The Lamb, 31 Chequer Street
“It’s more than a hundred years since I could have sold you a refreshing drink such as a pint of my best ale after a busy morning in the market. I was a pub called The Lamb, a popular place to gossip with friends and business acquaintances. I stood here for several centuries, and once you would have heard the bleat of live lambs not far from my door, as I was close to the Flesh Shambles where the local butchers lived and worked.
Unfortunately, by the early 1900s trade was no longer as good as it once was and I was demolished in 1906.
Now where I once stood at 31 Chequer Street is an early twentieth century building housing a branch of a bank, and people come there these days to pay in and take out money rather than in search of liquid refreshment.
But there’s still something left of more ancient times – if you look up as you walk down the side of the bank through Lamb Alley, you can still see a mark upon a wooden beam overhead. This showed the spot where two parish boundaries met – the Abbey, when it was still a monastery, and St Peters Parish. If you were very poor, a pauper, this mark told everyone which parish would provide your food and lodging.”
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