Georgian Chester

(work in progress)

The Georgian era is a period in British history from 1714 to c. 1830–37, named after the Hanoverian Kings George I, George II, George III and George IV. The sub-period that is the Regency era is defined by the regency of George IV as Prince of Wales during the illness of his father George III. The definition of the Georgian era is often extended to include the relatively short reign of William IV, which ended with his death in 1837. Historians debate the exact ending, with the deaths of George IV in 1830 or William IV in 1837 as the usual marker. In most social and cultural trends, the timing varied. The emergence of Romanticism and literature began as early as the 1780s, but religious changes took much longer and were incomplete until around a century later. The 1830s saw important developments such as the emergence of the Oxford Movement in religion and the demise of classical architecture. Victorians typically were disapproving of the times of the previous era. By the late 19th century, the "Georgian era" was a byword for a degenerate culture.

By 1700 Chester was on the verge of losing its dominance as a regional economic hub, as nearby towns, especially the industrial and mill towns in south Lancashire and around Telford began to specialize in trade or manufacturing. The reopening of the Dee in 1737 did not halt Chester's decline as a port. In 1701 Chester shipowners had 25 vessels, and in the early 1710s the total tonnage, no more than 3,400, was less than half that owned at Liverpool. By the 1730s it had fallen to around 1,650 tons (a tenth of Liverpool's total) and in the late 1750s Chester's 1,000-1,400 tons was scarcely a twentieth of Liverpool's fleet. Efforts were made to improve the Dee by dredging a "new cut" in the estuary and cutting the canal, but the decline of traditional industry and trade continued. The passenger trade to Ireland remained important.

The guild system in Chester continued well into the 18th Century, with the Tanners being particularly active in maintaining their monopoly. In the 1710s, in concert with tanners' guilds in London and elsewhere, it campaigned against new taxes on leather and sought to restrict the export of oak bark to Irish competitors. However the inward Irish linen trade grew as did the outward export of cheese, particularly to London. The corporation had become somewhat corrupt: in 1698 it formally abolished annual elections, restored 17 ex-councilmen, co-opted 23 others, and confirmed the existing 22 aldermen in office for life. A major theme in the history of Georgian Chester is the rise to prominence of the Grosvenors who started the period as baronets and ended it as marquesses. In effect, the Grosvenors took over the role of the Earls of Chester, even though that title was generally held by the Prince of Wales.

By 1700, the central "shopping" area was becoming defined with the beginnings of the later separation of high-class retailers and more workaday shops in distinct areas of the city. The "better-class" shops were now beginning to cluster in Eastgate Street. The Georgian period saw most of the "medieval" frontages re-done in brick. Many of these survive today, even if some of these have been re-covered with "mock Tudor", either in an elegant manner or simply by "nailing on planks and boards". The cultural life of Chester in the century after the Restoration reflected its growing importance as a social centre for the gentry of the surrounding area and as a place where many leisured families resided. The walls were increasingly used for recreation by visitors and residents alike after the city had them repaired and flagged from 1707. Chester's principal attractions for outsiders were the races and the fairs, especially the Midsummer fair, where entertainments were put on by the 1710s.

Perhaps the best-known change wrought in the Georgian period was the Industrial Revolution, but this largely passed Chester by.

==[http://chester.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Timeline#George_I_.281_August_1714_.E2.80.93_11_June_1727.29._Anne.27s_closest_living_Protestant_relative_.2851st_in_succession.29._Was_never_Earl_of_Chester. George I]==

Whig (Liberal) politicians believed Parliament had the right to determine the succession, and to bestow it on the nearest Protestant relative of the Queen, while many Tories (Conservatives) were more inclined to believe in the hereditary right of the Catholic Stuarts, who were nearer relations. Partly due to contrary winds, which kept him in The Hague awaiting passage, George did not arrive in Britain until 18 September 1714. George was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 20 October. His coronation was accompanied by the 1715 rioting in over twenty towns in England. George then dismissed the Tory cabinet and replaced it with one almost entirely composed of Whigs, as they were responsible for securing his succession. The election of 1715 saw the Whigs win an overwhelming majority in the House of Commons, and afterwards virtually all Tories in central or local government were purged, leading to a period of Whig ascendancy lasting almost fifty years during which Tories were almost entirely excluded from office. Such had been the turmoil of the times that the first thing done by the new Whig administration was the passage of the Riot Act. The preamble makes reference to:


 * "many rebellious riots and tumults [that] have been [taking place of late] in diverse parts of this kingdom",

adding that those involved "presum[e] so to do, for that the punishments provided by the laws now in being are not adequate to such heinous offences".

