10-12 February 2023
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| Chester Walls Trail Map |
I have been promising Jorge for years to bring him to Chester. I first visited Chester when I was about 20 years old and I came to spend a 2-week holiday with my friend Leonor in Cheshire. She brought me to Chester and I fell in love with it.
We came to Cheshire for a sad reason, a funeral, but we decided to create a positive and joyful memory to go alongside the sadness and stayed in Chester for the weekend.
The hotel was chosen taking in mind that we wanted it to be walking distance from the centre with parking as we did not want to use the car, at a reasonable price. Breakfast included would be a bonus. The Holiday Inn Express Chester - Racecourse ticked the boxes. Just on the outside of the walls, with views to the Racecourse, in a quiet location, with secure parking and clean and comfortable rooms. The breakfast wasn't exceptional but it did it's job.
We got some advice from locals and had dinner Friday night at The Architect and boy were we happy! An old beautiful Georgian house, with great service and excellent food. Psychologically, we licked our fingers... For 2 mains + 2 deserts + 2 drinks we paid £67.
The city centre in Chester is very lively at night, something we had not expected. The main streets are full of restaurants, bars, pubs and some with very loud and lively music. Partygoers dressed for a night out and bouncers at the doors. This is a city centre with plenty of life, day and night!
Chester is a city in the county of Cheshire in the Northwest of England. It was founded in 79 AD as a Roman fort with the name Deva Victrix and it became one of the main army camps in Roman Britain, later becoming a major civilian settlement. It has since seen Viking raiders and Anglo Saxon invaders before being taken over by the Normans. Chester played a significant part in the Industrial Revolution in the later part of the 18th century and the city grew from it. Much of Chester's architecture dates from the Victorian era with many of the buildings being modelled on the Jacobean half-timbered style, called the 'black-and-white revival'.
Our hotel sits on the outside of the Watergate which, as you may deduct, is the start of Watergate St.
Watergate
The river Dee was once deep enough for big vessels to reach the port of Chester and the port of Chester was at the Watergate. In Medieval times, Chester's port was only second in importance to Bristol on the west coast. Watergate was the main entrance to the city for goods and vital for tolls and regulation of trade.
The Georgian Watergate was erected in 1788, replacing a narrow fortified gateway with a broad and elegant entrance and promenade.
Chester's four main roads (Eastgate St, Northgate St, Watergate St and Bridge St) form a cross configuration in the middle of the city centre. This configuration follow routes laid out by the Roman fort. And what is in the middle of that cross? That's right, Chester Cross! Figures...
City Walls of Chester
The city walls of Chester are the most complete Roman and Medieval defensive town walls in Britain. They were started by the Romans in 70-80 AD and improved through the centuries until reaching their final complete circuit by the mid-12th century.
Currently, the walls form an almost complete circuit measuring 1.8 miles - 2.9km circumference and they are fully walkable. On Saturday morning, that is what we decided to do. Starting at the Watergate and walking counter-clockwise.
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| Ground markers along the circuit with the miles walked. |
Chester Racecourse or Roodee
2000 years ago, the area outside the gate where now lays the racecourse, was a tidal salt marsh at the head of the river Dee estuary. It became a busy Roman port and part of the so-called Roman 'quay-wall' is still visible, beneath the city walls (see on the right handside of the photo below).
However, in the Middle Ages, the river gradually silted up forming a riverside meadow and the area became known as the Roodee after the Rood ('stone cross') that stood on an eye ('island') in the middle of the meadow. This laid the foundation for the area to be eventually turned into a racecourse.
The first horse race at the Roodee was held on the 9th February 1539 and the venue is recognised by Guinness World Records as 'the oldest racecourse still in operation'. In nearly 500 years of racing, races at Chester only stopped 3 times for the: English Civil War, WW I and WW II.
