20th Century Chester

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This is part of a series of articles on the history of Chester through time. The 20th century needs to be treated a little differently to the earlier periods as there are many resources already available on it which are specific to Chester, and much information on the 20th century is located elsewhere on this site (and on others).

The people of Chester recieved the news of the death of Queen Victoria on 26th January 1901 with great sadness. Although the new century had already begun, an old era ended with Victoria's death. Few people remembered anything other than the "Victorian Age". The 20th Century brought enormous change to Chester. To a large part this was driven by external intervention and financing, but on heritage matters there was significant local involvment. The old century drew to a close with the newly unveiled Eastgate Clock, first set into motion on the 24th May 1899 (being started by the mayor at a quarter to one). Newspaper comments at the time (see: Clockmaker for more) perhaps foreshadowed some of the events of the next hundred years. Artist Charles Marston (of Mold) wrote to the Courant:

A Postcard showing Chester in 1910. One of the vehicles visible is an electric tram. The majority of the relatively small number of ohter vehicles are horse-drawn.
  • "THE EASTGATE CLOCK. A PROTEST. Sir,— Will you allow me space in your valuable paper to express my regret at the erection of the clock on Eastgate Bridge. Anybody with a sense of order and harmony in his nature will see at once that the tower or clock, or whatever it may be called, which stands at present on Eastgate Bridge, never ought to have been put there, as it is entirely out of keeping with its surroundings. Of course, everybody appreciates the good nature of Colonel Evans-Lloyd in giving the clock. But it is most annoying to any lover of art that so abnormal an over-growth should be erected in the midst of that which is picturesque and lovely. The pity is that the architectural features of Chester should be sullied by the close proximity of a giant toy, a plaything in the nursery; a petite ornament in a lady's drawing-room, to fill up some little corner, becomes an object of contempt when viewed as a street decoration, and that in one of the most beautiful cities in the world"

Two important themes behind the discussion of 20th Century Chester are poverty and preservation of the percieved past. There was a long debate as to whether the funds collected for something to mark the Jubilee should be spent on the Eastgate Clock or on a new maternity hospital, given that Chester had a higher than average infant mortallity - an indicator of social deprivation and poverty. There was also originally a feeling that the Eastgate Clock was "out of keeping" with the "style" of Chester, which percieved itself as a medieval city. One seemingly reasonable theory is that these are linked by the often precarious finances of a city corporation which was confined within limited boundaries for growth and whose port and traditional industries were dying.

Chester before WW1

Under the Chester Corporation Act of 1901, the council took up its option to purchase the assets of the Chester Tramways Company for a cost of £18,000. The initial Trams were horse-drawn, but the corporation wished to convert these to electriciy and provide a daytime load for its electricity generating station (dating from 1896). The funds needed for the purchase had to be borrowed, and the state of the council finances may be appreciated by the fact that the debt was still being paid back long after the trams ceased to run.

The Postcard view from Parsons Norman. This shows St Mary Without The Walls in Handbridge (1885-87) and St Peter with its short spire of the same period. Eastgate appears to have its 1899 clock, so this is a Prospect of Chester from around 1900.

By the beginning of the 20th Century there was very little heavy industry left in Chester and while shipping occasionally used Crane Wharf (until 1946, see: Portpool), Chester was at a low ebb. By 1900 the division between manufacturing and retailing was more ingrained in the economy and a much higher proportion of goods was produced in large factories and workshops, distributed by the railways, and sold by specialist retailers. The number of manufacturing workers in Chester actually fell between 1871 and 1911, mainly through a large reduction in the already limited number of women employed in manufacturing. Male jobs remained almost static. Against the trend of factory production, dressmaking and millinery remained the main jobs for women in 1911, with little change in the numbers employed after 1871. At both dates much of the employment was outwork for Chester shops and private customers, but Browns directly employed 150 in their own dressmaking workroom in the 1870s. The continued importance of dressmaking and millinery in Chester reflects the fact that the production of women's and children's outer garments was still not dominated by large specialist firms in 1914. Only tobacco and snuff-making provided a significantly growing number of jobs for women. In 1910 there were five tobacco manufacturers in Chester, two of which were large concerns, William Twiston Davies & Sons of Canal Street and Thomas Nicholls & Co of Deeside Mills, Handbridge (see: Dee Mills). The Deeside Mills works was partly destroyed by fire, said to be started by a cigarette, in the 1950s. It was then sold to the Imperial Tobacco Company. When it was then sold on to Chester Corporation, it was pulled down and a block of flats (Salmon Leap) built in its place. The only remnant of the mill still remaining is the water wheel, which has been restored and preserved. The Canal Street factory appears to be the source of so much smoke in the Parsons Norman "Prospect of Chester" reproduced above.

At the dawn of the 20th century mass entertainment was quite different from that of "modern times". Radio broadcasting of music and talk intended to reach a dispersed audience started experimentally around 1905–1906, but commercially only around 1920 to 1923. The first permanent cinema in Chester, with 400 seats, had opened in 1909 (initially the "Corn Exchange Cinema", then the "Picturedrome") in Eastgate Street. The Royal Agricultural Show had been held in Hoole, from 17 – 23 June 1893 (and would return to Chester in 1925). Entertainment for the masses meant large numbers of people gathering together, such as at the races, and this introduced many elements surrounding the presence and appearance of certain prominent members of society.

Mary Phillips being dragged away by police after she threw a "flour bomb" at Herbert Asquith, then Prime Minister, on the steps of Chester Town Hall in 1912.

1910 would see the Chester Pageant which tells us something of how the people of the time viewed their own history and heritage. The corporation had resisted holding a pageant for several years. In 1907, Chester’s Mayor had declared that he thought "pageants were overdone at the present time". Yet, only two years later, the Council changed its mind. In part this may have been due to the efforts of Osborne Aldis, a local resident who had also been involved in the restoration of Plegmund's Well. Aldis wrote to (among others) industrialist Alfred Mond, later 1st Baron Melchett, and Liberal Member of Parliament for Chester from 1906 to 1910. The partial monopoly of the Grosvenors as M.P.'s for Chester had ended in the 1870's and the electoral corruption for which Chester was noted mostly disposed of by the 1883 Reform Act. However many of the M.P.'s who followed had little to do with Chester.

The characters featuring in the 1910 Pageant included: Agricola, Edgar the Pacific, Hugh Lupus, Archbishop Baldwin, Edward I, Richard II, James I and Charles I. Unlike most other pageants at the time it did not feature Elizabeth I, who never visited Chester, but despite the absence of Elizabeth the costumes appear to have been lavish. Chester made good use of the available dress-making skills.

In 1912 Chester made the national press for a variety of reasons. Damer Leslie Allen took off from the Roodee in an attempt to fly to Ireland and was never seen again after being spotted crossing the coat at Holyhead. Suffragette Mary Phillips "flour-bombed" Herbert Asquith outside the Town Hall when on his way to ireland to visit Lord Lever (whose house at Rivington the Suffragettes burned down). Phillips' fine was paid by Louisa Phyllis Brown (nee Humfrey), a member of the department store family and later mayor of Chester in 1938.

