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"In
those barbaric days Bursley had a majestic edifice, black as basalt,
for the sale of dead animals by the limb and rib - it was entitled
'the Shambles' - but vegetables, fruit, cheese, eggs, and pikelets
were still sold under canvas."
Bennett: The Old Wives' Tale Chapter 3
"Edwin,
like everybody, knew every line of the poem.....
It seemed to him that in the dim cellars under the shambles behind the
Town Hall, where he had once been, there dwelt, squatting, a strange
and savage god who would blast all those who did not enter his
presence dripping with gore, be they child or grandfather. It seemed
to him that the drums were tom-toms, and Baines's a bazaar....."
Bennett: Clayhanger Book 2 Chapter 12
It was outside the Town
Hall and meat market that Samuel Povey set out by Hansom Cab for Knype
(Stoke) Station to attend the trial of his cousin Daniel Povey.
"On the
dark winter morning when Samuel set off to the grand assize, Constance
did not ask his views as to what protection he would adopt against the
weather..... Then the cab came, and he saw Amy put hot bricks into it.
Constance herself put goloshes over his boots, not because it was
damp, but because indiarubber keeps the feet warm.
Thus in the winter
darkness--for it was not yet dawn--Samuel set forth to the trial,
escorted by his son. The reverberation of his appalling cough from the
cab was the last thing that Constance heard."
Bennett: The Old Wives' Tale Book 2 Chapter 5
"In the
centre of the town, on the waste ground to the north of the "Shambles"
(as the stone-built meat market was called), and in the space between
the Shambles and the as yet unfinished new Town Hall, the showmen and
the showgirls and the showboys were titivating their booths, and
cooking their teas, and watering their horses, and polishing the brass
rails of their vans,..."
Bennett: Jock-at-a-Venture; The Death of Simon Fuge
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