Coffee Yard and Gr*p*c**t Lane

This is described by Mark Jones (the author of the Snickelway guide), as being 'the very quintessence of the Snickelways', and I would be inclined to agree.

So how does this particular snickelway earn such high praise from Mr. Snickelway himself?

Well, it's low (5'10" at its lowest); narrow (2'11" at its narrowest); long (220 feet); old (a medieval common lane); and it has three tunnels, a yard and a ginnel. As if this wasn't enough it also has 'a devil at one end and a four-lettered word at the other'.

Mr Snickelway explains:

'... you come to the last tunnel, terminating in a a real head-clouter, the lowest overhead beam in all the Snickelways. In the 14th Century, when a man's stature was less, this must have mattered little compared with what was to follow: for Grape Lane, into which we emerge, was then a street of iniquity. Francis Drake in 1786 wrote long sentences preparing his readers for Grape Lane's original name because (he wrote) "our ancestors used to call a spade a spade". But then he hid it away in the midst of a Latin appendix! Not so the Royal Commission on Historic Monuments. Its name was, they forthrightly declare, Grapcunt Lane, and Grap was for grope, not grape...."

Well!

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Snickelway Series

1. Pope's Head Alley
2. Black Horse Passage