1912 also saw the loss of Titanic, of interest to Chester historians because two of the crew were from Chester as was one of the drowned passengers.

Chester in WW1 and after

By 1914 Chester was an old-fashioned and declining county town, with a stagnant if not shrinking population, moribund traditional craft industries, and some, but not much, mid-Victorian heavy engineering. Local historian Frank Simpson recorded something of the start of the war in his diary, noting for 5th August:

  • "The banks are all closed but are to re-open on Friday when one pound, and ten shilling notes will be issued to the public. This is to protect the gold supply. All kinds of food stuff has gone up in price this owing to certain people making raids on the grocers shops etc to lay in a supply."

The 1st Battalion of the Cheshire Regiment was in Ireland when war was declared. It was sent straight to France to fight at Mons. Within three weeks there were 800 casualties among the 1,000-strong battalion, and hospital trains full of the wounded began to arrive at Chester. The defeat at Mons was partly due to bungling, but it is also fair to say that the Cheshires had been abandoned by the rest of the Allied army and left to fight to the death against an enemy sweeping down on their positions from all directions. A total of 40 men from the battalion remained unwounded. Of the 25 officers and 952 other ranks of the 1st Battalion who had been present at the start of the battle, only 7 officers and 200 other ranks remained alive. The badly battered 1st Battalion lost their regimental flag, the "miniature colour," during the retreat from Mons in 1914. The flag was hidden by Belgian villagers throughout the German occupation and was eventually recovered by a color party from the 1st Battalion at the end of the war. The regimental flag is now on permanent display at the Cheshire Military Museum at Chester Castle. Another notable WW1 connexion is HMS Chester launched 1916 and damaged at the battle of Jutland. Those killed on the Chester included John Travers Cornwell (VC) (8 January 1900 – 2 June 1916), - who died aged 16. Although Cornwell survived long enough to reach hospital in Grimsby, he died of his wounds on 2 June. Much propaganda was made out of Jack's death with numerous parallels to the death of Giocante Casabianca at the battle of the Nile (origin of "the boy stood on the burning deck...").

In 1916 the city's Unionist M.P., Robert Yerburgh, resigned, and his replacement, Sir Owen Philipps, took his seat without a contest. At the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, Robert was suffering from heart trouble and both he and his wife were in the spa town of Bad Nauheim in Germany. The couple were not allowed to leave immediately and were initially placed under curfew before being detained as prisoners of war under the orders of the military governor of Frankfurt. Nine weeks later, they were allowed to leave and were sent to Switzerland where they were required to stay for three weeks before returning to England. After his return to England, Robert's health continued to deteriorate and he died in December 1916, aged 63. Owen Philipps ended up serving a term in Wormwood Scrubs for fraudulent accounting. Philipps is remembered in Chester for installing the bell from SS Galeka on the canal-facing corner of St John's Hospital.

The mayor, John Frost, remained in office for six successive years from 1913, and was knighted in 1918 for his services to the city. Frost was a member of a local (corn) milling family who owned what was at the time Chester's most successful firm. Although Chester's mills were small and not well located to deal with the switch-over to imported hard foreign wheat, Frost and sons had installed the first Simon automated roller mill in the country in 1881, and by 1904 the mill at Canalside was "equal to anything in the country". Imported hard wheat was brought by river and canal from Birkenhead and Liverpool, but the need for transhipment exposed the disadvantage of the site in Chester, and in 1910 Frosts opened new mills at Ellesmere Port on the Manchester Ship Canal served directly by ocean-going ships. By 1913 they had stopped milling in Chester, and the premises were abandoned soon after Frosts' amalgamation with Spillers in 1920. The last surviving mill in Chester proved to be Upton windmill, operated by Edward Dean and his son from the 1870s to the 1930s. They had installed an auxiliary steam engine by 1892.

A map of Chester in the mid 20th Century. Neither the Amphitheatre nor the inner ring road appear on the map. Car parks and cinemas are marked and little attention is given to anything outside of the historic core of the city.

The Nursery business was also coming to a peak. The trade increased in importance right up to 1914 and maintained its position until the 1930s. The city's location at the geographical centre of the British Isles, together with its good rail connexions and mild climate, made it an ideal place to serve the national market. Around 15 per cent of Chester's trade between 1871 and 1914 may consistently have come from the areas of Cheshire to its east and south-east. Access was improved by the opening of the Tattenhall Junction to Whitchurch (Salop.) railway line in 1872 and the Cheshire Lines route to Northwich in 1875. They seem to have strengthened Chester's hold over its south-eastern hinterland and opened up the Northwich area more effectively. The frontier of significant trade evidently ran roughly along the southern boundary of the county as far as Whitchurch and then north along the mid-Cheshire ridge to Frodsham, with some coming from Nantwich and the Cheshire salt towns, notably Northwich. That area declined somewhat in the late 19th century, principally because the trade in Cheshire Cheese was depressed by large-scale imports of American cheese.

By 1914 the city had three engineering firms, Hydraulic Engineering, Henry Wood, and Brookhirst, which were leaders in their fields and, together with the Leadworks, gave the city a more significant national role in manufacturing than is commonly perceived. That growth did not, however, offset the decline of the local craft sector brought about by better communications and factory production elsewhere. Increasingly, Chester would transform into a centre for residence, tourism and retail. Indeed, plans to open a steelworks in Chester (in Curzon Park) were opposed as this would detract from the "placid" nature of the city. In the early half of the century the Amphitheatre was discovered and Chester Zoo opened. The river front along the Groves was further developed with restoration and improvements to the Bridges and clearance of the Dee Mills.

Eventually, the service sector provided much employment in the city, notably in transport and the retail trades, but also in hotels and catering, domestic service, the professions, and public administration. Employment in shops, services, and transport rose from 26 per cent of the working population in 1861 to 42 per cent in 1911, when nationally only 35 per cent of the labour force worked in service employments. Between the World Wars half of all jobs for men, and three quarters or more of those for women, were in services. For men, the largest single area was transport (17-18 per cent of all men's jobs), followed by shops and financial services (rising to 13 per cent in 1931). Female employment was concentrated in domestic service (40 per cent) and shop work (15-17 per cent). Within the city boundaries, the railway companies were at times the main employers of male labour, with a workforce of 1,160 men in the city in 1921. In the same year over 3,000 Cestrians already worked outside Chester, and the uncongested riverside sites on Deeside and at Ellesmere Port were ideal for the very large manufacturing and processing plants typical of much early 20th-century industrial development.

