A Chester Lightning Tour



This is a whistle-stop trip round the history of Chester. It starts at the High Cross and is best done during the day, when things are open. It is not suitable for wheelchair users. There is much more information about Chester on this website which can be accessed by clicking on the underlined links embedded in the text. Clicking on the icon on the right will bring up a map of Chester, but maps are inserted in the text below with "waypoints" marked. The tour can take most of a day, especially with diversions into pubs, shops and museums and it is possible to wander off the route to see more. Industrial and canal history is better covered along the Canalside tour.

The Cross - Start of the tour
The tour starts at the High Cross a sandstone pillar which stands at what was once the center of Roman Chester. The Romans appear to have started building a substantial legionary base here about 74 AD, as dates from around that time have been found on lead ingots and water pipes. The initial builders were Legio II - the second legion, but they were later replaced by Legio XX (the twentieth) who possibly occupied the site until about the year 400. Chester appears to have been occupied after the Romans left and may have been an early ecclesiastical center. The much rebuilt Church of St Peter at the cross stands on the site of the Roman headquarters building - knowns as the Principia, and was probably initially built from the ruins of that structure. Just inside the door of the church is a surviving example of a medieval fresco, a little further in is a font with an interesting palindrome on the underside of the lid and nearby is displayed a bible from around 1579.

Back outside St Peter notice the clock (it may or may not be correct as it is notorious for breaking down). Chester later became famous for its Clockmakers and St Peter had the first public clock in Chester, an early one was installed in about 1585. The clock that is there today probably dates from 1813. St Peter's bells are considered unsafe to ring, but Chester's enthusiastic Town Crier, whose office possibly dates back to 1553, still performs at the Cross in the summer months.

The religious and military histories of Chester are somewhat intertwined. After the Romans left during the so-called "Dark Ages", a battle was fought at Chester where the losing side was accompanied by a large number of monks. A few hundered years later, when a slowly forming England was subject to invasion by Vikings the city was re-fortified by Æthelflæd the warlike daughter of Alfred the Great. Æthelflæd followed a pattern of creating fortified communities with religious establishments which were also both mercantile and andministrative centers. She often re-used Roman sites. Chester was then strategic because of its proximity to the Irish Sea and North Wales, but the location has been on trade routes since prehistory. Chester lies between mineral rich North Wales (a source of copper in the Bronze Age) and the salt springs of eastern Cheshire. Chester would maintain its strategic importance after the Norman Conquest when it was one of the last places to fall under Norman rule. The powerful Norman Earls of Chester were granted powers that made them almost independent of the King. The Earldom was eventually taken back by the crown and was generally held by the kings eldest son, to give some experience of rule. Some kings favoured Chester greatly: Richard II drew his personal guard from the area and may have hid his Royal Treasure nearby. Its royal connections were not always of benefit, during the Civil War the city was subjected to a long siege and an intense bombardment. After the siege ended the cross was broken down and what is seen today is a reconstruction from the 1970's, which may contain some original parts.

From the cross it is possible to look down three of the four main streets of Chester: Eastgate Street, Bridge Street and Watergate Street. These follow the lines of the original Roman streets in a standard pattern which the Romans re-used time and again. It is also possible to see that the visible streets are arranged on two levels. These are The Rows which developed during the medieval period. While much of what can be seen looks like it dates from the Tudor period it is mostly late Victorian - sometimes called "mock Tudor" or, perhaps more accurately "English Venacular Revival". There is little else like the Rows in the world.

Northgate Street - Commercial News Rooms
Turning into Northgate Street one enters the fourth of the streets which meet at the cross, which again follows the line of the Roman layout. To the right is an example of the Rows and it is fairly obvious that the "half-timber" construction is not original but is largely decorative. Sometimes this is well done, as on the left a little further up the street, but in other places the quality can vary. Stop just after the sandstone building on the left and take a look around.

