Words In History: Ginnel
...In the Court Leet records for Manchester, there were similarly unpleasant connotations. In 1613 Robert Charnock was said to have ‘newly erected a privie, the Filthe whereof Falleth into a certen Gynnell or gutter’ between his house and one belonging to Thomas Brownsword...
Historian George Redmonds points out that the dialect word ‘ginnel’ still survives and is acceptable in polite conversation.
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We may have lost many dialect words in recent times but ‘ginnel’ is one that survives in good health, acceptable in polite conversation and even in newspaper articles. In that respect it can be compared with ‘snicket’, as though the two fulfil a role in the language that English somehow cannot match. We are left to wonder how people in less fortunate parts of the country manage, although it must be suspected that most regions have their own equivalents.
There are a few early references to the term but they tell us little about its precise meaning. In 1744, Arthur Jessop the New Mill apothecary wrote that a subpoena had been sent to ‘Joseph Eastwood’s wife in the Ginnil in the Low at Holmfirth’. This clearly identified exactly where she lived but ‘the Low’ is a term I have not otherwise heard. Perhaps it was simply the low part of the town. Similarly, one branch of the Taylor family in Meltham was said to be of ‘Ginnel’ in 1774.
Some years ago now I was in conversation with an old gentleman in the Holme Valley, and unwisely said that I was not always sure of the distinction between the two terms. His immediate reply was that a ginnil goes uphill and has setts whereas a snicket doesn’t – and hasn’t. You will have to imagine that spoken in a broad Yorkshire accent. That is not of course the meaning that is given in most dialect glossaries, which explain ‘ginnel’ as a north-country word for a narrow entrance between houses. The OED says that it has an obscure etymology but likens the word to ‘channel’ and offers the meaning as ‘a long narrow passage between houses, either roofed or unroofed’. In Wright’s Dialect Dictionary it is contrasted with ‘entry’ which is specifically said to have a roof – unlike a ginnel. The editors of Yorkshire glossaries are less reticent about the etymology and more than one claims a connection between ginnel and a Scandinavian word for ‘mouth’, as though the ginnel was originally an opening.
I have no wish to get involved in the etymological argument but feel that one or two other references to the word may be of interest. For example, in 1881, Councillor Brooke of Huddersfield moved a resolution that a footway near the Baptist Chapel in New North Road should be closed. In the statements that followed several councillors referred to the footway as a ginnel and said that it was in an unsanitary state. In fact, they also described it as an alley and a road but ginnel was the preferred term when its shocking condition was being mentioned.
In a much earlier example, in the Court Leet records for Manchester, there were similarly unpleasant connotations. In 1613 Robert Charnock was said to have ‘newly erected a privie, the Filthe whereof Falleth into a certen Gynnell or gutter’ between his house and one belonging to Thomas Brownsword. It was even claimed that he kept ‘his swine in the same gynnell’. On the other hand it was acceptable for the narrow alleys off Skipton’s High Street to be named as Ginnels and Ranson’s Ginnel had that name as early as 1755 – again in Court Leet records.
© George Redmonds, 2009