The Roodee is also the smallest racecourse used in significant British racing, measuring just 1 mile and 1 furlong (1.125 miles - 1.8km) around in total, and almost circular meaning that horses are almost always on the turn.
There were a few dog walkers using the circuit. It is not a closed space and there is access to the course but not to the course buildings or the aptly named restaurant 1539. Parking is paid. During races, entrance is paid but spectators can watch for free from the walls which offer a clear view of the whole circuit.
Chester Castle
The first Chester castle was built in 1070 by William the Conqueror, a timber tower atop an earth mound. During the 12th & 13th centuries, the castle was rebuilt in stone and extended by successive Earls of Chester. Access to the castle is free but it is only open at specific days and times, during Summer and Christmas.
From here we digressed from the walls and walked into the old city. Our 'walking the walls' idea didn't last long...
Castle Street
No.18 Castle St - Golden Eagle Pub
Corner of Castle St and Lower Bridge St - The Ye Old Kings Head
Built in 1622 over foundations from a 1208 building, said to be the first stone built-house in Chester of which there is a record. It is said to be haunted and currently trades as My Haunted Hotel. Stay overnight at your own peril!
No.53 Lower Bridge St - Dollectable
On the other side of the haunted hotel, a dolls shops called Dollectable with a somewhat neglected look, continuing the same vibes of the hotel.
Bridge Street - Chester Rows
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| Bridge St |
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| No.38 Bridge St |
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| No.13 Bridge St |
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| No.12 Bridge St |
As far as I'm concerned, the Chester Rows are the highlight of Chester!
They consist of a set of structures in each of the 4 main streets in Chester radiating from The Cross, with a ground floor (or street level) and a first floor (or row level).
On the street level there is a set of shops, many of which are entered by going down a few steps. Historically, this underground level was constructed in stone unlike the other levels which were constructed in timber, and it was called undercrofts or crypts, of which only 20 exist today. The undercrofts were used for storage or for selling more valuable goods.
On the row level, there are a series of covered walkways behind which are entrances to shops. On the street side of the walkways are railings and an area which was used as shelves or stalls for the display of goods, called stallboard.
The floors above the row level are used for commercial or domestic purposes or for storage.
Dating from the Medieval era, probably 13th century, the Rows may have been built on top of rubble remaining from the ruins of Roman buildings. From the 17th century, some wealthy families decided to extend their homes by enclosing the rows, thus meaning that we can no longer walk the full length of the rows. During the 19th century, there was a revival of the Rows and many earlier buildings were replaced with black-and-white timber-framed structures.
The Rows provide for an enjoyable walk, a varied shopping experience and a stop for a meal. Part of this can be done under the walkways which is a bonus in a part of England where rain is abundant.
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| Row level |
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| Stallboard |
Built in the early 1900s, it fits behind the main street without disturbing the historic frontage. It provides a light and elegant enclosed shopping area, today leading on to the more modern Grosvenor Shopping Centre.
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| Entrance to St Michael's Row. |
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| St Michael's Row or St Michael's Arcade |
No.48 Bridge St - Three Old Arches
The stone frontage at the street and row level is considered to be the earliest shop front still surviving in England, built in 1274. It was once the largest-known Medieval townhouse in the Chester Rows.
Eastgate Street
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| No.37-43 Eastgate St (1859-1892). |
Eastgate - Eastgate Clock
Although the original gate was Roman, the present Eastgate dates from 1768-9 when it was widened to allow coaches through. In 1899 a clock was added to the top to celebrate the diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria, 2 years earlier. The clock is made of iron work, it has a clock face in all 4 sides and a copper cupola.
Although Eastgate has changed dramatically over time, Eastgate St has retained its role as the city's busiest thoroughfare.
From here we walked the narrow Godstall Lane, with its shops and restaurants and ended up at the Cathedral.
