I spent what I consider to be the significant part of my childhood in Chester, from 7 years old to 18 years old. I attended the junior department of Westlea County Primary School, and the King's School, a Direct Grant Grammar School (semi-independent). From 11 years old I was destined for university (although these days that destiny applies to 40% of teenagers)..
Having spent much of their lives in London, my parents experienced Chester as provincial. They considered Chester people ignorant of cosmopolitan style and attitudes: small town, small minds. They found Chester lacking in cultural opportunity (despite having been too poor since my birth to make much of London's offerings) and metropolitan facilities, such as a comprehensive transport infrastructure, an endless supply of department stores and specialist shops (in which to window shop), and open markets where food, clothing and much else could be bought at low or even dodgy prices.
Chester occupies too large a space in my mind and memory for me to grasp in one sweep. Strange that I have lived in Durham for twice as long as I lived in Chester, I can more easily compartmentalise my experience of Durham. Maybe I have less need to write about Durham. Perhaps, too, I more readily know what I want to write about Durham. Chester was many different experiences for me. Chester was an unfinished experience, whereas I have long overstayed my stretch, my exile, in Durham.
Chester is a town with significant histories stretching from Roman times, through medieval England, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and now these millennial times.
The city's foundation was as a Roman army garrison town, called Deva, when some major buildings were constructed, city walls built, and the town given its street plan. An amphitheatre still exists, although half of it remains beneath the building that was (in my schooldays) the Ursuline Convent school. Close by the amphitheatre is a Roman garden, along with a hypocaust (central heating system). Remains of the Roman forum lie exposed beneath the modern shopping mall called The Forum. In a shop in Bridge Street (used to be Lawleys of Regent Street) are the remains of a Roman bath - no, not like in Bath, but more like an old tin bath, but made of stone. Although their first buildings were of wood, they were later rebuilt in stone, and the remains of Roman stone quarries are still evident. Elsewhere in Cheshire, the Romans were mining salt: then a precious commodity.
In the fifth century the Roman army garrisons were withdrawn to defend Rome, and Chester will have gone into decline. I have no specific knowledge about a civilian settlement beyond the garrison walls, as at Vindolanda near Housesteads, on Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland. During Romano-British (Arthurian) and Anglo-Saxon times (also known as the Dark Ages), Chester will have been isolated, with wild Wales to the west and south-west; wild Wirral to the north-west; the marshes of south Lancashire to the north-east, and the great oak forests of Cheshire spanning from the north-east round to the south-west (it is suggested that Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson), who was a parish vicar in north Cheshire, based the forests around which Alice wondered on the ancient forests of Cheshire. This may explain why he calls the wild cat that is always showing its teeth the Cheshire Cat.).
The arrival of the Normans changed much. As well as imposing their cruel satraps all over England, the Normans changed the nature of agricultural administration, forming estates on which the hoi poloi were obliged to labour. I have not yet discovered whether Hugh 'Lupus' was the tyrant his name suggests. The abbey church of St Werbergh (now a cathedral with cloisters) was constructed, and Miracle Plays were performed (as they are to this day). That Chester had been built by the Romans on the estuary of the River Dee allowed the town to be transformed into a burgeoning medieval trading port. The city walls were extended down to the water's edge, and it is possible to walk the walls most of the way round (little of it wheelchair accessible). The Watergate Tower (beneath the shadow of which I used to go to play putting with my brother on Saturday mornings) stood out in the water as a pier against which ships could dock. However, as the shades of evening drew medieval times to an end, Chester went into decline, for the Dee estuary progressively silted up.
In 1542, Henry Tudor (Henry VIII) founded a chorister school, later to be called the King's School, Chester. It may have been around this time that the Rows were constructed, although I have also been told that they were a Victorian invention. These curious walkways are at a mezzanine level above the central shopping streets (Northgate Street, Eastgate Street, Bridge Street and Watergate Street), and are set into the buildings. It is therefore possible, as in some modern shopping malls, to shop at two levels. In the 1640s, the city was caught up on the Royalist side in the Civil War, and there is a tower on the north-east side of the city walls from which Charles Stuart (Charles I) is reputed to have watched his Cavalier army defeated at the Battle of Rowton Moor. However, Rowton is some miles from Chester, and it is likely that he simply watched his routed troops fleeing from the battlefield. Chester is recorded to have resisted siege by the Parliamentarian army for five months. Why? I suppose because the great and the good of the city were on the Royalist side. In 1665, the bubonic plague visited Chester. The only house reputed to have been spared death from this pestilence was a house on Watergate Street, now known as God's Providence House, on the outside of which it is now possible to read the carving "In God's providence we trust," which explains the name given to the black and white timbered building. It is said that the occupants hung bunches onions at the door, and the plague-carrying fleas (that lived on the rats) preferred their burghers without onions. It is a matter of lesser pride that when Handel visited Chester en route (I believe) to Dublin, Chester Cathedral choir trashed his nearly-completed masterpiece: The Messiah. (So much for Henry VIII's attempts to improve the quality of the singing!)
In the eighteenth century, the canals came to Chester. A branch of the Shropshire Union connected Chester to the developing national canal network. There is still a narrow boat repair yard, with dry dock, in Chester today.