The Jacobites
The Jacobite rising of 1715 was the attempt by James Edward Stuart (the Old Pretender) to regain the thrones of England, Ireland and Scotland for the exiled Stuarts. The rising should be seen in the context of the rioting which had taken place in association with the accession of George I and the replacement of the Tory administration by the Whigs. As onetime heir to the throne James was Prince of Wales from July 1688 until, just months after his birth, his Catholic father was deposed and exiled in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. This also had made him earl of Chester. On 14 March 1715, James appealed to Pope Clement XI for help with a Jacobite rising:


 * "It is not so much a devoted son, oppressed by the injustices of his enemies, as a persecuted Church threatened with destruction, which appeals for the protection and help of its worthy pontiff"

Despite receiving no commission from James to start the rising, the Earl of Mar sailed from London to Scotland, and on 27 August at Braemar in Aberdeenshire held the first council of war. On 6 September at Braemar, Mar raised the standard of "James the 8th and 3rd", acclaimed by 600 supporters. By October, Mar's force, numbering nearly 20,000, had taken control of all Scotland above the Firth of Forth, apart from Stirling Castle. The Jacobites moved south into England with little opposition, and by the time they reached Preston, Lancashire had grown to about 4,000 in number. General Charles Wills was ordered to halt their advance, and left Manchester on 11 November with six regiments, arriving at Preston on 12 November and starting a series of street fights known as the battle of Preston. The Jacobites won the first day of fighting, but on 13 November, additional government forces arrived from Newcastle under George Carpenter, which Wills deployed to ensure the besieged Jacobites could not escape. Seeing that their position was hopeless, the Jacobites surrendered.

Despite its Tory inclinations and some sympathy for the Jacobites, Chester made no move in support of the rising of 1715. The defeat of the rebels at Preston spared it direct involvement in military operations, although its Militia was called up and government troops marched through. Captured Jacobites numbering up to 500 at a time were brought for temporary imprisonment at Chester, crowding Chester Castle and the city gaol and overflowing into houses throughout the city. Initially many perished of cold, hunger, and fever because local sympathizers were prevented from assisting them:


 * "The weather was very severe, and the snow lay a yard deep in the roads. Many of the above mentioned prisoners died in the castle by the severity of the season; many were carried off by a very malignant fever; and most of the survivors were transported to the plantations in America. As the castle was quite filled with these prisoners, the Lent assizes were held at Nantwich" (Hemingway)

Two regiments were kept at Chester for almost a year, and there was some friction between civil and military authorities. The recorder, Roger Comberbach, who had shown ostentatious enthusiasm for the Hanoverians, fell foul of the colonel commanding at the castle in 1715 in a dispute over jurisdiction, and was briefly placed under house arrest in humiliating circumstances before the colonel was himself removed.

The Grosvenors
The Grosvenors of Eaton, near Chester, were a Cheshire family of great antiquity and substantial fortune, derived mainly from Welsh lead mines. Sir Thomas Grosvenor, 3rd Baronet had build a substantial house at Eaton and had become involved in local politics. In 1676 the then 21-year old Thomas married Mary Davies, the 12-year old heiress to London estates covering a large part of modern Mayfair, Belgravia, and Pimlico, which increased the Grosvenor income from about £4,500 to £22,000 p.a. in 1742. Thomas died in 1700 leaving three minor sons, Richard, Thomas and Robert, and a daughter Anne, who all grew up under the care of Francis Cholmondeley, M.P., uncle of Charles Cholmondeley of Vale Royal, their mother having been declared mentally deranged.

In 1715 one of the sons, Richard Grosvenor, was returned as MP for Chester and in the same year he was elected as mayor of the city. The Grosvenor interest, having reasserted itself, held at least one of the Chester seats continuously until 1874. Richard Grosvenor appears to have had Jacobite sympathies. In September 1715 he attended a meeting of the Jacobite Cheshire Club, when it decided not to take part in the rebellion of that year. His name was included in a list of Jacobite leaders sent to the Pretender in 1721, and in 1730 he was in correspondence with the Stuart court at Rome through the Duchess of Buckingham. The supposed "prophecies" of Robert Nixon may have emerged at this time. Ther are other links between Cheshire and the Jacobites: Francis Cholmondeley had refused to take the oaths to William and Mary and was encouraged in his Stuart sympathies by his relation Sir Philip Egerton.

