“A Cestrian Pedestrian” series of articles

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.

Nov 17 Sat

I went on another walk around Chester today. It was nice. Especially as I finally found the Blue Bell Restaurant, the (sadly now closed for business) setting of the second of the stories to be told at that drama-group I’ve been assisting with. Turns out it’s just beyond the cathedral, on Northgate Street. I thump my forehead in self-disgust. Of course a restaurant named after bells is near the most major bell-tower/church in Chester!

This restaurant features the window of the widow-in-the-window story. During the seventeenth century, Chester was the last city to fall to the Parliamentarians in the Civil War. A short walk from from the Northgate is the Phoenix Tower, at the northeast corner of the citywalls; the tower was unknown to me until I walked that section of the walls. But the tower wasn’t unknown to King Charles and his army: according to the inscription on the tower’s side, “King Charles stood on this tower Sept 24 1645, and saw his army defeated on Rowton Moor”.

ChesterTourist.com denies that inscription its veracity, on the grounds that Rowton Moor is several miles south-east of Chester, so the battle could not have been visible from the Phoenix Tower. But I’m more punctilious. The statement does not say King Charles saw the defeat of his army on Rowton Moor; it states King Charles saw his army [having been] defeated on Rowton Moor. It is entirely possible that the Royalists fled back to Chester after the battle, and then they were seen by the monarch, as indeed is suggested on that webpage.

Like the Phoenix Tower, I hadn’t known about Rowton Moor before the drama-group introduced me to it. Like the Phoenix Tower, I’ve included the Moor on the poster advertisement I did for the play. Unlike the Phoenix Tower, where I’ve represented the Tower with a photo of it, I’ve represented the Moor with a photo of a somewhat related being, a moorhen. Gotta have a moorhen. So well adapted to water!

Rowton Moor is named as such because it’s the moor beside the village of Rowton.
(No moorhens, except potentially on the canal that runs past both Rowton and the Phoenix Tower.)

The Phoenix Tower is named as such after the badge of the Painter’s Guild, one of the two companies (the other being the Barbers and Candle-makers) to co-habit the tower from 1613 onwards (hence the embossed date in the photo, though the stone itself wasn’t carved and inserted until the tower’s restoration in 1658, after the ravages of the Civil War / Siege of Chester in 1645).

I imagine the Phoenix Tower rising above the musket-fire that set the city aflame in ’45, like the bird that shares the name the tower bears...

Nowadays the city is not aflame, but awash, flooded with traffic and thoroughfares...

But I had to go. After reaching the Eastgate, I inexplicably went Eastgate St / Bridge St / Pepper St / Lower St. John St / Eastgate St, thus visiting the Eastgate Clock for what was the third time today. I must have been caught in a whirlpool or something.

Then I wandered off in search of the Watergate (the gate on the western walls), by going down Watergate St.

It sounds rational, looking for the Watergate on Watergate St. Indeed, Watergate St passes through the Watergate, like a little stream passing under a bridge. Unfortunately Watergate St is cut across by the heavily motorised St. Martin’s Way (part of the A5268, a name that more accurately describes St. Martin’s Way’s heartless ways).

Upon arrival on the eastern bank of this Amazon river of a road, I turned a right angle to the left, scurried down the A5268 until I got to the Grosvenor Roundabout, where I forded the current (traffic lights are useful for this). I was on the western pavement of Grosvernor Road, which isn’t part of the A5268, though Grosvenor Street is, as is the rest of the Inner Ring Road.

Over Grosvenor Bridge I walked, as home is in the suburbs beyond. But I noticed a narrow, unlit stepcase down the side of the road, and I was curious. The woods I found myself in were not the woods of the Grosvenor Estate (that’s on the other side of Overleigh Roundabout), through which I often walk to school. These woods were groundlevel, with the embankment the road’s upon rising up on the eastern flank like a protective frontier. I felt sheltered there, and wonder and admiration at this beautiful, sacred even island in the waters of the roadridden world of Chester.

Unlike in the woods of Grosvenor, I saw no ghosts here.
Yet my camera did: look at the photo. Breathtaking.

But I had to go. Mum would be missing me. No doubt she’d ask me where I’d been, and as I’d replied on Sep 22 with “Everywhere”, and as I’d gone today anywhere I hadn’t gone in September, today I’d reply “Nowhere”. Which reminds me. A footpath goes under the Grosvenor Bridge from these woods, past a house called Nowhere. Local legend links this cottage to a less local (and more legendary) pop group called the Beatles, for whose song “Nowhere Man” was the inspiration from this habitation’s appellation.

Unlike the eponymous Nowhere Man, I think I have a point of view; I know where I’m going to. That place being, I hope, home.

Dec 08 Sat

During my walks of 2012 Sep 22 and 2012 Nov 17, I not once walked along any stretch, part, or transect of Chester’s citywalls on the western side. So today I went to walk along all the walls (they form an almost-complete circuit, easily walked).

