What do you call a passageway between houses?

NorthernStomps

Not one I use but I think it's also called a snicket in some areas?

BigMonka

Alley for me when I was a Bournemouth lad.
But snicket is common now that I'm a Yorkshire residing adult.

Snags

Alley, side ally, passage, passageway, ginnel, twitchel, side-path - any of those, really. Hertfordshire, but with family from all over the counties so my vocab is a right mish-mash.

NickBotfield

joneve said:

NickBotfield said:

And where are you from? (I promise this isn’t some long winded scam to get credit card details.)

I call at an entry and my partner calls it a ginnel, we’re both from Lancashire. 

a what and a what?! 

It's an alley or an alleyway (originally from East Mids/Lincs, now living in Gloucestershire)

Your guess is as good as mine mate.  Having said that I think you're missing out on a valuable life experience if you haven't had to explain / justify a fucking stupid name for a passageway to someone.

merlin

Anything you like. It can't hear you. 

BillDL

In my part of Scotland around Glasgow I've never heard anybody use any expression other than alleyway, and occasionally vennel when that's the historical name for a specific alleyway.  There is, however, another expression for a larger access (usually with an arched top) that goes between ground floor houses of a tenement building and under the ones on the first floor.  A "close" was designed to be wide enough for a horse and cart to gain access to the rear of the tenements.  The word (or "common close") is also used to describe a communal entrance foyer on the ground floor of a block of flats where the stairs to the upper flats are.

NickBotfield

BillDL said:

In my part of Scotland around Glasgow I've never heard anybody use any expression other than alleyway, and occasionally vennel when that's the historical name for a specific alleyway.  There is, however, another expression for a larger access (usually with an arched top) that goes between ground floor houses of a tenement building and under the ones on the first floor.  A "close" was designed to be wide enough for a horse and cart to gain access to the rear of the tenements.  The word (or "common close") is also used to describe a communal entrance foyer on the ground floor of a block of flats where the stairs to the upper flats are.

That's interesting, a lot more like old apartment blocks you get in Italy etc.

BillDL

Yeah, a lot of the old sandstone tenements and also more modern tenement styled blocks of flats used to have closes that had no doors at the front or at the back leading out to communal drying greens or vegetable gardens.  The houses on each landing just had fairly solid entrance doors.  During WWII quite a few German bombs were dropped around the area where my parents lived because they were targeting the steel foundries and railway marshalling yards.  If a bomb landed anywhere near one of those open-fronted closes the pressure would blow all the doors on the landings in, so they built baffle or blast walls across the front of the closes about 10 feet away from them to take the pressure wave.

I forgot about another name for the fairly narrow passageways that were between separate blocks of tenements.  A "wynd".  When a lot of parts of Glasgow (and other cities - picture Jack The Ripper) were slums in the late 1800s and early 1900s and all those old tenement blocks were still there, those wynds had an open drainage gulley and the gable ends of adjacent tenements were close enough to string some sash cord across and hang clothes on them to dry.

You also had the "Wally Closes" of the sandstone tenements in more affluent areas where there were entrance doors to the closes and the walls of the stairwell / close were lined with decorative ceramic tiles (wally tiles).  The word "wally" was used for dentures because they looked like white ceramic tiles, and standing dog ornaments were referred to as "wally dugs".

littlegreenman

An entry or "jigger" - North Liverpool.

MrTee

Entry (North Wales)

Dominic

The Home pastures and the Outer Estate pastures 
I'm from somewhere Posh

NickBotfield

littlegreenman said:

An entry or "jigger" - North Liverpool.

That's interesting, I'm probably only 6 miles from the nearest bit of North Liverpool and I've never heard someone call it a jigger!

Philly_Q

Alley or alleyway I guess, but not a word I regularly need to use.  I'm originally from Swansea, then lived in Hertfordshire for a few years, then South London for the last 36 years.

Kittyfrisk

The one that I own is definitely my back passage or rear entry.
Funny that...

Kittyfrisk

NickBotfield said:

littlegreenman said:

An entry or "jigger" - North Liverpool.

That's interesting, I'm probably only 6 miles from the nearest bit of North Liverpool and I've never heard someone call it a jigger!

Only heard the word 'jigger' in terms of a shot of spirits, usually rum.

relic245

When I grew up in Coventry it was an entry.

Both parents were from Leicester thought so it may originate from there.

Revolutions

Wow, at the grand old age of 43 I’ve literally never heard most of these words before.

Rocker

In Kilkenny, such passageways are called SLIPS. 

ICBM

Vennel or close, at least in eastern Scotland.

I could be wrong - I'm not from here originally - but I think a vennel is usually one that's just a passageway that goes through to somewhere else, whereas a close goes to the backs of houses etc.

Sporky

I would like to change my earlier answer to "Eric".