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A Virtual Stroll Around the Walls of Chester
Chester's Visitors through the Ages: 7
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
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Chester's Visitors through the Ages: 7
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
n his work Ten Day's Tourist; or Sniffs of The Mountain Breeze published in 1865, William Bigg of Luton, Bedfordshire has left us the following description of Chester:
"This, perhaps most ancient city in the Kingdom, is in some of its features quite unique. The old wall of defence remains nearly perfect; and a pleasant walk of two or three yards wide on the top of it leads from the centre of one of the principle streets round among housetops, through gardens and orchards, whose pear trees throw up their fruit-laden branches to a level with the parapet: along the precipitous bank of the river [canal] moat, past an ancient look-out tower, now used as an observatory, at a point commanding a wide view of town and country; and along by a fragment of an ancient fortification, converted into a museum of a scientific institute; till at length that beautiful amphitheatre of the Roodeye, the Chester racecourse, stretches into view, its magic circle bounded by a grand stand of nature's own making. Beyond this there is the singlespan stone bridge over the river Dee, a marvel of elegance, expansion, and symmetry. The special peculiarity of Chester is, however, the 'Row'. In the ancient streets intersecting at the heart of the city, the foot-way for passengers runs through what was originally the ground floor of the houses on each side of the road, the basement storey now fronting on to the carriage way beneath. The shops under this singular arrangement, are set back into what, under ordinary circumstances would have been the back parlour of the establishment; and the public walk under the ceiling of the floor of the drawing-room or best sleeping chamber above. Once landed in one of these Rows, the fair sex may do their shopping without parasol or umbrella, having a good house over-head, and at the same time an open look out over the public street, and an unrestricted circulation of fresh air. There are about Chester many old houses worth looking at for their quaint exterior, and curious history. The fish and vegetable market, as in every strange town, is also worth a peep. In the streets the Welsh costume of many of the country people reminds you that you are still in the near neighbourhood of Cambria; from whose lakes and mountains you will return with, I doubt not, fresh braced nerves and energies renewed to your professional engagements, prepared to fight with greater vigour and brighter cheerfulness the great battle of life"
The following lengthy and rather romantic recounting of a European tour ending in a vist to Chester was penned by an anonymous correspondent to the New York Times and was published by that paper on 26th June 1881...
"After Montenegro, the Channel Islands; after the Channel Islands, Devonshire; after Devonshire, Chester. All four are alike antique, but each in a way peculiar to itself. Montenegro is the antiquity of war; the Channel Isles that of sea-faring; Devonshire, that of country life; Chester, that of town life, and of town life in its most picturesque form, viz. that strange intermingling of romance and excitement with quiet jog-trot money-making, of savage bloodshed with hearty boyish merry-making, which gave such wonderful life and coloring to the world of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Sauntering along the "Rows", those quaint old street arcades which stand out like antique book-shelves over the trim modern sidewalk below, you find yourself amid the black-and-white crossbeams, the narrow loophole-like windows, the high-peaked roofs, the deep shadowy doorways, the projecting house fronts covered with strange antique carvings of the England of Edward IV. Everything that you see callls up a vision of portly burgesses with furred mantles and heavy gold chains, of buxom dames in coif and farthingale, of sturdy young 'prentices in their flat caps and grey jerkins, peeping slyly under the broad-leaved hats that shade thefresh, rosy faces of their master's pretty daughters.
But other and widely different associations are suggested by the huge dark wall which, rising gauntly up in the midst of the clustering houses, marks the limit of Chester as it was in the days when it formed the outwork of England against the still-foreign and hostile Kingdom of Wales. In that rough-hewn age, the life of a Chester draper or grocer was something more than a mere haggling over goods and summing up accounts. Any dark night, the beacon in the iron grate upon the highest tower might fling its warning glare upon the white mantles of Welsh warriors swarming through Moilvanna Pass, or the steel-capped retainers of some robber-baron of the Marches, who had cast a longing eye upon the well-filled warehouses and apple-cheeked damsels of the town. In an instant the quaint old streets would be filled with hurrying figures; the great bell would be clanging out its note of alarm; the walls would echo with the tramp of iron heels; every stout burgher would snatch down sword and buckler from the wall and hasten forth to the place of muster. And then, for two or three fierce hours to come, the glimmering moon and the flaring beacon would look down upon cut and thrust, slash and stab, shouts, groans, yells, wild faces, tossing arms, gleaming steel, armed masses swaying to and fro like contending tides. Then suddenly the hideous uproar would die away, the streets would be cleared of the slain and wounded, and the survivors of the fray would be found next morning busied among their wares and their ledgers as if nothing had happened.