The growth of Chester's large stores undermined older specialist businesses, particularly those in clothing and furniture. Established firms like Beckett & Co., William Garnett, Elias Williams, and Samuel Hamley seem to have been in relative or actual decline by the 1900s, and were also challenged by younger, more vigorous businesses such as Hendersons in Bridge Street, founded in 1890. The grocery trade also changed greatly between 1890 and 1914. Although the number of grocers was little altered, new shops were dispersed in the suburbs and the number of city centre grocers fell. The chain stores of Liptons, Home & Colonial, Maypole, and Pegrams established branches in Chester, and their branded, packaged goods started to supplant the shop-blended and shop-packed provisions typical of the older and often more exclusive retailers. By 1910 there were c. 20 chain stores in the city, including Boots, Marks & Spencer, and Hepworths, but Chester remained a shopping centre dominated by local businesses which, though often biased towards a wealthy and socially select clientele, increasingly broadened their appeal to other income groups. The growth and modernization of Chester's shops meant that the traditional fairs and markets both declined and changed in nature. The rise of corporate wholesalers and direct purchases from factories had made the fairs in their original form largely redundant by 1900.

The Infirmary in 1910.

Chester was confirmed as the main medical centre in the area, though the impact on employment was still limited. The Infirmary served much of west Cheshire and north-east Wales, but in 1890 employed only 24 nurses, rising to 52 in 1911. The Workhouse hospital performed a similar function for a smaller area around the city, while c. 1910 the county lunatic Asylum at Bache had over 1,000 patients, but served the county rather than the city. In the early 1930s a social survey of working families in Chester concluded, in line with national findings, that the factors which contributed most to their well-being, after wage and rent levels, were the strength of character of parents, their health, and the number of dependent children. In the sample of 13 families, the average size of family was seven. Of 12 surviving fathers, six were suffering from disabilities incurred during the First World War. None of the families had a "clean bill of health". The survey noted that of the families studied, only one had a wireless and eight never went to the cinema or theatre. The diets of all were adjudged seriously deficient in green vegetables, fruit, fish, and dairy produce. One family had no milk at all; another lived almost entirely on bread and margarine.

However, the process of improvement in the city itself was slow. Small towns such as Chester tended to suffer from the "politics of the rates", which meant that local politics were reactive, not dynamic. Most ratepayers were concerned primarily with keeping rates low, with the result that local government alone was unable to fund the creation of a healthy, attractive, or culturally stimulating urban environment. In the absence of any significant industry, the burden of the rates was largely borne by rate-paying householders and retailers. Money was always tight. Unusually for a town of Chester's size, shopkeepers were poorly represented on the corporation: in 1925 the mayor claimed that they paid three quarters of the rates but formed only a third of the council. The Chester Chamber of Trade, inaugurated in 1921, periodically exhorted its members to obtain greater representation but recognized that they disliked being "politically labelled" and apparently relied on householders to keep down the rates. The corporation's chief assets in offsetting the rates were its public and livestock markets. It also had an income from letting the Roodee for the race meeting and for pasture during the rest of the year, but these brought in comparatively little income.

Prof Newstead examining the gutter at the base of an Amphitheatre wall in 1930-31.

The corporation's town planning not only failed to ensure that most new buildings enhanced the environment, but also made low cost rather than quality the motivation in its own projects. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s the revivified Archaeological Society lobbied the council hard on conservation issues, but government intervention was the principal means of preserving the city's historic fabric. In 1927 a local inspector of ancient monuments, reporting that the walls were in disrepair, commented that:

  • "the city will do nothing worth doing unless it has to, and no one but the Office of Works can protect what remains from decay".

The council's attitude was apparent in 1929 in the controversy about the design of a new gate in the walls to connect with Pepper Street. The Chester Archaeological Society spearheaded a campaign, supported by the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, for a sympathetically designed gateway and for keeping the land surrounding it as public open space. Its case was that "the city's greatest asset, even in a narrow financial sense, is its historic character". The controversy over the design of the Newgate coincided with an even more contentious issue, the fate of the Roman Amphitheatre. Interest in Roman Chester had already been stimulated by the excavation of Roman barrack blocks in Deanery Fields by Robert Newstead, curator of the Chester Archaeological Society's collections and the dominant figure in the city's archaeology between the wars. It was greatly heightened by the accidental discovery of the Amphitheatre in 1929 in the grounds of Dee House.

Despite excavations in 1930-31 the improvement committee attempted to deny that the remains were those of an amphitheatre, and continued with its original plan to build a road across the site. The central government Office of Works responded by offering to pay the costs of excavation and preservation. Together with the Ministry of Transport, which was providing financial support for the road, it insisted that the road should be diverted round the amphitheatre, arguing that it would be a unique addition to the city's attractions and result in "a large and permanent increase in the number of visitors". The local council, which owned only the land needed for the road, refused to buy the rest of the site. A campaign was mounted to raise sufficient private funding to buy it, and national and international interest was greater than in Chester, partly perhaps because there was little to see above ground. Even Mussolini sent his good wishes for the project to the Archaeological Society. By 1934 the society had collected sufficient funds to buy St. John's House on the northern half of the site, which could therefore be excavated.

Buildings

Frank Simpson took this photograph just as the finishing touches were being put to the facade. Simpson went on to state: "This, being foreign to local architecture, caused considerable correspondence in a local paper. This proved to be a great factor towards the Duke of Westminster's decision on Friday, March 10th, 1911 to pull it down and replace it with a half timbered front. (On) March 20th, the builders re-erected the scaffolding and the demolition of the white front immediately began."

The taste for half-timbered "Mock Tudor" buildings persisted in Chester well into the 1920s, even though they were going out of fashion in most other town centres. Plans for the development of St Michael's Row in Bridge Street came before the Improvement Committee in June 1909. The scheme was approved, but noting that the front was of faience tiles the Improvement Committee instructed the Town Clerk to write to the Duke of Westminster (the developer) and suggest that it might be changed to half-timbering "in harmony with the characteristic architecture of the city". Other petitions to the Duke came from the Bishop of Chester and the Archaeological Society. Initially the Duke took no notice other than to explain that the half-timbered front would need repainting every three years at some expense (£150 in 1909 money). The "White City" as it was known locally had barely reached its full height in September 1910 when a debate erupted in the "letters" pages of the local newspaper (the Chester Chronicle). Only James Williams, a member of the Archaeological Society appeared unopposed to it. Williams wrote:

  • "..when we see the truly cosmopolitan styles of architecture now so general, we may congratulate ourselves upon the varied styles used in the buildings in Chester. What sort of a place would it look like if only one style or architecture was adopted? We should be appalled with the sameness. In our antiquarian researches let us not ourselves become antiquated. Whilst preserving the ancient - the old features - let us use the new styles also, and prosperity will bless us".