Chester Cathedral
(Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary)
There has been a church in this location since the 7th century and since the 10th century it houses the shrine of St Werburgh, a 7th century Mercian princess who became a nun and rose to be in charge of all the nunneries in Mercia. What was once the Benedictine Abbey of St Wesburgh, became the Chester Cathedral after the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1540.
Construction of the cathedral was an ongoing affair between the 10th and the 16th centuries. It was extensively renovated in the 19th century and a free standing bell tower was added in the 20th century. The cathedral has been the seat of the Bishop of Chester since 1541.
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| Built in New Red Sandstone from the Cheshire Basin. |
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| Beautiful metal art on the cathedral door. |
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| Detail of the West door (outside). |
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| West door - main entrance (inside). |
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| Stained glass with a very modern design. |
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| View from the lectern (17th century) towards the choir (1380). |
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| The High Altar. |
The Lady Chapel was built in 1265-1290 and contains the Shrine of St Werburgh. The floor tiles are beautiful, the ceiling lamps are gorgeous and the white washed vault gives it a homely feel. It's a very cosy and inviting space.
St Werburgh's Chapel was converted in a chapel for the Ukrainian refugees to pray.
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| Stained windows with images of saints. |
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| Detail of the stonework. |
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| Door to the garden. |
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| Refectory, 13th century. |
Exiting the cathedral, we decided to explore the rows.
Northgate Street
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| Northgate Rows |
Eastgate Street
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| No.26 Eastgate St |
Chester Cross - Chester High Cross
The place where three of Chester's main roads meet (Eastgate St, Watergate St and Bridge St) is called Chester Cross.
The original Chester High Cross dated from the 14th century and it was replaced by a new one in 1476 (octogonal pillar topped by a carved head and a crucifix) and gilded in 1603. It was damaged and broken up during the Civil War in 1646 but the head was kept safe. The cross was restored using the saved head in 1949.
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| Chester High Cross in front of St Peter's Church at Chester Cross. |
Some row entrances are quite grand and have very detailed signs. Just in case you get lost.
Entrance on the corner of Eastgate St and Bridge St (1909): Eastgate Row South and Bridge St Row East.
At this point we decide to walk down to the river, past Bridgegate, and walk by the river.
Bridgegate - Old Dee Bridge
The Old Dee Bridge was built in 1387 and replaced an earlier wooden bridge swept away in a flood. This was an important river crossing into Wales and there has been a bridge here since Roman times.
In the past, the city side was guarded by the Bridgegate and a fortified round tower. The country side, far side of the bridge, there was an outer gateway complete with drawbridge and portcullis. Of these structures, only the Bridgegate remains.
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| Bridgegate |
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| Old Dee Bridge over the river Dee. |
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| Someone's back door traverses the wall straight to the riverside. |
At this point we traversed the Grosvenor Park, where we stopped for a hot drink at The Lodge Coffee House and Kitchen because we had been walking for almost 4h and were getting cold.
Exiting the park and turning westbound on Union St, we passed by the City Baths.
City Baths or Public Baths
The City Baths opened in 1901 and are still operational. It has a very early 20th century look and the 4 chimneys are gorgeous. Inside it has 2 swimming pools: Atlantic (larger, 23m long, deep enough to dive and surrounded by galleries) and Pacific (smaller, 20m long and shallow).
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| Atlantic pool (credits: www.chestercitybaths.com). |
Continue along the Union St and onto Vicar's Lane and you'll find the Roman Amphitheatre.
Roman Amphitheatre
The first amphitheatre was small and built soon after 80 AD. By the early 3rd century the amphitheatre had been rebuilt and enlarged and it was a massive stone structure (101x88m with 13m height) with timber seating for about 7000 spectators.
Chester's Amphitheatre may be the biggest known in Britain but it's underwhelming because there is not much left of it and at least half sits underneath the road and adjacent buildings.
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| Model of the stone amphitheatre (3rd century). |
Newgate - Wolfgate
This is one of the most recent gateways. It was first recorded in the late 12th century and it was called Wolfeld's Gate. In the late Middle Ages its name changed to Peppergate. It was last rebuilt in 1768 and by then the name had reverted to Wolfgate.
