THERE'S nothing like brief contact between solicitors who revel in narrowing down the angles of history....

Legal firm Guest Walker & Company in Shambles, York has acquired Butchers Hall, exactly opposite its own offices and the two medieval buildings lean coyly towards each other.

The two partners, John Guest, left, and John Walker, couldn't resist proving the rumour which has persisted for hundreds of years - that people leaning out of those respective windows were within in touching distance across the seven foot wide gap.

Guest Walker have been in York's most famous tourist street since 1981, surviving even the last of the butcher shops which proliferated the Shambles since at least the 12th century. The street was first mentioned in 1086, the year of the Domesday Book.

The partners have twice knocked through their original two-up, two-down offices into neighbouring premises to make way for expansion.

This time they were forced to acquire the opposite neighbour, or rather the Butchers Hall on the third floor - a huge space where once the all-powerful Gild of Butchers met, ensuring that Shambles was one of the most prosperous streets in York.

The butchers may have finally vanished in 1992, but clearly as the housing market has boomed, property specialists Guest Walker will continue to pass to one another some pretty meaty briefs.