From the 1710s the Grosvenors repeatedly intervened in the city's affairs. Attempts to break their power were always thwarted, despite popular support and the presence within the corporation of a faction opposed to Grosvenor influence. Their growing interest in monopolizing parliamentary elections led the Grosvenors to try packing the body of freemen with supporters. Normally the Assembly admitted many new freemen before an election. Some were members of the county gentry and their dependants, many of whom resigned the freedom as soon as the election was over. Most, however, were inhabitants of Chester and its environs, entitled to the freedom by descent or apprenticeship but unwilling or unable to take it up until the Grosvenors paid the fees. The total numbers admitted in election years could be very large, as for example 338 by birth and 162 by apprenticeship in 1720, and c. 450 and c. 175 in 1732. As well as vote rigging there were many other dubious examples of patronage: clerk of the Pentice Roger Comberbach (d. 1720 - he of the "Recorder's Steps"), was followed by his son-in-law Thomas Mather, but when Mather died in 1745 William Falconer was chosen on the recommendation of Sir Robert Grosvenor. Comberbach arranged in 1712 for the clerkship of the Pentice to be granted for life to his son, also Roger, then aged 19, jointly with Thomas Lloyd. Lloyd had a deputy by 1735 and died in 1754, after which in 1757 the younger Comberbach took out a new life-grant jointly with Thomas Brock, this time recommended by Sir Richard Grosvenor.



In 1725, Daniel Defoe (author of Robinson Crusoe) visited Chester and wrote:


 * "The walls, as I have said, are in very good repair, and it is a very pleasant walk around the city and within the battlements".

By 1725 the city had three separate masonic lodges, more than in any other provincial town, who met at the Sun, Spread Eagle, and Castle and The Falcon inns. Membership had shifted decisively towards country gentlemen, members of the urban élite, and army officers from the garrison. The master of the Sun lodge, Colonel Francis Columbine, was the first Provincial Grand Master in the country. While masonics flourished, catholicism did not:


 * "A private soldier received 900 lashes and was drummed out of his regiment with rope about his neck having been found guilty of being a Papist."

From the 1720s, the Assemby seldom met more than twice or thrice a year, attended by only half or two thirds of the full complement of 70 or more. From the late 1740s attendance was often low enough to allow sittings during the colder months to be held in the inner Pentice rather than the larger (and colder) common hall at the Exchange.

==[http://chester.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Timeline#George_II_.2811_June_1727_.E2.80.93_25_October_1760.29._Son_of_George_I._First_Earl_of_Chester_since_the_.22Old_Pretender.22. George II] (11 June 1727 – 25 October 1760)==

George II suppressed his father's will because it attempted to split the Hanoverian succession between George II's future grandsons rather than vest all the domains (both British and Hanoverian) in a single person. Both British and Hanoverian ministers considered the will unlawful, as George I did not have the legal power to determine the succession personally. Critics supposed that George II hid the will to avoid paying out his father's legacies. George II had been made Prince of Wales when his father arrived in Britain to become George I (1714) but appears to have never been Earl of Chester.

Political chicanery continued in Chester. In 1732 the Whigs tried to win over the mayor of 1731-2 (Trafford Massie) by offering clerical preferment for his son. Shortly before the election in 1732 the Whig candidate for mayor left £100 in gold with Massie in return for a written promise to call no further Assemblies. Meanwhile sporadic disorders culminated in a clash in Bridge Street in early October between a Whig mob (allegedly reinforced with disguised soldiers, revenue officers, and Liverpool sailors) and Tory supporters who included Welsh miners. The latter came off worse, and the Whigs broke into and wrecked the Pentice. The mayor called for dragoons from Warrington to help restore order and appointed c. 270 special constables. The violence shocked the faction leaders into a truce, but when polling was adjourned the Whigs, supposing that their man had won, pursued the mayor and justices into the coffee house under the Exchange and carried off the mayoral sword and mace.

The New Cut


Chester as a port was still declining. Plans to improve the navigation of the River Dee dated back to the 1670's. In 1700 an Act of Parliament (11 & 12 Wil. III. C. 24, R. A. 11th Apr) "An Act to enable the Mayor and Citizens of Chester to recover and preserve the Navigation of the River Dee", was passed as regards the construction of a channel in the Dee. The preamble of this stated:


 * "That the river was theretofore navigable for ships and vessels of a considerable burthen from the sea up to the City of Chester, but that but by neglect of the said river, and for want of sufficient protection against the flux and reflux of the sea, the navigation to the city was almost lost and destroyed."

Pamphleteers from 1699 placed the blame for the silting of the Dee on colliers returning from Dublin, who discharged their ballast in the "Wild Road" (a channel of the river) and this then became trapped in the numerous nets placed by fishermen. Prior to this ships coming from Ireland need not be in ballast due to the import of cattle. The stoppage of the cattle trade occurred in 1680, when the Cattle Act, forbidding the import of Irish live cattle, sheep, pigs, beef, pork or bacon was made permanent, following the petitions of graziers in England who had vociferously argued for the trade to be stopped. The Act of 1700 empowered the Mayor, Aldermen and Common Councillors of Chester to appoint seven Commissioners, of whom the Mayor and two Justices of the Peace should be three, to trace the course of the new channel which was to be cut by Gell. If there were disputes over compensation, the Corporation should choose three arbitrators and the persons complaining three. Appeal lay to the Chief Justice of Chester. The tolls were limited to 1d a barrel of coal and 2d a barrel of lime brought to the city by land or water and there unloaded. The duty on coal brought by land was explained on the ground:


 * “there’s nothing can come by water which will bear the charge.”

