Walking Chester City Walls - Part 1

CHESTER BOASTS THE MOST COMPLETE CITY WALLS IN BRITAIN. In the past many major settlements were defended by walls, but Chester is the only city in Britain with a complete surviving circuit around the city, the oldest sections 2,000 years old. From the Romans to the time of the Plantagenet kings Chester was recognised as the most important seaport in the North-West for around 1,500 years.

Walking the complete circuit is about 2 miles and provides a fascinating glimpse into Chester's long history. First enclosed by the Roman timber fort of Deva on the mouth of the River Dee in the 1st century AD, perhaps as early as AD 60, by II Legion Adiutrix in the classic playing card shape enclosed by a turf rampart and a wooden palisade. In 100 AD after XX Legion Valeria Victrix moved in the Roman’s rebuilt the fortress in stone with the suffix from the Legion appended to the name, hence ‘Deva Victrix’. It became the main base for the Roman army in North Wales and North-West England and a rumoured invasion of Ireland. The XX Legion were withdrawn from Deva Victrix twenty years later to build Hadrian’s Wall. Around AD 200 the legion returned and rebuilt and expanded the site to become the largest Roman fort in Roman Britain housing some 5.500 soldiers. The legion remained at Deva until around AD 390.

The Roman defences were extended and enhanced by the Saxons in the 10th century, when Æthelflæd Lady of the Mercians re-fortified the town in AD 907 extending the Roman walls to the banks of the river Dee as part of the network of burhs in the fight against the Vikings. Æthelflæd is said to have translated the relics of Saint Weburgh to Chester.

The Anglo-Saxons called the city "Legacaestir" (fortress city of the legions) derived from the Latin term "castra legionis," (a fortified military camp), which evolved into the Old English word "ceaster" and eventually to ‘Chester’.

The earldoms of Hereford, Shrewsbury and Chester were created by William the Conqueror shortly after the Norman Conquest to control the Welsh border region, the Marches. The current castle occupies the same site as the first castle on the site, an earth and timber ‘motte-and-bailey’ fortress built in the south-west corner of the city in AD 1070 that became the administrative centre of the earldom of Chester. 

In the 12th century the Normans earls of Chester rebuilt the castle in stone and the defensive walls were improved and extended to form a complete circuit around the medieval city. The defences were further enhanced in the Middle Ages with tall projecting towers and the addition of impressive gateways. Attacked and damaged during the English Civil War in the mid-17th century, the defensive circuit surrounding the city has been altered and repaired many times over the centuries to ensure Chester was one of the most protected and strategically important cities in the country throughout the centuries.

Since the 18th century the city walls have been a fashionable walk with the four main gateways of Northgate, Eastgate, Watergate and Bridgegate still today providing the main access points onto the city walls. Where else can you experience over two thousand years of history in a modern city in one walk. In the television series ‘Britain’s Most Historic Towns’ professor Alice Roberts awarded Chester the accolade of Britain’s Most Roman Town. Who could argue with that.

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The Walk
We took the Park and Ride bus service from Boughton Heath into the centre of Chester, arriving at Foregate Street lined with timber framed shops. Chester Park and Ride is excellent value and runs every 15 minutes and takes all the hassle out of driving and parking in the city. Once arriving at Foregate Street enter the historic core of the city through Eastgate Street famous for its clock atop the Eastgate. We walked the city walls in an anticlockwise direction, leaving the best to last. 

Part 1: Eastgate to the Racecourse

1. Eastgate Clock
Originally, Eastgate was the Roman entrance to Deva Victrix, the present gate was widened and rebuilt in the 18th century to allow coaches into the city centre. The Eastgate clock, a famous landmark, was added in the Victorian age to celebrate Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee in 1897. The Eastgate clock is said to be the second most photographed timepiece in Britain after Big Ben at the Houses of Parliament in London. At the Eastgate is a recess in the wall which leads up some steps to the City Walls. Walking past the clock you soon arrive at Chester Cathedral which has occupied the north-eastern corner of the old city for over a thousand years.

2. Chester Cathedral
This is the resting place of Saint Werburgh, a 7th century Mercian Princess who became patron saint of Chester. Although there has been a church on this site since the 7th century the association with Werburgh did not begin until some three centuries later. 

The first church to have been built on the cathedral site was founded in the 7th century and dedicated to St Peter and St Paul. In the late 9th or early 10th century the church was rededicated to the 7th century Mercian Princess St Werburgh, after her relics were moved to Chester from Hanbury, Staffordshire, probably by Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, the daughter of Alfred the Great.