The majority remained opposed to this deviation from the "Chester Look" and the 2nd duke of Westminster was sensitive to the criticism and decided, at his own expense, to have the tiles removed and replaced by the timber frontage seen today, which the Duke paid (£4000) to have erected. The alterations were greeted enthusiastically by the Improvement Committee and the Chronicle. Work on the changes started towards the end of March 1911 and was completed in August. Despite these rapid changes of plan St Michael's Row was constructed to a high standard. The same cannot be said of some other, especially later, black-and-while buildings, which have been descibed as "nailing on planks and boards". Not all Chester's buildings of that kind were of poor quality, notwithstanding the comments made in 1929 by the dean of Chester's son, Francis Bennett, who deplored the replacement of "decent, honest Georgian" by "wretched, ill-designed black and white". For example, the Manchester and District Bank (later Royal Bank of Scotland) at the corner of Foregate Street and Frodsham Street was built to a well detailed design of 1921 by Francis Jones. Another late example of the revival style was the George and Dragon public house of 1931. Other "modern" buildings included those of national chain stores who built shops in their own house styles at the east end of the town centre, including the neo-Georgian Marks & Spencer, designed in 1932 by Norman Jones and Leonard Rigby of Manchester, and the cautiously Art Deco premises of Montague Burton, designed by Harry Wilson of Leeds in 1928, both in Foregate Street.

The most unashamedly modern buildings were the cinemas built on prominent sites in the main streets, particularly the Odeon, (which was not designed by Harry Weedon) and opened in 1936, which was unavoidable in the view down Northgate Street. The Regal, designed in the same year by the A.B.C.'s architects in a more subdued Art Deco style, filled the corner of Foregate Street with Love Street. For further information on the development of cinema in Chester see: A Brief History of Cinema in Chester and Chester Cinemas.

With the end of the Vernacular Revival only a few new buildings, such as Maxwell Ayrton's St. Werburgh Row of 1935 in St Werburgh Street, were designed in a manner which might be described as at least attempting to be "consciously sympathetic" with their surroundings.

Buildings in Watergate Street were purchased by the council and allowed to fall into disrepair.

As regards conservation the corporation's lack of funds had an impact: not only were Georgian buildings replaced, but genuine timber-framed houses were allowed to fall into disrepair. The council delayed, for example, over the restoration of Stanley Palace, purchased by the Archaeological Society but then sold to the earl of Derby, who presented it to the city in 1928. When work eventually began in 1932, it was greatly criticized at the time as overzealous and undertaken at the behest of "council reactionaries". Other historic buildings remained neglected. The problem was of great concern to Greenwood, the city surveyor, who in 1933 sought to make a list of those worthy of preservation. One seriously endangered historic building was the Blue Bell Inn in Northgate Street, which dated from the mid 15th century and was reputed the oldest domestic building in the city. In 1930 it was bought by the improvement committee for demolition as part of a plan to widen Northgate Street. Abandoned for six years, it fell into serious decay despite protests from the Chester branch of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, the Chester Archaeological Society, and the Duke of Westminster. The Office of Works intervened, asking the council to reconsider, and pointing out that the plan to widen Northgate Street was impracticable since the Northgate itself was a scheduled monument and could not be demolished as the plan required. Although the council was thus prevented from destroying the Blue Bell it refused to spend money preserving it and the building still remained unrepaired in 1939.

The state of the Watergate Street Rows also caused anxiety and public debate, and in 1938 the council bought several buildings apparently in order to preserve them. By then the improvement committee, which declared that "we depend very largely on our antiquities for our prosperity", may have had a change of heart about the city's historic buildings. However no money was spent on the properties and in 1955 the property in Watergate Street, bought by the council to protect it, was destroyed on the grounds that it had deteriorated beyond repair, leading to a gap in the Rows.

Traffic

The most serious threat to Chester's environment was motorized traffic, the volume of which was increasing rapidly. By 1914 the number of vehicles had grown to the point that the coroner thought that a speed limit of 10 miles an hour ought to be imposed. On bank holidays there were frequently long queues of traffic attempting the journey through the city centre to the seaside resorts of north Wales. Local traffic also increased because of the concentration of commercial and business premises at the heart of the city. Traffic on the main roads doubled between 1925 and 1928. Modest measures to ameliorate traffic problems included the introduction of pedestrian crossings and traffic lights at the Old Dee Bridge in 1934. Traders, however, successfully resisted all attempts to restrict parking in the city centre, or to introduce one-way traffic systems.

By 1920 it was recognized that the only effective remedy was to build an outer ring-road to divert through traffic away from the city centre altogether. Such a solution was expensive and required the cooperation of Cheshire and Flintshire county councils, on whose territory much of the new road would run. Even so, by 1924 a complete route had been mapped, controversially cutting across the avenue leading from Overleigh to Eaton Hall, the home of the duke of Westminster. A start was made on the Flintshire section in 1929, when the government provided 75 per cent of the cost, but in 1931 the financial crisis halted the project. In 1935 work was resumed on the same terms. Hopes of a rapid conclusion were, however, dashed by the outbreak of war.

Politics

Both representation in parliament and at municipal level were dominated by the Conservatives. The Liberals were in second place at each general election apart from 1922, but were well behind except in 1929. The two main parties generally chose the mayor alternately and usually invited him to serve a second successive term. Aldermen, usually former mayors, were appointed by the council, and held office until resignation or death. Until the collapse of the coalition government in 1922, there was a pact between Tories and Liberals not to compete with one another in local elections. Afterwards, out of a total council membership of 40 (44 after 1936), the Conservatives usually had between 16 and 19 seats, and the Liberals between 10 and 14. After 1919 there were usually between seven and nine official Labour councillors, although in 1928, their worst year, they shrank to three. Even so, in 1930 Labour took its turn in choosing the mayor, as well as aldermen in proportion to the number of its councillors, an arrangement which often caused dissension. Because Labour was relatively weak in Chester, the question whether responsibility for social and environmental reform was to be public or private was debated on its merits rather than on party-political lines.

Housing

Banners Court off Princess Street in the 1930's.

Most working-class Cestrians lived in 19th century terraced housing with tiny back sculleries, outside lavatories, small back yards, and front doors opening on to the street. In the city centre, conditions in the courts of Princess Street, Goss Street, and Crook Street remained below that standard into the 1930s. In Princess Street alone there were 224 houses, of which 140 were damp and 120 verminous; 103 shared lavatories, 118 had no suitable washing accommodation, and 108 lacked a sink or internal water supply. In one sublet house in Crook Street lived seven separate families, 39 people in all. Because in WW1 so many men joined the armed services, industry was soon short of labour, and men were sought from the surrounding districts, especially for the large new munitions factory built by the government in 1915 at Queensferry. By 1917 some 3,000 munitions workers had come to live in the already overcrowded city. Working women were blamed for the rise in the infantile death rate to an all-time recorded high of 106.9 per 1,000 live births in 1916, although it was acknowledged that overcrowded living conditions were partly responsible.

The council's commitment to providing municipal housing led it to accept the principle of urban regulation through town planning. In 1917 it commissioned Professor Patrick Abercrombie to consult with the city engineer on the preparation of a town planning scheme, necessary for the development of the what was then known as the Buddicom housing estate (at Lache} and to regulate land use. Abercrombie preferred formal layouts and house designs, against the prevailing taste for the picturesque garden-suburb style. Consequently, the first phase of the estate was centred on an oval of houses lining Sunbury and Abingdon Crescents and facing a central green, which was enclosed by a rectangle of streets bounded on the east by the estate's straight spine road, Cliveden Road. The housing committee favoured local architects, from whom Abercrombie chose James Strong, who designed terraced and semi-detached houses in early 19th-century urbancottage style; they were built of pink brick, with diapering in the manner of 19th-century Grosvenor estate buildings.