George Sorocold, who could be considered Britain's first "civil engineer", was paid £20 to propose improvements to the river in 1706, but, possibly due in part to frenzied investing elsewhere and then the "credit crunch" of that time, following the collapse of the "South Sea Bubble", nothing was then done until 1732 when a further survey was carried out by John Mackay. In the meantime the improvements to the River Weaver meant that rock salt (which had been discovered near Northwich in 1670) led to increasing trade following the Weaver, down the Mersey and thence to Liverpool. The craft which plied this trade returned back up the Weaver Navigation with coal from the south Lancashire coalfields, and this coal was used for boiling more brine to produce more salt.

In 1733 the Merchant Venturers of Chester obtained an Act of Parliament authorising a 'New Cut' under the supervision of the marine engineer Nathaniel Kindersley. "The first sod of the new channel of the river Dee was taken up by R Manley Esq April 20th".

Unfortunately the commissioners were more interested in making money from the sale of reclaimed land than on providing and maintaining a quality water-way. An Act of 1744 had empowered the Corporation to appoint one of two supervisors who were to take soundings in the river and report to the city or county justices if at three successive tides the depth of the channel fell below 15 ft - the corporation of Chester made no effort to appoint anyone until 1799, by which time the Dee Navigation Company had apparently taken the clandestine step of removing the "standard" by which the depth of the water was to be measured. As the "standard" was mentioned in the Act setting up the duties of the River Dee Company, the fact that it had "vanished" meant that they could always say that it was impossible to prove they had not carried out these duries - and argue that any "new standard" was wrongly placed.

Owen Jones
In around 1744 lead was discovered on the land bequeathed to the city by Owen Jones and his bequest now became a much more valuable property. From the 1740s the Corporation connived with the Guilds' misapplication of the Owen Jones charity, who by the 1780s were dividing the proceeds indiscriminately among their members, whether poor or rich, as each guild came round in rotation. Admission to the guilds was closely regulated (see: Charters), some choosing to admit new members at inflated premiums, others to exclude new guildsmen as their own turn for the "bonanza" approached.

Newspapers in Chester
Initially there was little increase in cultural interests or literary habits, though enough business for stationers and perhaps bookbinding and basic printing. In the earlier 18th century there were usually at least two booksellers, handling the scholarly libraries of deceased local clergy and gentlemen. From the early 1710s one or two worked their own presses, producing mostly sermons and other religious and educational works. One also began to print books in Welsh. William Cooke started a local newspaper in 1721, rivalled from 1732 and then driven out of business by another, later the Chester Courant, founded by Roger Adams and continued by his widow Elizabeth and her successors into the late 18th century.

1745 saw the production of the first "modern" map of Chester, the Lavaux Map surveyed and drawn by Alexander de Lavaux, engineer and surveyor. As well as naming the owners of many houses, the plan includes informative details such as the "North Gate May Pole" and the "Water Engine". This is a rare, important plan of Chester and one of the earliest large scale plans of the city. Lavaux's past before Chester was not without incident. Alexander De Lavaux was born in Berlin and had at his entrance into Prussian service had the rank of lieutenant and engineer. In 1729, at the age of 25 he was employed by the Dutch "Society of Suriname". With an appointment as cartographer in Suriname he was given the rank of ensign. He made ​​several campaigns against the "Maroons", and produced a first map of the Suriname River. In 1731 the Directors of the Society of Suriname discovered that the existing maps were not of sufficient quality to indicate the condition of the land and the location of the plantations. By May 1734 Lavaux had been working for over two years on a new and accurate map of Suriname. In 1725 he visited Amsterdam, was promoted to captain and went back to Suriname. He did not get on with the new Governor (Gerrit van de Schepper?) and in 1741 deserted without warning on an English ship to St. Eustatius and then to the British colony of Saint Christopher (now St. Kitts). At the end of 1741 he was extradited by and put in prison at Fort Zeelandia. It took until June 1743 for the court-martial verdict (which demanded a death penalty). Lavaux meanwhile was diagnosed as insane (presumably due to prison conditions). The sentence was commuted in 1744 to expulsion from the military service and banishment from Suriname.

Within two years Lavaux must have traveled to Chester and begun work on his map. Lavaux's reasons for coming to Chester remain unknown, but the map is dedicated to George Cholmondeley, who was Vice Admiral of Cheshire at the time, and appears to have Dutch ancestry through his mother.

