A Rouen (Seine-Maritime), the Massacre Street has a certain charm, with its hanging umbrellas (or stars) at certain times of the year, its small shops, and nearby with the Big Clock. A frame that denotes completely with the name it bears, which questions: why does it have this crude name, when it is one of the prettiest streets in the city? This is our not-so-stupid question of the day.

Names that bear the traces of professions

Aurélie Daniel, independent cultural animator, lights our lantern. She knows the subject well, since she makes a stop in this street on the occasion of the “Rouen macabre” walk that she offers to the public. “Contrary to what people may think, this is not about ‘massacres’ of humans, but of animals. Indeed, the rue Massacre was for several centuries the street of the corporation of butchers. Aurélie Daniel explains that other streets carry a similar heritage: “There is the rue Ganterie, where the glovemakers had settled, the rue des Bonnetiers, where we bought hats… And of course there was the rue des Butcher’s shops -Saint-Ouen. “

Slaughterhouses rue de la Tuerie

Its name could also be the derivative of “machacre” which designates a dead deer’s head. “Maybe one of the businesses had a deer’s head for a sign or decoration. “If it is difficult to date the end of the butchers’ activity in the rue Massacre, it could be contemporaneous with the ban on killings in town, decreed by Napoleon in 1810 for health reasons, specifies Aurélie Daniel. “This is how establishments designed outside the city for this activity, the slaughterhouses, were born. In Rouen, there was the rue de la Tuerie [qui longeait l’actuelle Halle aux toiles, NDLR]. The butchers killed the animals there, unlike today. »New slaughterhouses were opened in 1933 in the Grammont district.

As for the creation of the rue Massacre, it was done after the 12th century, once the ramparts dating from Antiquity were destroyed. “The Big Clock is located on the site of an old door, the Porte Massacre, destroyed in 1525. He proposed it in 1527.” According to the host, the appropriation of the street by the butchers was made around the 13th century, a period in which the various corporations and communities of trades settled.

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