The city's council houses provided working people with improved living conditions. Some would say that they were in part motivated the need to get the poor out of the slums behind the shopping facades of the city centre to less visible housing estates in the suburbs. The new houses were larger than most 19th-century terraced houses, free from damp, and had more bedrooms, better cooking and laundry facilities, internal plumbing, and small gardens. They were also more spaciously laid out, conforming to the government standard of 12 houses an acre. However, not only were council houses more expensive to rent, their tenants also incurred higher costs in travelling to work from the suburbs. Residents of the Lache estate campaigned continuously for facilities such as a public house or a fish and chip shop, which the council was reluctant to allow. Chester's early planning initiatives included the designation of areas of the city as residential, commercial, recreational, or industrial; by 1926, maps showing "zoning" had been prepared, confining shops to the city centre and excluding them from residential areas.

The new "garden suburbs" were a huge improvement on the slum courts, but many people could not afford the rent charged by the corporation. Note the blue brick diapering which was originally a distinctive feature of buildings constructed for the Duke of Westminster.

In 1924, when the government began to encourage slum clearance, 59 back-to-back houses were pulled down in Handbridge, and replaced by a row of shops. Although the government paid half the cost, there was no rent subsidy for the evicted tenants. People from the clearance areas who could not afford council-house rents moved into formerly respectable neighbourhoods, where single rooms were sublet to whole families, so creating new areas of overcrowding. The results were evident in a complaint of 1937 that people in Watergate Street, Crane Street, Stanley Place, and Paradise Row:

  • "stood in doorways with shawls over their heads, their children screaming, rolling iron hoops, and kicking footballs in the streets, or sitting in doorways"

The council had difficulty in finding land for development within the borough boundaries, and sometimes had to buy sites for housing in the surrounding rural districts. In such areas the cost of roads, electricity, sewerage, and other services laid on by the borough could not be recovered because the rates went to the county. The population within the city boundary rose very slowly, and Chester, one of the smallest county boroughs, was in danger of losing its independent status. The incorporation of the built-up areas outside the boundary into the county borough thus became extremely desirable. In 1932 the council planned a large extension into both Cheshire and Flintshire, but dropped the proposal when it became clear that a parliamentary Bill would be vigorously contested by Cheshire county council and that the government would not allow the borough to extend across the Welsh border. In 1936, however, the county agreed to surrender Blacon, the built-up part of Newton, and a part of Hoole which included the City Hospital and Chester Station.

In 1935, after the government had offered large financial inducements to persuade councils to carry out slum clearance, Chester produced a report which showed that 902 houses, inhabited by 4,117 people, were in need of demolition, and considerably more of extensive renovation. The first clearance area to be dealt with, and the only scheme completed before 1939, was near the town hall, in Princess Street, Crook Street, and Goss Street. Their dreadful condition did not deter vociferous objections to demolition, but clearance was encouraged by the possibility of a lucrative redevelopment of the site. Opposition to the Princess Street clearance at the public inquiry in 1935 probably deterred the council from embarking on further schemes, and all such plans were abandoned at the outbreak of war, leaving at least two thirds of Chester's slums intact. In 1941 Chester was described by one embittered citizen as an example of:

  • "unplanned, greedy development at its worst", its streets "airless, narrow, overhung, traffic-bound, bottle-necked alleys" fronting "an agglomeration of slums".

Public Services

The Water Supply was a significant issue. Dirty water is believed to have contributed to the poor health record of Chester. From 1914, the corporation made several attempts to buy the privately owned Water Company, which had failed to provide sedimentation tanks and still relied on the less effective method of sand filtration to purify the supply. In 1928, after the failure of yet another attempt at purchase, the chairman of the public health committee finally admitted that the standard of water was unsatisfactory.

Said to be some of the last trams in Chester. The advert for "Bovril" on electric trams is somewhat ironic. The "Vril", from which the Trademark is derived, were a "master race" from the fictional work of Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who used an electrical force called "Vril-ya". This is a still from the Glengary Cinema Archive.

As noted above, an electricity supply for Chester had been inaugurated in 1896, but by 1911 the maximum load had been reached for the steam-powered station near New Crane Street. The answer was to be a hydro-electric plant on the site of the Dee Mills next to the Old Dee Bridge. The suggestion was apparently put forward on 1911 by Sidney Ernest Britton who had been appointed the City Electrical Engineer in 1903. The City Council referred the matter to A. C. Hurtzig as consultant engineer and the original design was revised to be more in keeping with its surroundings after comments from the Chester and North Wales Architectural Society. Although Worcester had an earlier hydro-electric station, Chester was the first place to have a "tidal" station and the design influenced a later scheme at York. The completed station was equipped with three turbines, which by 1948 were generating up to 40% of Chester’s power, but ceased operation around 1950, after which it was used as a water-pumping station.

The system of Trams was not financially self-supporting between the World Wars, partly because of the debt incurred when the council bought and electrified it, and partly because the tramways committee was responsible for street repairs. In 1928, rather than renovate the system, which needed new cars and tracks, the council converted to motor buses. This was supported by a balot of rate-payers. The new bus service was proposed to run on routes extending over a 10-mile radius from the city centre. The move was vigorously opposed, and a campaign was mounted to abandon the city routes to the privately owned Crosville Bus Company, whose proprietor, Claude Crosland-Taylor, was a member of the council. The council compromised and agreed to reduce the corporation's bus routes to a radius of three miles from the centre, sufficient to serve the built-up areas outside the borough boundary at Newton, Hoole, and Great Boughton. Although the first corporation buses appeared in 1930, there was continuing pressure from rate-payers to sell or lease the routes to Crosville. The transport committee claimed that it ran at a profit and had contributed greatly to reducing traffic-jams in the city; by 1936 it was indeed profitable, but still financing the tramway debt incurred in 1903.

The council's contribution to the city's cultural life was limited. In 1928 the central library in St John Street lacked open access and was condemned as "everything a library should not be"; although enlarged in 1929, it remained unsatisfactory. There was no public art gallery. The collections in the Grosvenor Museum passed to the council only in 1938, even though it controlled the building from 1915. Despite frequent campaigning by the Music Society, there was no large concert hall, and a building acquired for the purpose in 1927 was eventually used as council offices.

Chester in WW2

"Map of Air Routes and Landing Places in Great Britain, as temporarily arranged by the Air Ministry for civilian flying", published in 1919. "North Shotwick" is Sealand.

