Article for 2012 Sep 22

2012

Appendix

For more information about Chester and its attractions, please consult ChesterWalls.info, VisitChester.com, EnglishHeritage.org.uk, and/or ChesterTourist.com. The first of these is particularly informative.

There is an appendix to this appendix, a table of photographs relating to the eight city gates.

The photos used to illustrate these articles may not have been taken on each day. Clicking on each image should display the Flickr page, on which is the actual date taken.

Sep 22 Sat

There are large sections of my life that go undocumented in this Blog. One such section is my involvement with a local children’s drama-group, Jigsaw Music Theatre. I have written lyrics for songs; I have directed groups developing scenes; I have created a poster advertisement. For this poster advertisement I have today gone around Chester with my camera, amassing a monumental collection of photographs. The reason for this? The play’s about three ghosts of Chester, from three different eras. They are a Roman romantic, a widow in a window, a jilted Juliet.

The Roman romantic and the widow in the window are for another time - indeed, they are from another time. To be fair, the jilted Juliet was also from another time, the Victorian era, so maybe I should likewise leave her (as her lover did) for another article. But that would reflect badly on me (and be harsh on that unfortunate tobacconist’s-daughter). So I’ll stick to the script.

Sarah Bewlay was her name, which we’re pronouncing to rhyme with “cruelly”: she was treated that way. She fell in love with an anonymous attendant to the local marquess. As attendant, his job was to wait on his master, but it was Sarah who waited, for her groom to appear on her arranged wedding-day. They say a gloved hand was seen tossing a handkerchief onto the street, out of a coach dark as a hearse; Sarah recognised the handkerchief as one she had given him, and hung herself above her father’s shop.

Grim stuff. If you feel you need a bit of fresh air after reading that, you’re in luck (unlike Sarah). Let’s take a trip to some of the places named after the marquess the runaway attended. To my knowledge, Richard Grosvenor’s name appears in twenty-one Cestrian place-names....

From Eastgate St (where Bewlay’s Tobacco once was), you can walk via Foregate St to Grosvenor Park, where there are copious green spaces, flowerbeds, pigeons and squirrels (which I haven’t counted in my twenty-one statistic), and even a miniature railway (which I also haven’t included). There is also a statue to Richard. Adjacent to Grosvenor Park, and included in the 21-figure, are Grosvenor Park Road and Grosvenor Park Terrace, as well as the Grosvenor Rowing Club.

Back inside the city walls, the Grosvenor Shopping Centre, known affectionately as the Precinct. I say “affectionately” liberally: it is at the site of former Roman buildings, including the bath-house, and these are now unlikely to be excavated any time soon, as you can imagine. More difficult (to a Latinist at least) to fathom is the willful destruction of several relics found during the preparation of the site for the building of the Shopping Centre. But I digress.

The axeman’s blade is not a suitable future for such relics from the past. Far better would be the Grosvenor Museum, which is situated on Grosvenor Street, which connects via the Grosvenor Roundabout to Grosvenor Road, a road that runs across Grosvenor Bridge like I ran across that bridge when the ghosts of Chester terrified me out to the suburbs.

It is in such suburbs that you find estate of the current Duke of Westminster, Gerald Grosvenor, Richard’s great-grandson. Continuing along Grosvenor Road we come to the Overleigh Roundabout, Overleigh being a common name in this suburb of Chester, Handbridge: Overleigh Road, Overleigh St. Mary’s Primary, Overleigh Cemetery (where the pursuing spectres finally came off my tail)... On the other side of the Overleigh roundabout is Duke’s Drive, part of Gerald’s empire (sorry, I’m thinking Roman again, Roman empire).

And if my lame puns make you feel ill, you may make use of the Grosvenor Nuffield Hospital, on the western edge of Gerald’s estate. (I don’t think the Grosvenors own this medical centre, or much that I’ve mentioned bearing the name, not yet. It wouldn’t surprise me.)

So there I was in that wooded estate of Grosvenor, when a child ran down my spine, and traversed my waist, and, resting above my navel, peered up at me with eyes. Eyes like the gentlest of lasers, carving away at my suspicion, leaving an expression of compassion and sympathy on my face.

This child was the offspring of the ghosts that had chased me thus far, a very small neonate with the cutest face, like a fluffy lemur. Indeed, the word “lemur” derives from the Latin “lemures”, meaning ghosts. I ceased to be terrified of the ghosts then. Which was fortunate, as the ghosts, crowding around me and the infant, were able to tell their tales, so that I might better tell their tales to a living audience, via the children of the drama-group.

And what are these tales? Oh, erm, I can’t say. Drama-group secret.