By the 1930s a wider gateway was needed due to traffic congestion and a neo-Gothic bigger gate was built to the side in 1938, called Newgate. This new gate was designed to blend in with the Medieval walls, complete with ornamental arrow slits and heraldic shields.
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| Newgate to the left and Wolfgate to the right. |
Roman Gardens
Next door to the amphitheatre and squeezed against the city walls, the Roman Gardens descend towards the river.
The gardens were first laid out in 1949 to display the Roman building fragments that had been discovered throughout the city during the previous century. In 2000 they were extended and redesigned to provide a route between the city centre and the river.
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| Note the different bricks on the part of the wall that was breached. |
Halfway down the garden we found a door on the western side of the wall.
It leads straight onto Park St where we stumbled across Almshouses.
The Nine Houses
Nine almshouses were built on the 17th century but, of these, only 6 remain. They were restored in 1969 and are private residences.
From Park St we went up a ramp onto the city walls and continued the city walls walk. I decided to continue clockwise because we had left the city walls way back at Chester Castle and had not done the southern part of the walls. This time we were going to do the entire circuit in one go and it took us about 1 hour.
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| View from the wall towards the river Dee. |
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| An art deco jewel on the wall. |
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| On the walls looking towards the Old Dee Bridge. |
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| On top of Bridgegate looking out. |
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| Nun's Road towards Watergate. |
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| On top of Watergate looking in. |
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| The Queen's School - not your average school. |
The Water Tower
There are 2 towers, the smaller Bonewaldesthorne's Tower and the larger Water Tower, both built to defend the port. The Bonewaldesthorne's Tower was built first, in the 10th century. As the river began to silt up, the wall was extended and the Water Tower built between 1322-1325, still allowing larger ships to dock at the base of the new tower.
An artist's impression of both towers in the late 14th century:
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| Credits: Cheshire West and Chester Council. |
In the 19th century, trains replaced ships as the main form of trade and transportation. The railway line from Chester to north Wales was cut through the city walls in 1846, with no regards to the ancient monument.
To get to the towers you need to descend stairs leading to the Water Tower Gardens.
The Northgate was unimportant during the Medieval period and only used for local access, it was a simple rectangular tower with a narrow gateway, a gatehouse. The present gate was built in 1810.
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| Northgate (credits: en.wikipedia.org). |
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| On top of Northgate looking in. |
The north side of the city walls runs along the Main Line of the Cheshire Union Canal.
King Charles Tower or Phoenix Tower
The King Charles Tower was once a Medieval watch-tower, but by the 17th century it had fallen in disrepair. There wasn't enough 'murage' tax being raised to pay for its upkeep. To fix the problem, the City's Guilds were invited to lease the tower as a meeting-house in exchange to keep it in good repair.
It became known as the Phoenix Tower after the emblem of the Painter's Company (a phoenix) was added in 1613. It can still be seen above the door.
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| Getting close to the cathedral, the tower can be seen. |
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| Getting to the Eastgate. |
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| Eastgate Clock |
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| On the Eastgate looking in. |
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| On top of Newgate looking out towards the Amphitheatre. |
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| Along the walls with the Roman Garden below. |
We were advised to try Chip'D so we walked to Northgate St. It sells chips. Unpeeled and unwashed. They have a manual contraption to cut big potatoes in wedges and straight to the fryer. They are twice fried and served on paper cones which can be easily slotted into the tables they have outside the shop. If this isn't enough reason to make this an experience to have, the fact that they have 21 dips to choose from should. Twenty one! I liked my dip, Jorge didn't like his. Oh well... It cost £8.58.
Walking down Northgate Street:
Storyhouse
The Storyhouse is an arts centre opened in 2017 in the remodelled 1936 Odeon Cinema, including a theatre, a cinema, a restaurant and the city's main library.