Hugh d'Avranches (le Gros, or Lupus), first Earl of Chester, established the Benedictine Abbey on this site in AD 1092 with the Abbey church dedicated to St. Werburgh. Ranulf Higden, a monk of the Abbey of St. Werburgh tells us that St Werburgh's remains were translated to Chester in AD 875 and housed in the church of St. Peter and St. Paul at Chester. Another monk from the abbey, Henry Bradshaw records in his hagiography of Chester’s patron saint that when Chester was restored c.907 by Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, she enlarged the church as a college of secular cannons and dedicated it to St Werburgh. In 1540 Henry VIII dissolved the Benedictine monastery during the Dissolution of the Monasteries but retained the Abbey church of St. Peter and St. Paul which was re-founded as Chester Cathedral a year later.

Chester Cathedral has long been a place of worship and pilgrimage; today it is the northern terminus of the Two Saints Way long distance footpath linking St Werburgh of Chester to St Chad at Lichfield 93 miles away travelling through the heart of ancient Mercia.

3. King Charles Tower
Return to the City Walls and follow the east wall (anticlockwise) until at the corner with the north wall you come to the King Charles Tower, a medieval watch-tower built in the 13th century that had fallen into disrepair through lack of funds. It was repaired in 1613 with the emblem of the restorers, the Phoenix, placed above the door, hence it was known as the Phoenix Tower. It was later renamed after the king watched the defeat of his army at the Battle of Rowton Moor in 1645. 

From here you can clearly see the Shropshire Union Canal (formerly the Chester Canal) below you as you look over the wall. Along this stretch of wall, particularly below Rufus Court, are several courses of Roman masonry used as the foundation for the medieval walls which are best viewed from the canal.

4. Along the North Wall
After crossing the Northgate you come to the Bridge of Sighs, a footbridge over the canal that was used to take prisoners from the city gaol to the former Chapel of St John where they could repent prior to their execution. Next we come to Pemberton’s Parlour, formerly know as the Goblin Tower, but renamed after a former mayor who built a rope bridge here. As you continue along the north wall, you arrive at Morgan's Mount, an observation platform with gun emplacement built in 1645 during the English Civil War to hold Morgan’s cannon. 

In the late 19th century a large collection of Roman tombstones were discovered in the north wall that had been re-used in its reconstruction during the 3rd - 4th century, not an uncommon practice in Roman times. The ancient practice of ‘Spoliation’ (from the Latin for 'spoils') was common in late antiquity when entire redundant structures were known to have been comprehensively demolished and the materials, including inscription stones and tombstones, re-used in the construction of new buildings. 

During repairs to a section of the lower course of the wall near Morgan’s Mount in 1883 pieces of Roman masonry, one was clearly part of a tombstone, were discovered among the fill of the wall. No further investigations were carried out at this time yet during further repair work between Northgate and the King Charles Tower in 1887 a substantial amount of Roman masonry was found, much from funerary monuments which has been used to repair lower courses of the wall. The finds were so numerous that between 1890 and 1892 they called in the Chester Archaeological Society to investigate the wall by Northgate.

More than 150 stones were found from the investigations of 1883, 1887 and the 1890-92. The collection is now housed in the Grosvenor Museum and demonstrates the extraordinary diversity in the Roman Army with soldiers being drawn from all corners of the Roman Empire. One of the most unusual stones in the museum’s collection is the tombstone of a Sarmatian cavalryman in his armour and distinctive conical helmet carrying a draco standard, hence known as the ‘Draconarius Tombstone’. The inscription is missing where the stone has broken. 

In AD 175 the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius defeated the Sarmatian Iazyges in the Marcomannic Wars. The Iazyges were required to provide 8,000 cavalry auxiliaries for the Roman army. The historian Cassius Dio says 5,500 of them were posted to Britain. The ‘Draconarius Tombstone’ is thought to be one of the Iazyges, and accordingly, date from this period. [*See: Note*]

5. St Martin’s Gate
Moving on we soon arrive at St Martin’s Gate, the most recent addition to the City Walls being constructed during the 1960s as part of the Northgate Regeneration Project for the Inner Ring Road system. Further archaeological investigations prior to the construction work for the ring road identified the remains of a Roman tower which would have formed the north-west corner of the Roman fort. The new gate was named after St Martin’s Church that was demolished to make way for the new roadway and sadly with it the Roman tower.