More Jacobites


George II's French opponents encouraged a further rebellion by the Jacobites. In July 1745, the Old Pretender's son, Charles Edward Stuart, popularly known as Bonnie Prince Charlie or the Young Pretender, landed in Scotland, where support for his cause was highest. George, who was summering in Hanover, returned to London at the end of August. The Jacobites defeated British forces in September at the Battle of Prestonpans, and then moved south into England. A part of the Cheshire Militia was brought in to garrison the city and business came to a standstill. The city gates were bricked up, save for wickets at the Bridgegate and Eastgate, the walls were patrolled, cannon were mounted to command the bridge, and the Chester Castle defences were improved. The spring assizes were held at Flookersbrook in Hoole. George Cholmondeley put Chester in a state of defence, repairing the castle’s defences and adding raised batteries in the inner and outer wards and a raised platform with a parapet south-east of the Great Hall. The military architect Alexander de Lavaux was engaged to draw up a plan to strengthen the fortifications, with massive earthworks in the form of a "star fort", but the work was never carried out.

On the march south, the Council met daily to discuss strategy, and at Derby on 5 December, its members overwhelmingly counselled retreat, the only significant dissenter being Charles. There was no sign of the promised French landing, and despite the large crowds that turned out to see them, only Manchester provided a significant number of recruits; Preston, a Jacobite stronghold in 1715, supplied three. Despite some early assistance, the French reneged on a promise of help. Losing morale, the Jacobites retreated back into Scotland. Charles faced George's military-minded son Prince William, Duke of Cumberland, in the Battle of Culloden, the last pitched battle fought on British soil. The ravaged Jacobite troops were routed by the government army. Charles escaped to France, but many of his supporters were caught and executed. Jacobitism was all but crushed; no further serious attempt was made at restoring the House of Stuart. Although the Jacobite army went nowhere near Chester, the city had been involved in heavy expense and had to turn to Sir Robert Grosvenor to obtain reimbursement from the government in 1746.

Infirmary
The Infirmary was founded in 1755 following a bequest by Dr William Stratford, who had died two years earlier. It was funded by public subscriptions, and was free to patients who were recommended by the subscribers. It was originally housed in temporary accommodation in part of Bluecoat School (St John's Hospital). Construction of the permanent building was started in 1758, and was completed in 1761. It was designed by William Yoxall, and the interior was remodelled in 1830 by William Cole, junior. Cooke describes it as follows:


 * "On the west side of the Shambles is Parsons lane or Princes street leading to a pleasant and airy range of building called St Martin's in the Fields opposite to which adjoining to the walls stands in a most delightful and salubrious situation - the Infirmary - a very spacious and elegant building erected in the year 1761 the comfortable retreat of disease and penury from every part of the county the city and North Wales." (in Cooke a printers error renders 1761 as 1701).

One of the most noted physicians to hold a post at the Infirmary was Dr John Haygarth. In 1778 Haygarth helped found the Smallpox Society of Chester; the group advocated variolation, a form of inoculation which uses a live pathogen, an unpopular position at the time, and tried to educate the populace so as to avoid casual contraction of the disease. Edward Jenner's work on vaccination only followed some twenty years later and Haygarth is largely forgotten. See the Infirmary and Pandemic pages for more detail.

George III (25 October 1760 - 29 January 1820)
George's life and reign, which were longer than those of any of his predecessors, were marked by a series of military conflicts involving his kingdoms, much of the rest of Europe, and places farther afield in Africa, the Americas, and Asia. Early in his reign, Great Britain defeated France in the Seven Years' War, becoming the dominant European power in North America and India. However, many of Britain's American colonies were soon lost in the American War of Independence. Further wars against revolutionary and Napoleonic France from 1793 concluded in the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. The "Industrial Revolution" was the emergence of improved manufacturing processes during the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840. Developments included, among others:
 * the canal network: (see: Canal and Boatyard) which allowed raw-materials and finished goods to be moved to and from specialised manufacturing locations;
 * hand production methods being replaced by the increased use of machines, including the development of machine tools. Mechanised cotton spinning powered by steam or water increased the output of a worker by a factor of about 1000. The power loom increased the output of a worker by a factor of over 40. The cotton gin increased productivity of removing seed from cotton by a factor of 50. Gains in productivity also occurred in spinning and weaving of the Chester "staples" wool and linen, but they were not as great as in cotton.


 * new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes;
 * improved efficiency of water power;
 * the increasing use of steam power: following it's introduction the efficiency of steam engines increased so that they used between one-fifth and one-tenth as much fuel. Steam allowed the development and expansion of railways (see: Chester Station), leading to a Railway "Mania" humourously recollected in the "Hunting of the Snark" (..They threatened its life with a railway share..);
 * the change from wood and other (mostly renewable) bio-fuels to coal: for a given amount of heat, coal required much less labour to mine than cutting wood, and coal was more abundant than wood.
 * Urbanisation, as workers moved from agriculture to better-paid factory work.