Coachworks Arcade
There has been a coachworks in this site since 1870 and the current façade was built in 1914 for the Westminster Coach and Motor Car Works. Currently, only the façade is left and inside a new leisure square with shops and restaurants was built in 2021.
Janya
Baby Indian elephant bronze statue. A gift from Chester Zoo to the people of Chester.
Chester Town Hall
The Town Hall was opened in 1869 and built in Gothic revival style.
Grosvenor Museum
The last stop of the day was the Grosvenor Museum. The museum houses collections exploring the history of Chester, its art and silver heritage and its natural heritage. It's free to visit and it's open Tuesday-Saturday 10.30am-5pm and Sunday 1-4pm.
There were two particular exhibitions I was interested about: Roman Chester and Chester Rows.
Roman Chester
A very detailed exhibition about the building materials in the Roman era gives you an insight into their houses.
Types of floors:
- Small tiles laid flat.
- Small tiles laid on edge in a herringbone pattern (opus spicatum).
- Cement which contains fragments of broken tile (opus signinum).
- Mosaic, made with small cubes of coloured stone/tile/pottery/glass (tesserae).
- Constructed in concrete and lime mortar.
- Plastered.
- Painted in a simple whitewash or in a plain colour like red. More rarely walls were painted with elaborate murals that could include human and animal figures, plants, architectural features and geometric patterns.
- Windows were made out of lots of small panes of glass held together with lead and iron fittings.
- Panes were usually blue-green and made by pouring heated glass into a tray.
- The thickness, finish and colour of the panes would have allowed daylight through but would not have been transparent enough to see through.
Types of ceramic tiles:
1. Box-flue tiles: hollow box-shaped tiles were built into walls as 'flues' for the hypocaust, Roman's central heating system.
- Tegula (pural: tegulae) - flat tile with raised edges; they were laid side-by-side starting with a row along the bottom, and were slightly overlapped by each consecutive row.
- Imbrex (plural: imbrices) - a tapering curved tile; the imbrices were placed over the tegulae edges and packed with cement.
- Antefix - Occasionally decorated antefixes were attached to the bottom row of tiles, to cover the joint between the tegula and imbrex.
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| Antefixes. |
Chester Rows
Architecture of the rows:
No.9 Watergate St - God's Providence House
Flanked by Georgian buildings and dating from 1652, the inscription 'God's Providence is Mine Inheritance' is said to refer to the house's escape from an outbreak of plague. The owners wanted to demolish it in 1861 but the Chester Archaeological Society convinced them to rebuilt it in a more 19th century style but using some of the original timbers in 1862.
Built in 1700 for George Booth by remodelling two 13th century houses. It is the largest house in Watergate St.
Note the gate before the door on the photo below. These can be seen in several buildings in this street, mainly Georgian.
The crypt construction is likely to be from the 12th century but the building is from the 19-20th centuries. The 'Saint Ursula's' written over the doorway was a reference to a coffee shop which once occupied the crypt.
George Lloyd was the Bishop of Chester from 1604 until his dead in 1615. If the 1615 date on one of the window panels is correct and represents the date when the building was completed then Bishop Lloyd may not have lived here.
Built in 1591, it had many residents, one of them the Stanleys of Alderley, one of Chester's most influencial families. It was restored and extended towards Watergate St in 1935.
I woke up at 9pm, disoriented and hungry. 'Right, shall we go out for some dinner?', I asked Jorge. He bluntly said 'At this time of night, no one is giving us dinner'. 'Weren't you supposed to wake me up?!?'. 'I tried', he said. We must have walked quite a fair amount of miles for me to be this tired...
So I had a 4h nap. Not unheard off... But I really wanted to try a Japanese restaurant we had seen in Watergate St and I had missed the opportunity. I had a couple of biscuits, brushed my teeth and went back to bed, really upset!
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