The lanes that once served as service alleys
Launch library · evergreen read
Before they became known for coffee and small bars, the city's narrow lanes existed for a far less romantic purpose. They were the service routes behind the grand main streets, used for deliveries, rubbish collection and the general back of house business that no one wanted facing the public road.
That utilitarian history explains their scale. Lanes are narrow because carts, not carriages, once needed to pass through them, and the buildings backing onto them were designed with loading doors rather than shopfronts, a pattern still visible in the brickwork of many surviving buildings. Old loading doors and rear entrances still mark this original purpose for anyone who happens to look closely enough.
Their transformation into some of the city's most celebrated spaces happened slowly and largely unplanned, small businesses gradually claiming leftover space nobody else particularly wanted. It is a rare case of the city's least glamorous infrastructure becoming, decades later, one of its main attractions. What survives today rarely hints at that plainer original purpose, dressed up instead in a character nobody originally intended.