During the later 1930's it became evident that there was likely to be a resumption of war. Some historians report that R.A.F. Sealand was established at Queensferry in 1933 as a flying training school, and during the war supported front-line squadrons by repairing engines, instruments, armaments, and wireless telegraphy equipment. The site is however older: a report by the Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust makes it clear that it became home in 1916 to a flying school which, during World War I, was requisitioned by the War Office. Originally named RFCS Shotwick and later RAF Shotwick, the station was finally named RAF Sealand in June 1924 to avoid confusion with Scopwick in Lincolnshire. The report said:

  • "The site of the former Dutton's Flying School is an incredibly important historical location, effectively the origin point of the initial Royal Flying Corps and later RAF as a fighting force".

Government cutbacks eventually closed Sealand in April 2006 and ousted its final long-serving units. Industrial estate use since then has seen a considerable part of the airfield fairly rapidly cleared but some of the older hangars still stand. There also continues to be a civilian-manned element to support the military to repair and maintain electronics.

By 1938 there were two large aircraft factories near Chester: de Havilland at Broughton and Vickers-Armstrong near Hawarden. In 1938 an imposing classical headquarters was opened for the Army's Western Command in Queen's Park, on land bought from the corporation.

Chester's M.P., Charles Cayzer, died on 18th February 1940: he and his butler were found dead from gunshot wounds, with a shotgun laying next to Cayzer. The Tory nominee, Basil Nield, took his seat without a contest. By then council politics had become muted; there were no ward elections and W. Matthews Jones served as mayor from 1940 until the end of the war.

Joe Smoe compiled several informative pages of on aircraft incidents in or near Chester during WW2.

On the night of 28th March 1942 the German city of Lübeck was one of the first German cities to be attacked in substantial numbers by the Royal Air Force using "Area Bombing". Lübeck was a cultural centre and only lightly defended. The bombing followed the Area Bombing Directive issued to the RAF on 14 February 1942 which authorised the specific targeting of civilian areas including Germany's cities and their civilian inhabitants. The German response was the Baedeker raids. The name was derived from a comment by a German propagandist, Gustaf Braun von Stumm, a spokesman for the German Foreign Office. He is reported to have said on 24 April 1942, "We shall go out and bomb every building in Britain marked with three stars in the Baedeker Guide". Joseph Goebbels was furious as he was keen to brand British attacks as "terror bombing", and equally keen to designate German efforts as "retaliatory measures". Chester escaped these attacks despite being a potential "cultural" target, and also despite it housing important war industries such as de Havilland at Broughton and Vickers-Armstrong near Hawarden. Chester emerged from WW2 virtually unscathed by bombing.

Chester after WW2

In 1945 the city engineer and surveyor, Charles Greenwood, presented a redevelopment plan which attempted to reconcile economic and cultural considerations. As well as council offices and a replacement for the Victorian public market, which no longer complied with hygiene regulations, the plan included a civic centre with a new central library, a museum and art gallery, and a concert hall. His plan included much demolition so as to expose the city-walls, which would be lined with gardens. In 1949 the Ministry of Works offered to excavate the Amphitheatre if given guardianship. The council agreed, and work began in 1960. Since Dee House remained in private hands, only the section already owned by the city and the Archaeological Society could be excavated. The work proceeded slowly throughout the 1960s, partly because of difficulty in shoring up the adjoining higher ground. When it was completed in 1971, there was much disappointment among the general public that there was little to see. By 1974, the improvement committee, however, was prepared to state publicly that the amphitheatre was "one of the greatest unrealized assets in the city".

The original conception by Greenwood for the development of a "Civic Center" for Chester. This was published in 1945.

The town-planning proposals made by Chester immediately after the Second World War also extended beyond the county borough's boundaries, but in 1947 legislation made the county council the planning authority for the rural areas and outer suburbs, confining the city's responsibilities within its own boundaries. After that the city could prepare a development plan only for the central clearance area. A scheme based on Greenwood's plan was approved by the government in 1952 but not put into effect. In 1957, with government approval, the county drew up plans for a green belt, roughly following the line of the projected outer ringroad. The intention was to restrict further building in rural areas and to prevent urban sprawl from spreading all the way to Ellesmere Port, but in Chester it was seen as designed to prevent a successful submission for a borough extension.

The functions performed by the county borough were reduced by the post-war Labour government. Chester's Police force was merged with the county's in 1949, although the city still contributed to its costs and was the location of the county headquarters (in Foregate Street until 1964). Chester retained its own independent Fire Station until 1974. With the loss of the profitable municipal electricity undertaking through nationalization in 1948, the corporation's chief remaining assets were its estates, markets, and share of the profits of the race meeting. The municipal transport undertaking, which made large profits during the war, thereafter fluctuated between profits as high as £7,500 in 1959 and deficits of almost £3,000 in 1957 and 1958. In 1972 there was a surplus in the revenue account of £21,000.

In 1945 the infantile death rate was still a matter for concern. It had fallen as low as 56 per thousand live births in the late 1930s, but during the war rose again into the upper 70s. The reasons, which were extensively debated in local newspapers, were thought to be bad housing, maternal undernourishment through poverty, and deficiencies in health care. There were no resident consultant paediatricians, gynaecologists, or obstetricians, no specially trained children's nurses, no special children's wards, and insufficient maternity beds. In 1947 the infantile death rate in Chester rose to 81.2 per thousand live births, almost twice the national average, and the Ministry of Health instituted a local inquiry into the possible causes. In general Chester's health record improved dramatically between 1945 and the mid 1960s. Although better health services were the main cause, other factors included the alleviation of poverty and malnutrition, full employment, and the falling numbers of those living in overcrowded and defective houses.

Before the Ring-Road - a Pickford "Scammell" and a DeHavilland Comet negotiating the corner at the High Cross at Halloween in 1955.

One common myth about Chester in the 1950's is that DeHaviland Comet aircraft were frequently brought through the city centre, and that this was so inconvenient that it led to the construction of the Ring Road. This is nonsense. Two Comets were shipped through Chester city centre as a consequence of a series of aircraft crashes. The aircraft were being brought from Ireland and the image of the Comet in Chester is apparently of one of the two Mark II comets made to a specific order by Short Brothers and Harland Limited in Belfast and taken to Broughton in October/November 1955. After shipping to Preston, because of low bridges, the comets had to travel by a long route through Manchester, Stockport and Chester to get to Broughton. This was not a production run but for further special testing after the three crashes of comets a few years earlier. This shipping of wingless hulls by road was not part of the normal production method for the comet and made no commercial sense. An associated myth is that a ladder seen in the photograph is being used to move tram-wires out of the way: the trams had in fact been discontinued many years before.

In 1959 the corporation announced that the Blue Bell Inn in Northgate Street was too expensive to maintain and repair and would be pulled down. As noted above, the building The ensuing campaign ended when the government refused to permit demolition, and the corporation had to spend £2,500 on preserving the building. The debate over the Blue Bell kicked-off a new interest in conservation in Chester.

