Historian Arthur R. Nicholls takes a look at the derivation of some of Kendal's street names

EVEN the most innocuous street name can hold the unexpected.

When Lowther Street, which runs down beside the town hall was opened, many local people refused to use the name, calling it instead 'The New Street'.

The Lowther family were true-blue Tories, who exercised considerable influence in the town.

Politics engendered fierce rivalries among Kendalians in the early 1800s and in the elections at that time, there was open warfare between the supporters of Colonel Lowther, the Tory candidate, and Henry Brougham, the Liberal, when mobs ranged down the main streets and caused damage to property - and many sore heads.

Today it is the traffic and its fumes which cause problems in the street.

The name of Blackhall Road refers to Black Hall, the ancient house in Stricklandgate, above which stands the 'Bristling Hog'.

The owner was Kendal's first Mayor and ruined his life and reputation by falling into temptation with another man's wife.

The house has had a number of uses over the centuries. It was for some time that of a brush maker, was later an estate agents, and is now a most respectable cafe showing no traces of the disreputable past of the house.

Other street names recall past uses. Rinkfield is a reminder of the time when water from the canal was released on to a field there, to freeze in winter to provide ice for skating.

Known as the skating rink field, it was the headquarters of the Kendal Skating Club. The whole area was turned into housing, leaving just the name.

Shambles is an archaic word, meaning a table for the display of meat.

In earlier times cattle were sold, baited and butchered on Beast Banks above the town. Baiting was abolished in 1792 and the butchers moved to Old Shambles, where the animals were butchered in the street, the blood and entrails draining to a central gully.

The drainage was a failure, so the butchers moved to the New Shambles off the market place.

The fine Georgian building at the end of Old Shambles was once 'The Butchers Arms' and later became a dye works.

The Shambles was a busy place with workshops, shops and houses, and at one time also schools and a theatre.

After dyeing, woollen cloth was processed by fulling - scouring, washing to remove any natural lanolin, and compacting - then hooked on to tenters to stretch it and prevent shrinkage while drying.

Tenters were frames on which were hooks or pegs to hold the cloth, hence the phrase 'on tenterhooks'.

High Tenterfell was one of the open spaces around the town where tenter frames were erected.

Gooseholme was another, 'Holme' which is a Saxon word for a water meadow and geese were pastured there. Geese were a prime source of food in earlier times and they were driven miles to the Goose Fair, their feet plastered with tar to protect them.