From Bridgegate (on the south side) I walked west, and unwittingly walked off the walls. I continued for a hundred metres, then noticed an impressive parapet-like stone structure on my right. Oh. That’s a wall. Better get on it.

So I got on it, and continued west. The wall decreased in height (as I had thought it would) until it was nonexistent, where Grosvenor Road cuts across the path. Remembering that the camera-angle for a photo I’d taken of some ivy across the entrance to the Overleigh Cemetery was off-kilter, I came off course to re-take that photo. I liked the idea of ivy creeping over the entrance to the spirit-world, thought it was appropriate for the poster advertisement for that play we’ve been working on.

The ivy had been cut away. Probably by another member of the directorial staff at the drama-group, seeking parlance with loose spirits. (Not me.)

I curved around the cemetery, got an equally nice photo of the graveyard through the enclosing hedge, and discovered the lack of steps back onto the Grosvenor Bridge. Fortunately I could walk under the bridge along Sty Lane, and come up the steps on the other side. But not without a trip around the woods there!

Not as enjoyable in the day as in the night.

Back across the Dee, I was back on the walls, with my back to the motorcars of the congested Grosvenor Road. On my left was a lively race-course, possibly to be mentioned on my own lively race-course (“curriculum vitae” in Latin). Or not. On my right was the narrow Nun’s Road; and in front of me? The second gate I visited today, the Watergate, the one I failed to visit in November. The streets are narrow around here, as are the houses, and the boats on the nearby canal...

You may be wondering why the Northgate and the Eastgate are named after their compass positions, but the gates on the south and west walls are called Bridgegate and Watergate. You’re not wondering that? I’ll not tell you then. Oh alright then. In Roman times (and Romans are awesome so their names stay, unlike their bulldozable buildings), the citywalls encompassed a much smaller area than nowadays, with their north gate at the Northgate and their east gate at the Eastgate, but their west gate on the intersection of modern Watergate St and the Inner Ring Road, and their south gate on the intersection of modern Bridge St and the Inner Ring Road. The walls were extended in the medieval ages.

You may also be wondering why the modern roads leading to the four main gates from the Chester Cross (the centre of Chester, streetwise) are Watergate St, Northgate St, Eastgate St, and Bridge (no gate) St. You’re not wondering that? Must be just me then. For I don’t know that answer.

But I do know what’s further along the walls from the Watergate. There’s the Queen’s School (on the right, within the walls and within walls) and the tennis-courts and playing-fields of that school (on the left, without the walls and without walls). There’s Bonewaldesthorne’s Tower (on the walls, beside a sign reading “Water Tower”) and the Water Tower (off the walls, beside a sign reading “Bonewaldesthorne’s Tower”). And there’s the canal (which twists north here, after running alongside the northside of the walls) and the railway (which continues southwest, after running southwest under the Fountains Roundabout and St Martin’s Way).

This north-east corner of Chester is particularly busy. Not with people, not even with cars, particularly, but with things, semi-strange structures. The mix of what’s quaint and what ain’t is incredible. I’ll have to come back and explore at a later day, because this is mysteriously miscellaneous! I’m surprised we aren’t featuring phantoms from this phantasmagoric district in drama-group! The very roofs of the houses twist twistily, in heterogeneous hues of history, magnifying a manifold mystery!

I crossed St Martin’s Gate, the newest of Chester’s gates, built to accommodate the Inner Ring Road in the Sixties.

And I’m back into backstreets again.

I was walking the northern walls, alongside Water Tower Street (which isn’t that close to the Water Tower, at 265 metres distance as the crow flies, or 542 metres distance as the car drives).

On the south side of Water Tower Street is a group of houses called King Charles Court, which isn’t that close to the King Charles Tower (or the Phoenix Tower, as I call it), at 261 metres on foot and 253 metres on crow.

It might be quite nice to hitch a ride on a crow. Would certainly get round Chester faster. Nevertheless, I arrived at the Northgate before sunset, and at the Kaleyard Gate before dusk. Forsooth, I arrived at the Eastgate before nightfall, despite the diversion off the walls due to maintenance. Thus today’s and my photograph of the Eastgate Clock is not of terrible quality. The clock itself is not of terrible quality either, having been designed for Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee.

From that charming icon of Chester, I arrived at the Newgate, which isn’t really new (the name Newgate for it dates from 1533), though it was broadened in the 1960s most recently with the construction of the Inner Ring Road. The gate is also known as the Peppergate, after the street it looks over (Pepper Street), which itself is presumably named after the spices sold on the medieval markets that once enlivened the world there, now replaced by such focal points for the community as Tesco Express and the controversial Grosvenor Shopping Centre.

Now it was twilight. And I continue to whinge.
My photos do not compare to this pretty appealing gate of Chester. Not even such magical creatures as the goose and gander could improve my digital recordings. (I found these two waterfowl on the river Dee - where else? - after coming off the walls, before coming home.)

