Closs (but no cigar)

A lull in the weather allowed time for a wander round Lerwick last night in search of White Wife & Simmer Dim and other produce of Valhalla.

The following has been lifted from the excellent Shetlopedia.com

Trance Closs is a very narrow alley at Market Cross, between 64 Commercial Street, that houses Shetland Youth Information Service, and 66 Commercial Street, the premises of Alliance & Leicester plc. It goes eastward towards Ellesmere Stores.
"The name of this peerie lane is a memory of the last of Lerwick's "trances", the "South Trance", previously called "Yorston's Trance".
Where 66 Commercial Street now is located, there was until 1839, a building that housed a merchant's shop with housing quarters above. This house stretched across a path and had a trance in the middle, wide enough to allow a small cart to pass through. The trance was about two meters high and four meters long, and the ceiling of it was part of the floor of the kitchen in the house above. The name of the last family to live in this house was Robertson, a son of the family, John Robertson, born in 1826, became known as "John o de Trance".
The about two meter wide stony path that ran through this house was just called "Da Shore", as it ran alongside the beach. In 1845 it was renamed - from that year it became Commercial Street." Shetlopedia.com