One may almost say that the history of Chester is epitomized in the view afforded by the circuit of its walls. From the top of the old Water Gate you see a train steaming over a long viaduct towards those purple mountains from which Gryffyth and Blethwallon once poured their invading hosts. A little further on you look down upon the smooth, green surface of the famous "Rood-eye" over which Scott's doughty Constable of Chester careered with levelled lance in days when Chester races were still undreamed of, and when modern civilisation had not yet changed the tourney-field into a place for rogues to win money and fools to lose it. Around the further edge of the Rood-eye curves the bend of a broad, smooth shining river, no other than the Dee, upon which (possibly not far from this very spot) lived the "jolly miller" who has been immortalised by that jovial boast which "bluff King Hal" is said to have contradicted so emphatically:
"I envy nobody, no, not I
And nobody envies me!"
Just at this point appears a contrast equal to that celebrated by Burns in the "Auld and New Brigge of Ayr". Beyond the race-course the broad white highway, leading southward to Wrexham and the Welsh border, is carried across the Dee, at a considerable height above it, by one magnificent arch of hewn stone, with a span of fully 250 feet. To the left of this, about a quarter of a mile further up the river, its clear, bright current is flecked with a long streak of dark red, like a bar-sinister athwart some gorgeous escutcheon. This is the Old Bridge, with its low, massive, moss-grown arches of stern red sandstone contrasting strikingly with the green, sunny freshness of the level banks. Just beyond the bridge, a group of queer little toy houses, built on the wall itself, look down upon the river, which at this point almost touches the base of the rampart. On the left hand, a little higher up the slope, stands a grim old church of the Saxon style, the crumbling red tower of which is coeval with the city itself, and memorable to the curious in legendary lore froma weird old tradition of a tall, one-eyed, silent monk who lived there for many a year after the battle of Hastings, and whose name among men had been Harold, King of England.
Above this relic of the past stands another, which needs no aid of romance to adorn its associations. On the highest point of the ridge cluster the dark towers of the old castle, now garrisoned by English Red-coats and English cannon, instead of Norman men-at-arms with cross-bows and mamongel. Here ruled the grim Earl Leofric, husband of Tennyson's Godiva, and father of that Hereward whom the old chroniclers call "the last of the English" as having stood his ground against the Normans for more than a year after every other spark of Saxon independence had been trampled out by the iron heel of William the Conqueror. Here William himself established his headquarters during that wonderful campaign that overthrew the Saxon Earl Edwin and his Welsh ally Blethwallon, and carried fire and sword for many a league through the passes of the Welsh mountains. Here Edward I held high festival on his way to extinguish Cymrian nationality forever, and proclaimed his infant son, Edward II, born at Carnarvon Castle, as the first "Prince of Wales". And here- a strange association of ideas indeed- lived Matthew Henry, the famous biblical commentator, in whos honour a monumental tablet now stands in fron tof one of the principal churches.
And now the wall bends round to the north east, and you pass through another cluster of those queer little houses that cling to its top like limpets every here and there. Most of them are small shops, and in not a few of their windows you see displayed a tempting muster of those quaint, worm-eaten, tobacco-colored folios and quartos for which Chester is famous, with red and black letters intermingled in their title-pages, like a half-finished game of chess.
All at once you find yourself looking over the balustrade of a solid arch down into the long vista of Foregate-street, the strangest imaginable jumble of ancient and modern, of Dutch tiles and hewn-stone fronts, carved porches and varnished doors, little bow-windowed taverns and tall, prim-looking hotels, oaken crossbeams and ornamental cornices. In the midst of this medly eddies a noisy flood of tall, sturdy, ruddy men in top-boots, and shoert, close-cropped men with sleek, shining faces, evidently engaged in some keen trial of commercial fence, while ever and anon the crownd is cleft by a bare-headed man on a vicious-looking horse, which he seems bent upon showing off to the best advantage; for there is no shrewder bargainer than your genuine North of England man when chaffering over the animal which his Danish forefathers used to eat. But there is no time to linger over the scene, life-like though it is; for now the wall makes another bend, and, passing through a serried mass of roofs and chimneys, brings you out suddenly in front of a small patch of smooth green turf, in the midst of which rises the stern, dark-red vastness of the ancient cathedral. The great central tower, huge, square, massive, rising far above the trim modern buildings around, fills the eye so royally that one almost regrets that the Shah did not see it before his celebrated introduction to the Duchess of Westminster, on which occasion his Majesty was graciously pleased to observe, "Ah, yes! I've heard of you, but I thought somehow that you were a good deal bigger"- having, in fact, mistaken her for Westminster Abbey.
