Nine snickelways every local should walk at least once

First, the word itself, because it's perfect. “Snickelway” isn't medieval at all. It was coined in 1983 by a York author called Mark W. Jones, who mashed together snicket, ginnel and alleyway for his book A Walk Around the Snickelways of York. The word was so obviously right that the city simply adopted it, and now it feels a thousand years old. Very York, that.

The snickelways themselves, though, are old, many of them genuinely medieval. They're the gaps the city left for itself: shortcuts between markets, squeezes between churchyards, passages that once led to breweries, bakeries and at least one alleged witch. Walk them all and you'll cross the city centre barely touching a main street.

Here are nine we think every local should have under their boots.

1. Coffee Yard

The longest snickelway in the city, running between Stonegate and Grape Lane, and the one with the best résumé: it passes Barley Hall, a reconstructed medieval townhouse hiding in plain sight. The name comes from the coffee houses that buzzed here in the 17th and 18th centuries. Duck in off Stonegate and the temperature drops, the noise dies, and you're suddenly somewhere older.

2. Mad Alice Lane

Officially Lund's Court, unofficially named for Alice, who, depending on which storyteller you catch, was either hanged, haunted, or simply misunderstood. The truth is murky; the lane is not. It's a lovely crook-backed cut between Swinegate and Low Petergate, and saying “I came via Mad Alice Lane” never stops being satisfying.

3. Lady Peckett's Yard

Named after the wife of a Lord Mayor, tucked off Pavement behind half-timbered overhangs that look poured rather than built. It's the snickelway photographers guard jealously. Go early on a summer morning when the light comes down the gap in stripes.

4. Pope's Head Alley

One of the narrowest: a genuine breathe-in job between Peter Lane and High Ousegate. Two people cannot pass politely; one of you must reverse, and this being York, you'll both insist the other goes first. Budget time for this negotiation.

5. Hole-in-the-Wall

Exactly what it says: a passage by the pub of the same name near High Petergate, within bell-ringing distance of the Minster. The name allegedly refers to a grim old cell discovered nearby, but today it's simply the quickest way to a pint after evensong, which feels like progress.

6. Straker's Passage

Off Fossgate, and the connoisseur's pick. No famous story, no ghost, no plaque, just a proper working shortcut that locals use and tourists walk straight past. Some snickelways are celebrities; this one has a job.

7. Nether Hornpot Lane

Off Low Petergate, named for the horners who once worked pots of, well, horn here. Seven hundred years later the name survives on a street sign roughly the size of a paperback. That's York's relationship with history in one image: casual, unbothered, everywhere.

8. Black Horse Passage

Linking Fossgate and the Stonebow end of town, once beside the Black Horse Inn. Moodier than the others (brick rather than timber) and best walked at dusk when the lamps come on and you can pretend you're in a period drama with a decent budget.

9. Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate (honorary member)

Technically a street: the shortest in York, wearing its longest name. The name's meaning is gloriously disputed; the best translation on offer is roughly “neither one thing nor the other”. It's over in about six strides, and it earns its place here because no walk of York's odd little thoroughfares can decently leave it out.

The snickelways are York's answer to the question every city faces: what do you do with the gaps? Most cities fill them. York kept them, named them, and told stories about them for seven hundred years.

The gentle art of getting lost

Here's our actual advice: don't follow this list. Not exactly. Pick a Saturday, enter the first snickelway you see, and take every narrow opening that looks like it might not be a dead end. Some will be. That's part of it. York's centre is small enough that you can't get properly lost, only pleasantly misplaced, which is a different thing entirely, and arguably the whole point of living here.

And when you emerge, blinking, onto a street you didn't expect, there'll be a café within thirty yards. There always is. We wrote about those too.