The 1960's

In the 1960s Chester spent less per head on services than the average county borough. In 1962, for example, it underspent the national average by 2 per cent on education, 32 per cent on health, 10 per cent on welfare, and 2 per cent on childrens' services. Its parsimony was the cause of civic pride, even though it had probably been achieved at the expense of quality of service. One of the council's objectives was to keep the rates of city-centre shops as low as possible, and when the government took over responsibility for valuation in 1955 shopkeepers found that their rates increased by up to 200 per cent. Chester was more successful than any other borough in the North-West in increasing its rateable value. The growth was mainly due to shops and offices. From 1952 to 1972 the contribution of industry as a percentage of the total rose from 3 per cent to 4.2 per cent whereas the share of shops and other commercial premises increased from 25 per cent to 38 per cent. The wish to maximize revenue determined the council's attitude towards the commercial redevelopment of the city centre, perhaps without sufficient consideration for environmental factors or the needs of Cestrians. In 1961 the corporation's only contribution to arts provision was £550 pledged to cover the losses incurred by the Hallé and Liverpool Philharmonic concerts. In 1967 for the first time it funded a Chester Festival, of which the central event was an adaptation of the Chester Mystery Plays on Cathedral Green. After criticism of the council's parsimony, arts expenditure increased, primarily in the form of subsidies to the Gateway theatre.

In 1962, after finally abandoning the proposal to widen Northgate Street, the council adopted an Inner Ring Road scheme which connected Little St John Street, Pepper Street, and Grosvenor Street to a new roundabout north of Chester Castle and then ran north along a widened Nicholas Street and Linenhall Street, to swing eastwards outside the walls on an elevated viaduct and then descend southwards across the site of the cattle market at the Gorse Stacks to join Foregate Street at the junction with City Road. Although the planned route connected with Grosvenor Bridge, which already took far too much traffic, the government endorsed the scheme and paid three quarters of its construction costs of £1.2 million. The northwestern section was opened in 1966, and the entire road had been completed by 1972. St Martin's church was sacrificed, along with Georgian houses on the east side of Nicholas Street, and Egerton House on Upper Northgate Street, regarded by one observer as among the city's best Georgian buildings.

In 1963, John M. Temple, then MP for Chester, spoke of the traffic issues in Chester. He made a plea for a revival of the plans for an outer ring road to be completed but these were refused.

Back in 1919 Chester had the high levels of environmental pollution more usually associated with industrial towns, largely caused by smoke from closely packed domestic chimneys and perhaps by emissions from the gas works. However the Leadworks was also a serious source of pollution. Although there was some improvement in the 1930s, mainly because of slum clearance in the city centre, such conditions made the need for public open spaces particularly important. There were, however, only 186 acres of open space, well short of the 518 acres required by the accepted standards of the day. The shortage was worse than it seemed, for some of the existing space was not laid out for recreation and the total included the Roodee, which was not always available to the public, and Earls Eye, which was subject to serious flooding. In 1929 the city acquired 64½ acres of the Meadows, but shrank from the expense of providing drainage and access. By the mid 1960's the area within the walls was virtually devoid of residents and consequently free of serious smoke pollution, however, the Inner Ring Road would soon provide a new source.

Lower Bridge Street in 1972 was in a dreadful state of repair.

In 1962 the Civic Trust, founded in 1959 to heighten public awareness of Chester's character, history, and civic design, initiated a plan to improve the appearance of the main streets. Owners and traders were persuaded to finance the refurbishment of their properties to an overall design, and to remove or replace unsightly signs. The council paid the fees of an architect to prepare the design and oversee its execution. In 1966 the first scheme, for Bridge Street, was judged a success, and Eastgate Street then received similar treatment.

Also in 1966, Richard Crossman, minister of housing and local government, commissioned a pilot study of four towns of special historic importance, including Chester, to elicit what special problems such places faced in relation to their modern development. The other towns were Bath, Chichester and York. The study led to the formulation of a national policy on conservation which had extremely important consequences for many historic towns and cities. Results in Chester included the council being persuaded to abandon plans to destroy Georgian houses in Queen Street, and their agreement to renovate the Nine Houses in Park Street rather than demolish them. However, conservation on a serious scale could have not have begun without extensive help from national funds. The report of Chester's consultant, Donald Insall, was a watershed in the history of conservation in the city. The content and status of his report, with the weight of central government behind it, finally changed the council's attitude. The crucial factor was again the availability of central government funds for conservation. The Insall Report dealt with all aspects of town planning, from traffic management to tree-planting, in relation to the city's historic fabric. It asserted that the restoration of old buildings could enhance both their own value and that of the whole city centre, and provided a realistically costed 15-year programme which identified the buildings most in need of saving.

Three of the thirteen separate areas of individual character mapped by Insall and Associates were identified as action areas. The first to be the subject of detailed plans by the consultants was the Bridgegate area in 1970, followed by Watergate Street in 1973. The Bridgegate plan was approved in 1973, and work financed equally by local and central government was completed in 1980. It began with the renovation of older buildings on the west side of Lower Bridge Street such as Shipgate House and Gamul House, and of terraces in the adjoining Gamul Place, which had been neglected by their owner, the county council. Sympathetically designed residential units were built to replace low-grade property and to fill empty sites. After 1974 the Falcon Inn at the top end of Lower Bridge Street was saved as a public house by a small charitable trust set up for the purpose.

Buildings

Chester's black-and-white style was echoed in some new buildings of the mid/late 20th century, but weakly stylized, for example, on the oversized Moat House Hotel and car park with which the architects Parry, Boardman, and Morris extended the Forum development over Trinity Street to St Martins Way. There were also buildings following the Brutalist style of architecture of which several car-parks are the best known surviving examples.

Better executed was Grosvenor Court, a courtyard development of open-plan offices planted on an unpropitious island site at the junction of the inner ring-road and the Bars. Though of one date (1989) and with one designer and developer, the Stannanought Partnership, the group was made to look as if had evolved, by being disguised as 18th century terraced houses and 19th century Grosvenor estate buildings. The renovation of Godstall Lane in 1980 and the Eastgate Street Row project of 1991-3, the latter designed by the Biggins Sargent Partnership for the corner of Eastgate Street and Northgate Street, revived a run-down and underused area immediately next to the Cross.

Unfortunately, some of the revelopment of the 1960's and later missed opportunities for archaeology. Excavations, which were funded by the government and the corporation, revealed the plan of a unique elliptical building, Roman floors on the Forum site, and the full extent of the bathhouse, together with part of a barrack block, under the Grosvenor Shopping Centre. None of these sites were preserved and many were not even well recorded. The destruction of the remains of the baths, still then of great size and a high degree of preservation, provoked much controversy.

Traffic

It was still feared in the 1990s that more draconian measures to restrict vehicular access to the city centre would damage the commerce on which its prosperity depended. Pedestrianization of the central streets was phased in between 1982 and 1990, closing Northgate, Eastgate, St. Werburgh, Bridge, and Watergate Streets, and the Cross, except for access. Frodsham Street was briefly closed to traffic which brought about doom of a much missed hardware/tool store. Some "rising bollards" were introduced in 2002 to control access to Frodsham Street. These were removed in 2016 after wrecking several cars. By 2024 new rising and moving bollards had been introduced across the city centre as a preventative measure against terrorism. "Blue Badge" holders requiring access to the city centre are advised to make enquiries before visiting.

