The candidates don’t give me a vennel or a wynd, but they give me something adjacent: Pope’s close, which is doing exactly what you’re describing.

And ambush’d close behind an arbour lay.

One word, two functions: the adverb of concealment and the noun waiting inside it — the enclosed passage, the shut-off place. Pope doesn’t use “close” as a noun here, but the pressure on the adverb carries the noun’s social freight anyway. A close is where you don’t go unless you belong; Pope’s line knows this. The ambush is possible because the space is close — private, walled, not traversable by just anyone.

The OE clūs (enclosure) and the AN clos (enclosed field, garden) are fighting over this word through the entire period, and they’re fighting over different politics: who encloses, who is enclosed. By the time it settles as a noun into Edinburgh’s Old Town, it’s naming passages that are technically public but feel like someone’s throat. Pope’s adverb is still vibrating with both.