 17, 2022 Share Posted February 17, 2022 A one-horse cart usually has the wheels from around 4'6" to 5' where they touch the road. Any yes, that is connected with railway gauge. Indeed: Quote Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that’s the spacing of the wheel ruts. So who built those old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe (and England) were built by Imperial Rome for their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots first formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for (or by) Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Specifications and bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse’s ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses. Thus, we have the answer to the original question. (Snopes.com) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lysanderix Posted February 17, 2022 Share Posted February 17, 2022 I have no doubt our Roman ancestors found the distance needed for a horse to go between its shafts was the same as coal owners in the north east found ….and thus standard gauge was adopted by our nascent ,world beating, steam locomotive powered coal trains.🧐 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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