The High Cross returned to its traditional location in 1975 after an absence of some 329 years.

Much through traffic was diverted round the city by the southerly bypass opened in 1977 and a more effective easterly bypass in the early 1990s. The outstanding part of the complete outer ring-road which had been demanded since the 1920s was a western bypass linked to a further bridge over the Dee, but only the sections from Liverpool Road to Sealand Road (Countess Way and the Chester Western Bypass) had been built by 2000, leaving the western stretch of the inner ring-road and the Grosvenor Bridge frequently congested.

Housing

Blacon Camp on a target dossier of the German Luftwaffe, July 1941.

Post-war council housing was concentrated in the areas added to the county borough in 1936. A very large estate was built at Blacon, and smaller ones adjoining each other in Newton and Upton. The large social housing estate at Blacon was built between 1948 and 1968 and covers an area of 1.2 square miles with a population of 13,400. It was formerly home to one of the largest council housing estates in Europe. Prior to World War II and for a short period afterwards, Blacon was also the base for an army camp which housed aircraft and war prisoners at the time. By the 1960's the city-wide shortage of development land influenced the layout of the southern neighbourhood at Blacon, where two 12-storeyed blocks of flats and a compact square of shops were built; other multi-storey blocks were planned but not built, largely because they were unpopular with tenants and expensive to erect. Building continued into the 1970s with low-rise housing at higher densities, mainly short terraces of mixed construction, until by c . 1980 the estate was built up.

In the 1990s both statutory and voluntary agencies in Chester understood that poverty was increasing and that the widening gap between rich and poor nationally was mirrored locally. The causes identified included unemployment, old age, sickness, and large families, all familiar since the 1930s or earlier, besides the new factor of far more extensive single parenthood. Government constraints on local authority spending prevented due attention being paid to poverty, but Chester's image as a wealthy area was also an inhibiting factor. An investigation by Cheshire county council into family stress identified three of the city's wards as being among the 33 areas in the county where the problem was worst: Lache ranked second worst, Blacon Hall seventh, and Dee Point (also in Blacon) thirtieth. In 1993 unemployment reached 40 per cent in parts of Lache, when the Chester district average was 7.8 per cent.

The only distinguished individual house built in Chester after 1974 was the Chaim Schreiber House off Eaton Road, designed c. 1983 by James Gowan as a post-modern fusion between the ideas of Le Corbusier and Palladio. James Gowan was obsessed with the Palladian country house. His version here has a refined, barn-like roof floating over a glazed ground floor, a pediment cum gable dominating the elevation. His client Chaim Schreiber never lived there.

Conclusions

It is easy to condemn many of the changes which took place in Chester in the 20th century, especially in the second half of it. Online forums are packed with comments that the local council is inept and even corrupt, frequently suggesting fiscal mismanagement and even bribery. Even if this were true it would be nothing compared with the ballot-rigging and other malpractice of the previous century. From early in the 20th century one major force in keeping council spending low was pressure from the rate-payers. Another was that the city was small, expansion was difficult and the corporation had little income from sources other than the rates. Much of the improvement which took place in the 19th century had to funded with external cash and brought about by external pressure. Many of the causes of the more negative changes arise from the conflict between, on the one hand, the historical layout and role of the city as a regionally important market town and key port for the Irish Sea Zone, and on the other hand, the vast growth in automotive transport and changes in the role of the High Street and the retail economy. While these issues have become prominent in the 21st century their roots can be seen in the 20th.

The establishment of the Civic Trust at the dawn of the 1960's was part of a national interest in heritage and did much to slow down and reverse urban decay as well as prevent inappropriate development. Some of the furore which resulted is well recorded on other websites: see for example the "Virtual Stroll" pages on the Amphitheatre and Market (and much else). In 1975 the retired church of St Michael was transformed into the Heritage Centre which provided a strong focus for local history. In December 2017 the Heritage Centre closure was announced as use of the building had been tranfered to become a "Tourist Attraction". The Heritage Centre moved in January 2018 to the Grosvenor Museum, but effectively closed for good during the COVID Pandemic.

Exploring the History

All 40 buildings on the Millennium festival trail were selected by local people as outstanding examples of Chester’s architectural development over two millennia. The five dating from the 20th century include the Cathedral Bell Tower, the Magistrates Court, Rufus Court, the Odeon and the former library in Northgate Street.

A number of relics of the tramline survive along the route srved by the Chester Trams. Mostly these are in the form of the "roses" which supported the overhead cables, although there are also a few stretches of track still visible, and, near "Tramways" student accomodation a set of points (not publicly accessible) manufactured by Hadfields. In nearby Car Street there are some partly exposed lines set in the ground. Other sections of track are often exposed during roadworks. A pair of cable supports can be seen on the 1880 former Sunday School building in City Road, which also has a dummy owl on the roof to scare pidgeons. One rose in Foregate Street has been lowered and a plaque added, although several nearby are in their original locations. Another, at the Grosvenor Hotel in Eastgate Street, has been re-purposed to prevent the signage swinging in the wind. On the underside of the bridge forming the Eastgate there are two holes which once supported the overhead cables.

Very little now remains of the "slum courts" which persisted well into the 20th century. Some of the few surviving "court buildings" in Chester can be found in Union Place off Cuppin Street. The houses are tiny and probably date from the 1830s. Brown brick in Flemish bond to front and English garden wall bond to ends; hipped grey slate roof. 3 storeys, each former house of one bay. Painted sandstone plinth; one sandstone step to each door; doorcases with simple pilasters, friezes and cornices. The Grosvenor Museum features a reproduction of an Edwardian bathroom. St Michael's Row in Bridge Street preserves an Edwardian shopping arcade.

The truly magnificent interior of Lowe's, which features a small exhibition about the history of the family, including a few items relating to Titanic.

The Military Museum and the Medical Museum both have exhibits relating to WW1.

The Suspension Bridge on the River Dee dates from 1923.

There are a few unusual relics of WW2 scattered around Chester. These include Emergency Water Supply signs, and a few pillboxes and like emplacements. A pair of type Fw3/26 emplacements guard the old Roman route to the north, one at Mannings Lane and the other just off the Warrington Road (both near where the Romans built their "practice forts"). The Roman route to the south also had a pillbox near Heronbridge - site of the Battle of Chester - and there is a further one on the Dee at Saltney.

Some examples of 1960's Brutalist architecture survive.

Sources and Links

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Books

A number of history books concentrate on Chester in the 20th Century. Some of these are still in print and many are available second-hand.

Related Pages

20th century Chester is mentioned on many pages on this website.

Online

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There is much to be found online about 20th century Chester. Much of this is concerned with the photographic record of Chester during the period, but some sites go into more detail as regards the social history.