The Canal
The "New Cut" briefly re-vitalised Chester as a Port, but in the 1770's a canal was needed to expand the Port's hinterland. Originally intended to go to Middlewich, this route was blocked by the Trent and Mersey Canal Company and the Chester Canal became an unsuccessf "dead-end" leading to Nantwich. In the 1790's, the proposed Ellesmere-Mersey canal was planned to link Shrewsbury with Liverpool; its route being down the Wirral to Chester, on to Wrexham and Ruabon and then on through Chirk towards Shrewsbury. The northern section of that canal joined the Chester Canal near its connection with the Riven Dee at Chester. Building Thomas Telford's 1000 foot long Pontcysyllte Aqueduct in 1805 almost ruined the Ellesmere Canal company leaving them with a 17-mile gap between Chester and Ruabon and no money. The Chester Canal was now brought back from dereliction as the central secion of the Ellesmere canal forming much of what was to become the Shropshire Union Canal.

In the late 18th and early 19th century Chester was not a propitious place in which to establish new industries. It was not on a coalfield, and water power was restricted to the weir on the Dee, which was affected by the tide. The hinterland was mainly rural and was poorly served by transport. A Leadworks was opened in 1800, but there seems also to have been a lack of enterprise on the part of Cestrians, and the residual power of the city guilds may have restrained development. They certainly opposed the Leadworks on the grounds that the proprietor was not a member of any of the guilds. It was observed in 1814 that:


 * "corporate privileges are not often calculated to foster commerce, and in this city, although we mark the infancy of several manufactures, few arrive at maturity" (Wardle and Bentham's Commercial Guide, 1814).

The influence of the guilds did not ebb as quickly as in other towns, due mainly to their subvention by the Owen Jones charity. Their final decay came about in part because of restrictions on membership imposed in order to maximize existing members' benefits from the charity, but their authority was destroyed finally in 1825 when an unsuccessful case was brought against a tanner for trading when not a freeman. While the Corporation was strongly in favour of the intended canal to Nantwich and beyond, it was a heavy investor through the Owen Jones charity in the company's shares, thus risking (and eventually losing) £2000 of the funds of the charity (about 2 million in 2016 money) rather than its own. Frank Simpson wrote of the charity:


 * "About this time (1773) many were admitted into the Companies through favour, for the sole purpose of partaking of the Bequest, and others were kept out by the demand of arbitrary fees; although many well-to-do citizens partook of the distribution, they gave receipts for their shares describing themselves “poor brothers."

In 1792 when the Owen Jones payout came to the Bricklayers £203 11s was paid out to the 12 members of that company of which half were Bodens. In 1798 the distribution of the funds from the Charity to the "Poor Bretheren" was £19.50 per head. In terms of comparing wages, this is the same as at least £20,000 in 2016 money, and the "Poor Bretheren" included the then Mayor of Chester (Thomas Barnes Esq), his son (Thomas jnr), and possibly at least one other family member (both Samuel and Benjamin Barnes are amongst the 19 member who benefited). The only beneficiary who did not get £19.50 was "Widow Dawson", who got £1 1s. In addition there were £5 spent on refreshments, £14 in other disbursements

Rebuilding Chester Castle
In 1785, it was decided to hold a competition to rebuild Chester Gaol. The prize was 50 guineas and the winning design was submitted by Thomas Harrison, then relatively unknown. The new gaol was commissioned by the Justices of the Peace for the County of Cheshire; the building committee, formed in September 1786, included Sir Henry Mainwaring Bt, George Leycester, John Leigh of Oughtrington, and John Legh of Adlington.

The leading architect to specialise in prison design at the time was William Blackburn (1750-1790), who was responsible for eighteen prisons, including Oxford, Liverpool and Gloucester. The latter, which owed much to the ideas of its Governor, Sir George Paul, appears to have been influential on Harrison, since, in 1784, Blackburn was paid to review the early plans for Chester, and in 1793 copies of a pamphlet published by Paul "containing many useful hints as to the care and regulation of gaols.." were requested from Gloucester. "The Builder" (vol. 21, p. 204) records a visitor to Chester, a M. Dupin, as commenting:


 * "The Sessions House and Panoptic prison of Chester are united in the same building which is assuredly the handsomest of its kind that is to be seen in Europe. The interior arrangements are well contrived and bespeak much regard for humanity. The architecture is equally simple and majestic."

