A FEW weeks ago we had a debate in the pages of Yesterday Once More about Swinegate and how it contributed to Finkle Street once being known as Mucky Peg's Lane (the clue: it was originally 'Mucky Pig's Lane', according to reader Brian Hattersley, and pigs were driven down it on their way to the pig market in Swinegate).

With Swinegate still fresh in our minds (if not noses) we were delighted to stumble across three great photos of Swinegate on Explore York's Imagine York website. They date from the 1880s to the early 1900s: and they reveal just how run-down this quarter of York was in late Victorian times.

One shows a group of children gathered on the cobbles, clearly posing for the photographer. In a second, furniture dealer Nathan Samuel - whose business was based at 17 Swinegate - is seen standing on the corner of Swinegate and Back Swinegate. He's a comfortable-looking man in tweeds and felt hat and sporting a thick, bushy white beard who, at the time this photo was taken, would have been about 65 years old, according to the photograph's caption.

Our favourite of the three Swinegate photographs has to be the one showing a group of women and children standing on the corner of Swinegate and Mad Alice Lane, however. The sign above the door in the centre of the building reads 'W Henderson, Chimney Sweep' - very appropriate, given the grimy appearance of the street.

Stephen Lewis