6.  Bonewaldesthorne's Tower and the Water Tower
As you come to the end of the north wall arriving at the corner with the west wall you arrive at the Bonewaldesthorne's Tower. When Æthelflæd refortified Chester in the 10th century she extended the Roman walls from the north-west angle and at the south-east angle, near Newgate, to the banks of the River Dee, probably as earthen ramparts topped with a wooden palisade. At the north-west angle the extended fortifications ran from the Roman tower at the site of St Martin’s Gate to the bank of the River Dee.

It is thought that the Lady of the Mercians also built a watchtower on the site of Boneswaldesthorne's Tower at this strategically important location to protect the port. Very little of the 10th century defences have survived above ground and the current tower was built of red sandstone in the late medieval period. 

Overtime the River Dee continued to silt up and by the early 14th century ships could no longer reach the old port, the site where the Roodee racecourse is situated today. The solution was to build a tower in the river further downstream to allow ships to dock at its base and unload their merchandise. Originally known as the New Tower, the Water Tower was built between 1322 – 1325, by John de Helpston, a mason who had worked on the king’s castles in Wales.

Until the early 18th century the river turned sharply north-east towards the Watergate, in the form of a meander around the site of the racecourse, rather than in a straight line. It then flowed close to the medieval wall to the Water Tower, near the north-west corner of the city walls. The Water Tower would have stood in the river channel. The New Tower was attached to Bonewaldesthorne's Tower by a 30m (100ft) length of spur wall, much of it still visible today. These two towers were both built to defend the port but three hundred years apart owing to the shifting course of the River Dee. Yet, within a century of the New Tower’s construction, the Dee’s course had moved even further west, leaving the tower on dry land. The improved navigation in the 1730s forced the river channel further westwards leaving the Water Tower 200m (650ft) from the modern river. As the port declined the railway became an important means of trade, the line from Chester to North Wales was cut straight through the north-west corner of the City Walls in 1846 without deviation. 

At the Water Tower turn left and walk south along the line of the west wall along City Walls Road toward the Old Port and over Watergate and into Nuns Road toward the Roodee, with racing since 1539 said to be England’s oldest racecourse.

7. Watergate
During the Middle Ages when Chester was a thriving port the River Dee flowed close to the walls to Watergate. The Watergate controlled the entrance into the city from the old port, collecting tolls for goods brought in to the city. After the canalisation of the Dee in the 1730s a new port was built lower down the river. The present Watergate arch was built in 1788 to replace the medieval Watergate that had been badly damaged during the siege of Chester during the English Civil War. 

Leaving the Watergate you are now looking down on the rooftops of the Roodee racecourse buildings to your right. A small stone pillar beyond the racetrack is said to be the base of an ancient cross that is responsible for the name ‘Roodee’ from ‘rood’ (cross) and ‘eye’ (island). When there is no racing the public are allowed onto the track and you can walk across to this red sandstone pillar.

Opposite the modern racecourse was the site of three friaries all founded in the 13th century: Black friars (Dominican); Grey friars (Franciscan); and the White friars (Carmelite).  It is said that the steeple of the White friars church was used as a landmark for ships coming into port. The names of the roads opposite the racecourse identify the sites of the former friaries, while Nuns Road was so-named from the medieval St Mary’s Priory, a Benedictine nunnery, founded in the mid-12th century.

These religious houses occupied a significant portion (a quarter) of the walled city; the foundation of the friaries in the 13th century seems to be linked with the development of Chester as a result of Edward I's Welsh campaigns for which he used the town as his base. However, none of them survived the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII; the only remaining structural feature of the nunnery is an archway relocated in Grosvenor Park, yet the survival of their street names preserves their presence in Chester's history. 

8. The Roman Quay
In the 1st century AD the River Dee was a coastal estuary, the Roman fort of Deva, sited on a sandstone outcrop, was strategically positioned at the highest navigable point. When the Romans arrived the site of the Roodee racecourse was tidal with ground level considerably lower than today. Conventional wisdom tells us that the Romans built a massive quay wall here, then as the course of the river moved westward away from the Roman walls and the old port over centuries the area of the Roodee became a flat expanse of dry land. The medieval walls were built on top of the Roman remains with the race course now occupying the old flood plain.

