Ironmonger Row, Salisbury

Ironmonger Row is a defunct road name – it’s presumably been subsumed within one of the other ‘rows’ around Salisbury Market Square.

There is a reference to Ironmonger Row in the Victoria County History of Wiltshire:

In the streets around the Market Place stood rows of shops occupied by various trades. Ironmonger Row is said to have been near Oatmeal Row ¹

It would be nice to identify exactly where Ironmonger Row was – I’m afraid I’ve not been able to.

Ironmongers

An ironmonger was a seller of metal goods such as tools and garden implements. I think an ironmonger would have covered a similar range as the ‘hardware store’ or ‘DIY shop’ of today.

Wikipedia says that:

The term ironmonger’s as a supplier of such goods is still widely used in Great Britain

I don’t think I would say that it’s still widely used, myself.

Etymology of ‘Ironmonger’

The word ‘iron’ is an old one. It seems to come an Old English isærn meaning ‘strong metal’ or ‘holy metal’ – iron being ‘strong’ in comparison to bronze. ²

‘Monger’ is a dealer or trader, in this context³. It’s derived from the Latin ‘mango‘ ⁴

I’m not sure if the suffix ‘monger’ is now much in use.

I’ve heard it used semi-ironically – for example there is an IT company called ‘Code mongers’ ⁵.

‘Monger’ is also used pejoratively in ‘scaremonger’, ‘gossip monger’ and ‘warmonger’. Mirriam-Websters Online Dictionary actually gives a second definition for monger as ‘a person who attempts to stir up or spread something that is usually petty or discreditable’⁶. My assumption has always been that this use of monger is derived from the dealer or trader.

The only contemporary monger who actually buys and sells things that I can think of is the ‘fishmonger’. ‘Costermonger’, a seller of fruit and veg, was perhaps in fairly common use in living memory but I don’t recall hearing the word being used in everyday speech.

Footnotes

1. ‘Salisbury: The market place’, A History of the County of Wiltshire: Volume 6 (1962), pp. 85-87. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=41787 Date accessed: 15 December 2010. [↩]
2. Online Etymology Dictionary [↩]
3. Monger – Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary [↩]
4. Online Etymology Dictionary [↩]
5. Code Mongers – Home [↩]
6. Monger – Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary [↩]