The new prison was praised as one of the best-constructed prisons in the country. It had such endearing features as a raised exercise yard with a delightful view of distant Beeston Castle. The two courtyards at the right and left of the building were originally exercise yards for the male and female debtors respectively. The semi-octagonal felons jail originally radiated from below the central bay with the Governor's house in the right hand wing. The jail was thus the first in England to have been built on the overview principle advocated by John Howard in his State of the Prisons of 1780 and later by Jeremy Bentham in his publication "Panopticon" of 1791. However, it was a project that was to take 37 years, was plagued by financial problems, needed two separate Acts of Parliament and was slowed down by poor workmanship (much of the work being undertaken by a badly housed and often-undernourished population of convicts). While Harrison submitted the winning plans, and fleshed them out in 1792/3 he did little else until 1794 when it was discovered that William Bell, the superintendent of works since 1788, had wasted stone and embezzled funds and materials. Bell was dismissed, and Harrison, who seems to have been responsible for his exposure, replaced him as surveyor. Examination of the work supervised by Bell revealed that the pillars in the prison chapel would not support the planned superstructure and there were additional delays while the foundations were relaid. A new contractor, William Cole the elder, was only appointed in 1797. The main block seems to have been completed shortly after, for in 1800 the finishing touches were put to the portico and prison chapel.



George IV (29 January 1820 — 26 June 1830)
Elections were still riotous affairs. Hemingway, writing in 1826, reported:


 * "Of all the places in the kingdom which have heen contested during the late general Election, the city of Chestet has heen distinguished ahove most others for the virulence of party feeling, the acrimony of personal hostility, and the violence of popular outrage."

The system had become a grave scandal, and each recurring election day was a "demoralising orgie".

The Grosvenor Bridge
The Grosvenor Bridge was built between 1827-1833 in order to ease congestion on the Old Dee Bridge at Handbridge, which by the beginning of the 19th century was the only crossing across the River Dee in Chester. The bridge was a long time coming, as in 1808, Chester Corporation decided to hold a competition to select the best plans for a new bridge across the Dee. A committee was empowered to consider plans, surveys and estimates. Nothing much happened for ten years. However, a serious blow for the viability of the Port of Chester was the building of what is now the A5 by noted engineer Thomas Telford from Shrewsbury up to Holyhead. The committee "woke up" in 1815 when Telford was appointed to the new road project and it was seen as a threat to Chester's Irish trade. On September 2nd 1818 the Grand Jury, meeting in its room at Chester Castle passed the following resolution:




 * "We, the Grand Jury of the County of Chester, having considered the state of the present bridge over the Dee at Chester and the avenues thereto, cannot but approve of the erection of a new bridge as a measure highly beneficial to the public at large and as a National undertaking most important to the intercourse between England, Wales and Ireland. But as it is within the jurisdiction of the City of Chester we do not conceive it to be within our province to interfere in any manner with the building of the same."

The Jury would have been aware that the "Exchequer Bill Loans Commision", which had been set up to finace public works such as roads, harbours and bridges, had now been in operation for over a year and Chester had still hesitated to take advantage of this source of funding.

Following a public meeting at the Chester Town Hall (in those days the "Exchange") on 28th Deptember 1818 a resolution was passed that:


 * "... the existing mediaeval bridge [at Handbridge] and the avenues thereto, which are the principal communication between the great manufacturing counties of Lancaster and York and the whole of the North of England, with the West of England, and with Wales and Ireland, are not only highly inconvenient but absolutely dangerous to passengers in carriages, on horseback and on foot."

A "Dee Bridge Committee" was appointed to:


 * "..receive and consider plans, surveys and estimates, and the most expedientmode of providing funds for carrying out these resolutions into effect"

At its first meeting, held on 3 October 1818, the Dee Bridge Committee appointed the somewhat aged architect Thomas Harrison (then in his mid 70's) to supply plans for a new bridge. Within a remarkably short peiod of ten days Harrison provided a design for an iron bridge costed at £17,740. This appears to be very little time in which to calculate loads, materials and expenses for what was a very new material and one which Harrison seems never to have worked with before. Nothing much then happened until 1824, when Telford had his bridge over the Menai Straights well underway. Once again, it was realised that without an adequate crossing at Chester there was a serious threat to local trade, especially the trade with Ireland. Then there was further delay as a plan to give the task of designing and constructing the bridge to Marc Brunel was explored. If this had gone ahead the elder Brunel may well have given the task to his son, Isembard. Eventually Harrison was given the job. Harrison did not live to see his bridge completed. In fact he resigned as bridge designer on the 8th January 1826 well before the foundation stone was laid. At its opening, the Grosvenor Bridge was the longest existing single-span stone arch road bridge – at 200 feet across and 60 feet high – in the world. The Grosvenor Bridge held the world record for thirty years when it was surpassed by the "Cabin John Bridge" in the USA, 220 feet across and 57 feet 3 inches high. The Grosvenor Bridge is still the longest masonry arch in the UK.