The remains of the original Roman quay can still be seen on the city side of the racecourse a few metres in front of the medieval walls jutting out of an earth bank at the point where Black Friars road intersects Nun's Road. This so-called Roman ‘quay wall’ is traditionally considered as the only surviving feature of Deva’s Roman harbour. Although only a comparatively short section is now visible, this massive wall of large sandstone blocks runs for 200m (820ft) to Watergate, and is about 2.5m (8ft) thick with 1.5m (5ft) concrete backing. In 1884 they dug down for 4.5m (15ft) at the face of this wall, and even then did not reach the foundations. But this would have left vessels docked in port considerably lower by several metres than the top of the quayside, which seems a most unlikely scenario.

The requirement for such a substantial engineering work that is estimated to have used as much stone as the equivalent to more than half the entire circuit of the fortress curtain wall, remains a mystery. Suggestions for this huge wall include protection from tidal surges, to prevent the river undercutting the fort, or as a revetment to reclaim and terrace the steep natural slope down to the Roodee to increase building space for the canabae, the civil settlements that grew alongside legionary bases. But did it actually function as a quay where ships could be loaded and unloaded? Archaeologist David Mason [The Town and Port of Roman Chester, in Peter Carrington, ed, Deva Victrix: Roman Chester re-assessed, Monographs of the Chester Archaeological Society, 2002, pp.53-73] who has studied Chester for many years, argues that there is persuasive evidence to suggest that it did not.

Excavations in 1885 to install foundations for a new gasometer where the modern railway crosses the river Dee found oak timbers in the river bed in excess of 3 m in length, some of which had a point at one end encased in an iron sheath and set around with concrete. Identified by archaeologists as the piles of a substantial structure such as a wharf or jetty. Their similarity to iron-sheathed timbers found elsewhere in Roman structures, such as bridges, wharves, and jetties and the fact that they were surrounded by a mass of Roman material confirms they are of Roman construction.

Similar timbers had been found outside the Water Gate in 1874 during work to lay a new sewer outside the city walls, also at a considerable depth and again associated with Roman material, which has led to the interpretation that the piles represent opposite ends of a large landing stage extending from the eastern shoreline of the Roodee for a distance of about 350m (1,150ft). This concept never gained favour with preference settling for the quay wall.

Several hundred metres to the south, beneath the race course track these same excavations encountered a Roman burial at 1.80m (6ft) deep, containing two skeletons and a coin from the reign of the emperor Domitian, AD 81–96. The location of the burial indicates that the site of the racecourse must have been dry land in the early Roman period with considerable silt deposition along the east side of the Roodee by the time that Roman Chester (Deva) was founded. On examining water levels of the Dee, Mason argues that laden ships could only have approached the ‘quay wall’ at periods of high tide, but the height of the quayside would have been bizarrely some 5m higher than the deck level of a vessel tied up alongside.

Current thinking among some archaeologists and local historians is that the current position of the River Dee flowing around modern Chester is in a position similar to its location in Roman times, with the area of the racecourse was mudflats at low tide. The Roman port would have been located near the racecourse, but with the erection of a landing stage, as evidenced by the iron-sheathed timbers, joined to the ‘quay’ by a long pier projecting into the deepest part of the river channel allowing ships to dock under most tidal conditions.

Where does this leave the ‘quay’ wall? Mason argues that its main purpose was defence. The erection of defensive walls around legionary suburbs in the later Roman period is a phenomenon found at a number of fortresses. Mason proposes that the construction of a large wall at Chester was to protect the western sector of the canabae, the wealthiest section of the extramural settlement, which may have been considered vulnerable at the north-west edge of the Empire.

The 'quay wall' (after Mason, 2002)

The course of the ‘quay’ wall northward beyond the Watergate is unclear but it is thought to have continued along the frontage of the Roman Baths (excavated in 1989), immediately to the north. Mason then considers it must have then turned eastward to join the fortress defences, closing the north side. He suggests that it closely followed the line of the medieval north wall from Bonewaldesthorne’s Tower to the north-west angle tower that stood near St Martin’s Gate.

When Æthelflæd refortified Chester in the 10th century by extending the walls of the Roman fortress at the north-west angle (St Martin’s Gate) and the south-east angle (Wolfgate) to the banks of the River Dee it is likely that in the north-west sector her construction followed the line of Mason’s proposed eastern extension of this so-called ‘quay’ wall.

As you come to end of Nun’s Road, leaving the Roodee, cross the Grosvenor Road and Chester Castle is now on your left.

Continued in Part 2: Chester Castle to The Rows

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