And now comes the most picturesque part of the whole circuit. Just at the angle that faces towards the great railway depot, the wall is surmounted by a crumbling round tower, on the rusty, iron-studded door of which and inscription tells how Charles I stood here one grey September evening in 1645, and saw his last army smitten hip and thigh on Rowton Moor by the hard-handed saints of Cromwell. Beyond this tower, the rock upon which the wall is built goes sheer down into a deep, narrow, moat-like canal, on the other side of which lies a region of smoke and dust and red-brick chimneys, peopled with hard, sallow faces and bare, grimy arms and tattered blue shirts and uncouth, provincial patois and round-mouthed British oaths. This, slightly relieved at intervals by a dainty little garden or a patch of inclosed ground, brings you round again to your starting-point at the old Water-gate, and then, if you are wise, you will walk up Water gate-street itself and look at the quaintly-carved black and white front of an old and fast-decaying house halfway along it, upon one of the frontal beams of which are engraved, in crabbed, antique characters, the words "God's Providence is Mine Inheritance"- a memento, as every man, woman or child in Chester will tell you in a moment, of the gallant burgher who, when the shadow of the plague hung black over the doomed town, stood firm at his post with death staring him in the face, and escaped unharmed, while all around him there was not a house where there was not at least one dead.
This survey being over, the only thing left to do is to inspect the half-completed restoration of the cathedral, a task which could have fallen into no abler hands than those of good old Dean Howson, whose kindly face is a living contradiction to the popular theory of "dry-as-dust scholars", although his share in the "Conybeare and Howson" New Testament would suffice of itself to establish his reputation for learning. It is true that the cathedral work is still very far from completion. Nearly $500,000 has been expended upon it already, and as much more will probably be required to finish it. Still, much has undoubtedly been done. The taste and energy of the Dean have removed the hideous coating of plaster with which one of the finest interiors in Europe was defaced in the seventeenth century. Several huge, ungainly chandeliers and tasteless attempts at ornamentation have been wisely banished to a remote corner of the building. The unsightly partitions which once marred the symmetry of the transepts have been demolished, a reform which brought to light one curious relic of the past in the shape of a newspaper of the last century, which was found pasted upon one of the planks.
But one loses all thought of details in the first glance at the noble vista of the interior. So might some gerand old primeval forest appear if turned to stone, the stately trunks being represented by the solid strength of the pillared arches, and the clustering foliage by the sombre beauty of the panelling which hangs over them in mid-air. What a place for a midnight vigil on All Soul's Eve, when the ghostly moonlight, streaming through the great clerestory overhead, might reveal the cowled figures of pale, hollow-eyed monks gliding with noisless tread along the triforium, while the grim Norman warriors, starting up from the vaulted recesses below, flashed back the dim light of the altar candles from their battle-dinted mail.
But when once you have fully drank in the magnificent effect of the tableau as a whole, the details begin to grow on you little by little. If you do not duly appreciate them, it is no fault of the chatty old verger, who descants upon the improvements as fluently and complacently as if he had done the whole thing himself. It would have been a rare treat for Dickens to have jotted down the old fellow's quaint, rambling talk, with its high-flown guide-book phraseology, relieved ever and anon by architectural blunders almost as startling as that of the luckless schoolboy who stated that Cleopatra was "stung to death by an apse". Moreover, this good verger is a bit of a wag in his way, and keeps on hand a stock of mild little cathedral-precinct jokes, which season his discourse, not unpleasantly. "You will remark", says he, "the helegance of this wood-work, which is composed of oak from Bashan, cedar from Lebanon, and olive from Gethsemane. You don't see a mo-saic every day made of stone from Solomon's Temple; do you now, Sir? But such is actually the case with this mo-saic before the haltar, a gift from the Jerusalem excavators. You will next hobserve the tasteful design of the haltar-cloth, which, as you perceive, represents the seven plants symbolical of our Lord's Passion. The wheat and vine typify the sacrament, the flower and fruit of the olive the agony in the garden, the hyssop gave Him drink on the cross, and the flax and myrrh emblematise his burial. These oaken seats in the stalls, you notice, are made so as to slide off any monk who fell asleep- would come rather hard upon some modern congregations eh, Sir?
Here," he adds, turning up the seats and displaying various grotesque carvings of quarreling couples, mitred foxes, clergymen seizing tithe-pigs, and other samples of medieval wit; "here's a little 'igh art combined with moral teaching. This door used to lead into the confessional; it's a pretty wide one, as you see, no doubt to accomodate some Father Tichborne of those days. In this little room here we keep some of our curiosities, including, you perceive, a manuscript Bible of the twelfth century, and the remains of a black-letter Testament of the fifteenth, still retaining the chains which used to bind it to the front of the pulpit. This way out, Sir, if you please, and allow me to point out to you those two carvings on the wall. This, you see, represents Lord Beaconsfield defending the English Crown against Dr. Kenealy, and that is Mr. Gladstone overturning the Pope's triple crown with a lever. That's what one might call " truth disguised in a jest", as my old master, Canon A. said when he admonished his choir by changing the Litany to 'have mercy upon us, miserable singers'. Thank'ee Sir, and good day".
Finally, on we go to hear from some 20th Century visitors to Chester...
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