In the nineteenth century, the railways came to Chester with direct connections to Liverpool, Manchester, Crewe and thence to London, Wrexham and thence to Shrewsbury and Wolverhampton, and North Wales through to Holyhead, for Dublin. I first went to Chester on a train pulled by a steam locomotive, although it was not long afterwards that diesel locomotives replaced steam. In the early 1970s, Chester Northgate Station was closed and a leisure centre built on the site. Until its closure, trains for Manchester left from Chester Northgate, and we would sometimes take the train to Delamere where we would spend a day in the forest. Sadly, the forest is now largely coniferous. At the end of the nineteenth century (1899) the city was given a magnificent and impressive clock. Reputed to be the second (after the clock in St Stephen's Tower, Palace of Westminster, London - better known by the name of a bell that hangs inside the tower: Big Ben) most photographed timepiece in the world, the Eastgate Clock is sited proudly above the Eastgate of the city walls. It will also have been around this time that the Groves were developed. A pleasant promenade, planted with trees, lines the north bank of the River Dee. A suspension footbridge spans the river connecting the Groves and Grosvenor Park to the Queens Park residential district of the city. Grosvenor Park, with its formal flower beds, trees, birds, squirrels and children's light railway appears to be a typical Victorian urban park.
In the 1930s, George Mottershead moved to Upton-by-Chester with some animals from a local zoo/menagerie. He wished to create a zoo without bars, to give the animals the freedom to roam in paddocks, and the public the chance to glimpse the animals in a more natural style of habitat - more natural than a cage, anyway. The North of England Zoological Society was formed in 1934, a body to run Chester Zoo. Just over 30 years later, from the house in which I lived with my family at the other end of Upton, we could hear at night the gibbons calling from Gibbon Island, and the cry of the peacocks carrying over the fields. Chester Zoo makes use of water barriers with some animals to avoid fences, walls and bars. We would visit the zoo from time to time, as it was a good place to go when friends or relations visited us, or even came to stay (a rare event). When I was a child I never much appreciated the extensive rose gardens, although I should do so with enthusiasm now. There were big cats (lions, tigers and cheetahs) not far from the zoo entrance we used (now closed I think). The elephants were always interesting, although one of them killed the father of my brother's friend, Brian. Only once did I ever see the wolverine, and only on the rarest of occasions the red panda. There is a country bridle-way, along which we used to go blackberrying, that drives through the middle of the zoo, and although there are high fences, it is possible to see some of the animals, such as deer and zebra. Additions to the zoo since my childhood include the otters, and a monorail. The one part of the zoo I never saw as a child was the Tropical House, because there was an additional entrance fee of 2/6d (12.5p, but in terms of today's value, more like about £2.50). As an adult I have visited the Tropical House several times, not least because entrance is now no longer charged additionally.
Conditions for many of the animals at Chester Zoo are reasonable. For instance, I am certain that the marmots have a fine time. Conditions for other animals, though, remain cramped. Tigers, for instance, naturally roam, and a paddock of almost any size will be too small. On the other hand, tigers are so endangered that protection of the species in captivity could be the only way ensure their survival. The aviaries, too, are far from generous. In my order of desirability of the conditions under which most of the animals are kept, Artis Zoo in Amsterdam is depressingly bottom (7/7) of the list, Regent's Park Zoo in London comes next (6/7), followed by Calgary Zoo (5/7). Chester and Stuttgart Zoos rank next (=3/7), followed by Toronto Zoo (2/7). Top of the list (1/7) is Whipsnade Zoo in Bedfordshire. I should very much like to visit the zoo founded by Gerald Durrell on Jersey in the Channel Islands: the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust.
Much of Cheshire is flat, and many people know the name 'the Cheshire Plain'. Meteorologists recognise the Cheshire Gap, through which rain-laden clouds roll in, depositing their 75cm of annual precipitation on Cheshire's green and pleasant pastures. There is, however, a ridge of low hills that snakes its way down the middle of the county: the Mid-Cheshire Ridge. To the north are Helsby and Frodhsam Hills, to the south of which is Delamere Forest. Kelsall Hill, the escarpment closest to Chester, is where I used to pick school summer holiday strawberries for a pittance. South from here are the facing hilltop castles of Beeston (where there are some caves in the sandstone) and Peckforton. Between the two castles is the village of Burwardlsey, where there is a candle making workshop. I recall visiting the workshop in 1975 when it was only small. Now there are huge tea-rooms and a coach park, so the business has obviously done well. A well-known public house called The Pheasant is also in Burwardlsey.
I almost never visited east Cheshire. The Jodrell Bank radio telescope, which I think I visited twice, is not far from Holmes Chapel, which I am not sure whether I ever visited. If there is a billiard ball factory in Congleton [check on the web] then I went there once with my father, but the smell of the resins and solvents made me feel so ill that I almost fainted. I don't think that I have ever been to Macclesfield, although I have visited Buxton (with its well dressing flower festival) several times, but Buxton is over the border into Derbyshire. I should like to visit Alderley Edge. I went to Knutsford once, but I cannot remember why. We went several times to Tatton Park, a stately house and estate. I wonder what the grounds are like now?
Since I left Chester in 1976, the city has been connected to the national motorway network, the M53 carrying commuters to Liverpool, and the M56 to Manchester. A southerly by-pass also now takes commuters and tourists into North Wales. Round the southern boundary of Chester, adjacent to the King's School, relocated in 1960, a prestigious business park has been built on land that I assume belongs to the Duke of Westminster. Companies such as Marks & Spencer and MBNA have located their financial services headquarters there. It would seem that, since I left, the city has blossomed again: a rise in its two thousand years of rises and falls.