William IV (26 June 1830 — 20 June 1837)
As a result of the deaths and childlessness of his two older brothers, he inherited the throne when he was sixty-four years old. His reign saw several reforms: the poor law was updated, child labour restricted and slavery abolished throughout the British Empire. One of the most important pieces of legislation was the Reform Act 1832, which refashioned the British electoral system. Though William did not engage in politics as much as his brother or his father, he was the most recent monarch to appoint a Prime Minister contrary to the will of Parliament.

Behind the facade of Georgian Chester lurked the fact that Chester had little if anything to sustain its economy in the long-term. The traditional industries of lead, linen and leather were in a terminal decline. Tourism began to appear as a significant factor in the economy and the first guide Books on Chester appeared. Soon there was a growing category of writers on Chester. By the 1830's traditional manufacturing trades, including the making of clay-pipes, clocks and gloves were in serious decline, if not entirely extinct. Ship-building was entering a terminal phase and rope-making barely survived. Both of the two cotton mills had closed by the 1820's, so one of the leading industries of the Industrial Revolution had failed to establish itself in Chester. While in the 18thC. the City Fair's had been dominated by linen (the trade peaked in the 1760's), by 1830 the trade was dead. The reasons for the collapse of the linen trade center around the decline in the Chester/Dublin trade route, as its ends moved from Dublin to Belfast and Chester to Liverpool. Other communication issues affected Chester. The Menai Straights Bridge opened in 1826. In 1830 the semaphore system between Liverpool and Holyhead through Hilbre Island could carry a message in 23 seconds, allowing Liverpool to dominate shipping on the Irish Sea approaches to the Dee and Mersey.

The pace of change in Chester now began to pick up. 1835 saw the "Municipal Corporation Act" abolish the admiralty rights of seaport towns - from this time, the Mayor of Chester's title "Admiral of the Dee" is strictly honorary - Chester City Assembly now became the Council of the Borough of Chester. Legal proceedings started over whether the corporation had grossly mismanaged the funds of St John's Hospital: only £85 of the annual income of £600 was applied to the purposes of the hospital. The Mechanics Institute was founded in St John Street. The Chester Criminals Execution Bill was passed after a dispute between the Sherrifs of the city and county as to who should execute criminals. The following year tolls at the city gates were abolished, allowing goods to enter without payment.

In 1837, the union of the thrones of the United Kingdom and Hanover ended. Succession to the Hanoverian throne was regulated by semi-Salic law (agnatic-cognatic), which gave priority to all male lines before female lines, so that it passed not to Queen Victoria but to her uncle, the Duke of Cumberland.

Georgian Architecture
John Vanbrugh grew up in Chester, where his family had been driven by either the major outbreak of the plague in London in 1665, or the Great Fire of 1666. It is possible that he attended The King's School in Chester, though no records of his being a scholar there survive.

Georgian architecture is characterized by its proportion and balance; simple mathematical ratios were used to determine the height of a window in relation to its width or the shape of a room as a double cube. Regularity, as with ashlar (uniformly cut) stonework, was strongly approved, imbuing symmetry and adherence to classical rules: any lack of symmetry, where Georgian additions were added to earlier structures remaining visible, was deeply felt as a flaw. In Chester the most noted Georgian architect was Thomas Harrison. In the Georgian era, Chester became again a center of what passed for affluence, a town with elegant terraces where the landed aristocracy lived. This trend continued into the Industrial Revolution, when the city was populated with the upper classes fleeing to a safe distance from the industrial sprawls of Manchester and Liverpool. By the mid-C.18th, Chester was a busy coaching town. Elegant classical buildings replaced some of the medieval buildings on The Rows. The City Walls, no longer really needed to defend the citizens, (despite the scare of the Jacobite rebellion of 1745) were transformed into a promenade. The medieval gateways Northgate (1810), Bridgegate (1781), Watergate (1790) and Eastgate (1769) were demolished and replaced by ornamental arches.


 * "Thus this beautiful walk, the offspring of war, is now solely devoted to the purposes of pleasure, and salubrious enjoyment; and thus is evil sometimes the parent of good." (Cowdroy's Cheshire Directory, 1789.)

The Georgian architecture of Chester is often overlooked, or even covered by the Victorian nailing on of black and white "planks and boards" to create a Tudor theme - at times very crudely.

Related Pages

 * Industrial Revolution;
 * Canal and Boatyard;
 * Leadworks;
 * River Dee;
 * Grosvenor Bridge;
 * Thomas Harrison;
 * Baldwin and his balloon flight;
 * Infirmary;

Chester in Other Historical Periods



 * Before The Romans;
 * Roman Chester;
 * Dark Ages;
 * Medieval Chester;
 * Tudor Chester;
 * Stuart Chester and Civil War;
 * Georgian Chester;
 * Victorian Chester;