The pale sandstone building is the Commercial News Rooms, built in 1807. It was designed by the Chester Thomas Harrison a neo-classical architect who had studied in Italy. This was a club where the gentlemen of Chester would meet up, read the newpapers and no doubt do business deals. Conveniently, there was a bank on the ground floor. The bank used to print its own notes and some of them feature this building. The next row of buildings are in the elaborate black-and-white style of John Douglas another Chester architect, and were built by Douglas and his pupils around 1900. Thus, while the black and white buildings appear older than the sandstone club, they date from about 200 years later. There are some surviving early black and white buildings in Chester, but none of them are on Northgate Street. The figure of an elderly gentleman in the middle of the black and white building is St Crispin. He was the patron saint of shoemakers and these buildings are known as "Shoemakers Row" as this was once the site of many shoemakers shops. Boot and shoemaking were once major industries in Chester which had several other trades associated with leather. In the middle ages the guilds of the city included Skinners, Tanners, Glovers, Cordwainers (shoemakers), and Saddlers. The guilds were noted for putting on the Chester Mystery Plays, a series of religious plays which were enacted every four years and performed on carts which were dragged around the city. Each guild was performed by a specific guild starting with "The Fall of Luficer" performed ny the Tanners and ending with "The Last Judgement" performed by the Weavers. The plays are still performed every four years, although they were banned from around 1575 until revived in the 1950's. The reasons for the ban included the belief that they were superstitious relics, but the ban came at a time (just before Shakespeare) when plays were subjected to political censorship.

Street theatre in Chester did not only include the Mystery Plays. Nowadays there are plenty of buskers and sometimes other performance artists, but the tradition is a long one. A local legend holds that when a Norman Earl of Chester was holed-up in a castle in Wales by the Welsh the buskers and vagrants of Chester were marched to his aid - making a lot of noise and leading the Welsh to believe that they were an army on the march. For many years the minstrels (and prostitutes) of Chester would be licenced once a year at the Minstrel Court, after a procession which started near Shoemakers Row. Some carvings of minstrels can be seen on the end of the Row, which is the next waypoint.

Northgate Street - Market/Town Hall Square
Chester's Market Square (or Town Hall square} is dominated by the Town Hall and the first views of the Cathedral on this tour. before heading into the square it is worth a short detour to take a look at the remains of the "Roman strongroon" which is cut into the red sandstone on which Chester stands. The strongroom was the place that the Romans stored both money and the legionary regalia including their eagle standards. Roman soldiers fell into two broad groups - the Legionaries, who were very well trained heavy infantry and the Auxiliary troops who included light infantry and cavalry. Early in the Roman empire only the citizens could become legionaries and it was a job for life. The Auxilliary troops were recruited from around the empire and could become Roman citizens at retirement. Many of the troops who ended up in Britain came from the Balkans, and retired in Britain when their term of service ended. Tracing the genetics of people living in some parts of North Wales actually shows that their ancestors probably came there in Roman times and it is likely that their descendents formed the basis of a part of the "Romano British" society which persisted after the Roman empire ended. Early writers such as Nennius recorded the Roman ancestry claimed by later Welsh rulers.

It was under the Romans that Christianity first arrived in Britain and after they left Chester may have been a significant ecclesiastical center. The Anglo-Saxons invaded Britain soon after and initially had their own religion, but Christianity survived in Wales. At length, the Anglo-Saxons started to convert and there was something of a competition to see whether the "Celtic" church or the Church of Rome could gain the most converts. Again, early writers mention this with Bede laying the blame on the practices of the Celtic church for the defeat of Welsh armies at the Battle of Chester in 616.

The "Venetian Gothic" Town Hall is frequently open to visitors (and it is free). Inside are a series of sculptures which claim to tell the history of Chester. They are full of sometimes hillarious errors, and are covered in some detail on the page relating to the Military History of Chester. There is a lot more to see in the building, including a series of portraits of the Grosvenors who had a significant part to play in the government of Chester from the Civil War onwards. The stained glass on the main starcase depicts the Norman Earls of Chester who ran their lands with a great deal of independence from the Crown and some of whom played a significant part in wider history. There is also a painting of HMS Chester who had a role in the battle of Jutland. The Town Hall clock is notorious for not having a face towards Wales - as popular legend states that Cestrians "would not give the Welsh the time of day", but this is untrue: the Town Hall only got its clock in 1980 and the building is based on the "Cloth Hall" in Ypres, which only has a clock face on three sides.

Chester Cathedral stands to the east of the square.