But still. I had a rather good trip around Chester today. There’ll be another trip, I hope.

Dec 16 Sun

I circuited the walls last week, but didn’t venture off the walls so to take photos of the gates and walls themselves. This significant omission was rectified today. Now I have at least four photos for every one of the eight gates, looking inside and outside the walls from each gate, and looking at each gate from inside and outside the walls.

I started at the Bridgegate, for which I have all four photos, so I came east, to the Newgate, for which I also have all four photos. Then I came off the walls, as the Newgate is only an abandoned amphitheatre and an empty church away from the Grosvenor Park.

The Grosvenor Park is where the arch from the old Shipgate was moved in 1831 (a large jail was built in its place, near the castle).

This archway, a Grade-II-listed building, was built by the Normans, and - as you may expect from its name and its former location beside the river - used to be used for transporting goods from the boats on the Dee to the city.

Then I returned to the walls, stopping at Eastgate (the subject of more photographs by me than dunnocks in my garden). I stopped because the walls there were impassable due to maintenance work. I had forgotten that. But I’ve remembered this: the Eastgate is not the furthest east of Chester’s gates. The Newgate is, forty metres east (and two hundred metres south). Of course, if you consider the Shipgate as still a gate, that’s the easternmost gate, 342 metres further east.

I’ll backtrack to my walk along the walls. Indeed, after the Eastgate I backtracked to the Newgate, then I walked along the walls to the Bridgegate, then I got distracted by some really rather beautiful geese, then I came past where the Shipgate used to be (I didn’t take photos there because I don’t know the exact former location). Then I continued along the walls, crossed Grosvenor Road, and continued along the walls, along the walls.

Finally, I arrived at the gate that I had planned to arrive at (if the Eastgate/Kaleyard Gate section had been passable) at the end of my trip, the Watergate.

At the Watergate, I came off the walls at the steps on the city side. I was thus able to get my shot of the Watergate from inside the walls. Then I returned to the walls.

Getting the shot of the Watergate from outside the walls was more difficult, but more fun. I continued along the walls and found steps beyond Bonewaldesthorne’s Tower. These steps led outside the city, so I came down them, and walked to the Water Tower. They’ve a bowling-green there! And football pitches, where kids were playing.

(The Water Tower is so named because of the canal and river nearby; in olden days the river was wider, and covered the race-course. Indeed, the “ee” of “Roodee” comes from “eye”, meaning “island”, as there was a small island in the middle with a “rood” - a crucifix - crucially fixed atop it.)

I continued. I passed under the railway bridge over New Crane Street, and the Watergate was visible again. I got the shots, tried not to get run over. (Cars are lethal.)

At the Watergate, I came back onto the walls. Turns out there is a pavement to the road that goes under the Watergate (that New Crane Street).

I re-walked the walls at that north-west corner, and hurried to St Martin’s Gate. It’s quite an impressive (if grey) viaduct they have there. The nicest bit of Sixties architecture in the city, I think. The name of “St Martin’s” comes from St Martin’s Church, which was destroyed when St Martin’s Way was constructed. No-one in my family remembers it.

Though I wasn’t near home, I was nearly home. Only two more gates to photograph. And two minutes until dusk. At least the Northgate was lit up; it looked quite nice with the sodium light and helium sky. (I talk in falsetto when I’m too tired to write coherently. I should probably stop writing later.)

I continued along the walls, passing the Phoenix Tower and stopping at the Kaleyard Gate, the narrowest of Chester’s gates. I retook several photos from that area, and in exploring different angles I found - prepare yourself for this - the Kaleyards Designated Pigeon Feeding Area. I got distracted quite a while by this dovecote and its flocking residents.

When it was too dark for photographing, I went home, and tried to formulate a nice ending for this article. Too tired to think of one, I settled for this one, and settled into a nice warm bed, to dream of pigeons and doves and resurrecting Romans, and other fantasies.

Appendix to the Appendix: Photos of the gates

Years refer to the completion of the earliest building and most recent rebuilding; all are AD.

If the Shipgate had been left in situ it would be at south, 40 metres west of Bridgegate.
As it is, it’s 580 metres southeast of the Chester Cross.

			In to	Out to	In from	Out from
S.	1120s 1782	Bridge
ESE	<1258 1938	New
E.	c. 74 1768	East
ENE	1275	Kaleyard
N.	c. 74 1810	North
NNW	1966	St Martin’s
W.	C12 1789	Water
n/a	C12 1831	Ship

I have since walked around Chester on several occasions, without writing “A Cestrian Pedestrian” articles about them. The photos can be seen on Flickr: 2012 Dec 23, 2013 Jan 19, 2013 Feb 24, and 2014 Jul 05. I have however written about 2013 Jan 19 for my “Cusp” series of articles.