Down our alley ...........

I have always been fascinated by those narrow throughfares behind houses.

Once they were just cut throughs or places to play as kids, but now more and more of them have been gated off.

I can understand why this should be the case, after all anything that makes the work of Burglar Bill just a bit more difficult is to be applauded, but it has deprived many of us the chance to save time by slipping down the alley to avoid the main road on the journey to the shops.

At which point the word alley will provoke some to intervene with alternative names, from back alley to ginnel and snicket.

My Wikipedia tells me that a “A ginnel is a word in various Scottish and northern English dialects describing a fenced or walled alley between residential buildings that provides a pedestrian shortcut to nearby streets. Ginnels are typically found in suburban areas, and do not contain any business premises, unlike some other types of alley. Other related terms include snicket, tenfoot and snickleway. 

Suburban streets in Sydney, Australia similarly feature "cut-throughs", which are fenced or walled passages found between residential lots that grant pedestrians easy access to nearby facilities situated on other roads. 

They may feature a nature strip and are generally secured by bollards to prevent vehicle access”*

And cut throughs along with back doubles were what we called them in my bit of south east London, although that said they were not a feature of the houses where I grew up, which meant the dustbin route from the garden involved carrying it through the house.

Leaving me just to reflect that while some alleys win competitions for the way their residents add potted plants and even chairs to enhance these back strips, others are just a repository for wheelie bins.

And there is nothing wrong in that.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; one back alley, 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Ginnel, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginnelhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginnel