Roman Festival Trail



=Visiting Roman Chester=

There are a lot of Roman remains in Chester. Some are well marked and easy to find, others not so. This is a brief guide to the ones which can be found by the interested visitor. The map above (based on a 1950's map of Chester) can be printed off for reference when visiting. There are other "trails" round Chester including the Millennium festival trail which take in some of the same locations as well as many non-Roman locations. This Roman Trail "starts" at the Amphitheatre but can be joined anywhere. Descriptions here are only brief - much more information can be found on the Roman Chester page. For a detailed guide to the remains we would suggest "Roman Chester - City of the Eagles" by David J. P. Mason, copies of which can be purchased at the Grosvenor Museum.

The Amphitheatre


No-one knew for certain that Chester had an amphitheatre until 1929, when a large curved wall appeared while an underground boiler room was being built onto the south side of Dee House, an eighteenth-century town house used as a convent school for girls. A local schoolmaster, W. J. Williams (his nickname was "Walrus") was the first to recognise what this meant. Williams identified a stretch of masonry exposed in June 1929 as the outer wall of the amphitheatre. The curving wall and the buttresses were the main features that suggested that this was the amphitheatre, the ruins of which proved to be well preserved. In the early 1930s, parts of the western entrance, the outer wall, the arena walls and the arena itself were discovered.

Near-by non-Roman

 * St Johns - Chester's first Cathedral with spectacular ruins at either end and interesting stained glass;

Corner Tower on the City Walls
The Roman Corner Tower might give the impression that these towers were located on the outside of the City Walls. In fact the Corner Towers were located on the inside of the walls, and in centuries of re-building the wall has moved backwards.

The remaining base of the former south-east angle tower dates from the late first to early second century. It is purple-grey ashlar sandstone and trapezoidal in plan. Parts of a base-course are visible, then 2 weathered plinth-courses and parts of an ashlar facing course above, with the rubble core and parts of the coursed rubble inner face rising a little higher. The outer face is segmental in plan to coincide with the quadrant corner of the former fortress wall. Also present are part foundations of an adjoining chamber within the former wall-line west of the tower. The remains of the tower and adjoining fragment of the Roman wall are bonded together, hence built at the same time.

Near-by non-Roman

 * Pepper Street - site of a Spitfire factory from WW2;

Roman Gardens
This collection of pillars and other Roman remains were in fact, assembled in 1949 from bits and pieces of Roman artifacts found throughout Chester. None of the building fragments originally came from the present site. The project was initiated as Chester's contribution to the 1951 Festival of Britain. The gardens were re-modeled in 2000 to provide a path down to the River Dee. Most of the columns that can be seen in the Roman Gardens came from the exercise hall of the Roman bath house (thermae). They were once 6 meters tall and supported the stonework of the central section of the hall. The largest column currently in the Roman Gardens came from the assembly hall of the headquarters building (Principia). The Roman Gardens also houses a reconstructed hypocaust which was the Roman system of under floor heating. An under floor cavity was filled with hot air from a furnace to heat the rooms or baths above. Several hypocausts have been found in excavations in Chester. The hypocaust in the Roman Gardens has been reconstructed using the pillars (pilae) recovered in 1863 from one of the rooms in the main bath building (thermae) of the Roman fortress.

Near-by non-Roman

 * Park Street - where a coin of Edward VI was mistaken for a Roman coin;

Old Dee Bridge
The present bridge over the River Dee replaced earlier medieval bridges, probably of timber, and is believed to stand just upstream of the site of a Roman bridge (see Roman Chester), which probably had stone piers carrying a timber carriageway. The remains of the bases of the Roman piers are said to be visible in the river bed just downstream of the present bridge. The precise date at which the Romans began construction at Chester has been the subject of much debate. According to one version, sometime around 74 CE, the then governor of Roman Britain, Sextus Julius Frontinus constructed an "auxiliary fort" at Deva Victrix (Chester). The placement of this fort (at the lowest ford of the Dee) appears to have been a strategic move by Frontinus with the intent of both blocking the route of any routed British trying to escape to the north, and to guard against help arriving from the Brigantes and other northern tribes. Frontinus was a noted engineer as well as being a governor, and author of De aquis urbis Romae, a history and description of the water supply of Rome. It is not known whether he was involved in providing Chester's water supply from the springs at Boughton to the Roman fort, but is is known that at this time lead (such as is used for plumbing) was traded with the Deceangli of north Wales.

The Roman bridge did not survive the early dark ages, and by the time of Æthelflæd had been replaced by a ferry, which traveled from Handbridge to the Shipgate.

Minerva Shrine


This is the only surviving rock-cut Roman shrine which is still in situ at its original location in the whole of western Europe. It dates from around AD 79, during the time of the emperor Vespasian, when the same area was being used to quarry stone for the construction of the Roman fortress (and, years later, possibly also Chester Castle) just over the river. It may have been the shrine of quarry workers, or it may have been used by travelers about to cross the River Dee (by a ford) - Minerva was Goddess of both craftsmen and travelers. The Roman Road headed south from here to the cattle trading site at Bovium (Tilston). In medieval times the figure was thought to represent the Virgin Mary and this may have saved it from destruction by vandals or quarrying. However, almost 2000 years of Chester weather have left the stonework badly damaged and no doubt 'acid rain' has caused further damage in recent times.

The Minerva shrine is located in Edgar's Field about 200m from the south end of Handbridge Old Dee Bridge. Edgar was Edgar the Pacific - some say he was the first king of all England (and you can find his sandstone 'gate' just at the other side of the bridge). The Minerva shrine is well sign-posted, but to get there just cross the Norman bridge Old Dee Bridge and turn right past the Ship Inn then follow the path past the playground. The shrine is on the rocky outcrop to the left of the path.

Grosvenor Museum
The Grosvenor Museum (official website) holds Chester's biggest collection of local and international history. It covers 2,000 years of Cestrian life spread over three floors of a classic 19th century building. It is truly one of the most interesting "local" museums in England and a "must see" when visiting Chester. And best of all – it's completely free! The Grosvenor Museum was founded in 1885, and its origins are linked to the start of the Chester Society for Natural Science, Literature and Art, founded by Charles Kingsley in 1871. Charles Kingsley was a Canon of Chester Cathedral from 1871 to 1873. He brought together many local naturalists, and the Society built up large and important natural history collections. The building of a local museum was first suggested in 1871, to house the collections and use them for teaching. Kingsley wrote many fictional works, but also wrote the lesser known "Town Geology" while in Chester.

The museum houses the largest collection of Roman tombstones from a single site in Britain. With a few exceptions, all the stones in the gallery had been reused at some time to repair the City Walls. The tombstones on display tell you something about the lives of the soldiers, slaves, women and children who lived in Roman Chester. The gallery takes you on a walk through a Roman cemetery. Four altars to Roman gods include one to Nemesis, the goddess of fate or destiny. Thirty five tombstones are on display. One of the finest pieces of Roman sculpture in the museum shows a fragment of a scene with a wounded barbarian lying defiantly under the legs of his opponent's horse. His spear is broken but he still clings onto his shield. The complete stone commemorated a Roman cavalryman whose name and likeness are now lost.

The first few were found in 1883. More were found in 1887, buried inside the lower part of the City Walls near the Phoenix Tower. Between 1883 and 1892, over 150 tombstones were found in the north wall. This is still the most spectacular archaeological find made in Chester. The walls were probably repaired later in the Roman period between 300 and 400 CE. Why the tombstones were used is a mystery. However, they were well preserved inside the wall and survived unharmed for 1500 years.

The Baths (Cellar of "Spud-U-Like")


Like most Roman settlements, Deva Victrix had a large legionary bath complex for the soldiers to wash and to use for leisure time. The remains on the east side of Bridge Street were largely destroyed during the construction of the Grosvenor Mall. It has been estimated that the baths used between 500,000 and 750,000 litres of water a day, which was supplied from the springs in Boughton. Water was piped in large lead pipes underground from a branch off the main aqueduct near the Eastgate, downhill to the baths on Bridge Street. The water was then held in large tanks with concrete foundations, and then fed through the complex. Waste water would have been fed downhill using gravity to the river. The water was fed through 24 hours a day.

Some of the baths remains can be viewed in situ at 39 Bridge Street. In the west cellar wall are sections of Roman bath house masonry, and the medieval rear walling contains a rebated doorway opening into an exposed Roman hypocaust, perhaps restored when found during development in 1864; these roman remains are thought to date from the second century AD. They consist of 27 square columns in a rectangular chamber which originally contained 32 columns in eight rows of four. Also in the east wall are compound corbels, comprising of four stones, positioned over the doorway and dating to circa 1300.

Roman parts of the City Walls
The walls of Roman Chester were built to a very high standard of large sandstone blocks without mortar, a technique known as opus caementicium and usually reserved for temple or city walls rather than those of a fortress. So one mystery is why did Chester get this special treatment, and why is Chester significantly (20%) larger than the any other Roman legionary fortress in Britain? One theory is that Chester was intended to be thew capital of the province of Britain. The presence of unusual buildings at the heart of the fortress – accounting for the area by which Deva was larger than other fortresses – has been taken as evidence that their construction was specifically ordered by the provincial governor. The governor when construction first started was Gnaeus Julius Agricola. Lead piping (now in the Grosvenor Museum) found in the unique elliptical building bears his name. This is the only evidence in Britain of a building under the provincial governors direct control. These differences suggest that Deva may have been Agricola’s administrative headquarters – in effect the capital of Britannia. The section of wall heading north from Eastgate almost follows the line of the Roman walls, but not quite. In places the east-facing Roman walls would have been a few meters further to the east. The Roman walls of Chester were once thought to have been rebuilt in stone from the middle of the second century CE. There has been much debate on this. However, it now appears that the facing of the ramparts with stone started earlier and the rebuilding of the ramparts with solid stone was well underway by the end of the first century, i.e. within a few years of the establishment of the city. This would have been a massive undertaking, as the stone walls, towers and gates comprise some 55 thousand tons of stone (about 70 thousand Roman wagon-loads). Even after the Romans had built their stone walls there were still changes: from around 260-310 work at Chester was largely abandoned while the Twentieth Legion was fighting elsewhere. During this half-century, the ditch silted up and parts of the wall collapsed due to lack of maintenance.