Other Locations
"Rotten Row" is used in at least 15 places in England and Scotland, such as in Lewes, East Sussex and Elie, Fife. It describes a place where there was once a row of tumbledown cottages infested with rats (raton) and goes back to the 14th century or earlier, predating the London derivation. Other historians have speculated the name might be a corruption of rotteran (to muster), Ratten Row (roundabout way), or rotten (the soft material with which the road is covered).
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