THE SPIRIT OF CHESTER

Evening Star, Issue 19025, 21 August 1925, Page 12

THE SPIRIT OF CHESTER

A CITY OF ANCIENT GLORIES (By Herbert Vivian, in ‘ John o’ London’s Weekly.’) Chester crystallises old England, has shared for most poignant sorrows and romances, passing through death, burial, and resurrection. From the Vear 47 Chester was the bulwark and sentinel of Roman legions, their camp and military base for the conquest of Wales. From the spot where stands the present Cross Rome ruled, with a garrison of 6,000 men, a quarter of England for 300 years. Rome withdrew to defend herself against barbarians at homo, and for long dismal centuries Chester remained a crumbling wilderness, 'through the sharp winter of ,803-4 she saw ruthless Danes camping among the rubbish heaps within her walls. When the Normans came she was the last English city to hojd out for King Harold; and she paid heavy toll for the espousal of a lost cause, reduced for centuries to little more than a poor village. A MEDIAEVAL REVIVAL. It was not until 1257 that she began to revive and could boast of a mayor. The Cross had reappeared in the centre of Chester, and Archbishop Baldwin stood forth in rich vestments to preach a crusade. Hero was the heart of Chester, pulsating pictures of mediaeval warmth—stately processions, solemn proclamations, strange mystery plays, baiting of bulls and bears, the clash or steel as feudal levies and knightly musters marched to and from the Welsh wars. Here, also, was a throbbing centre of industry and commerce, while Liverpool remained a village, known as a crikko or creek of the port of Chester. Hundreds of barques came with ■■argot's to the Watergate, many from Ireland and far across the seas, importing vast stores of hides and tallow to make the gloves and candles lor which Chester was famed. Great lords and fat burghers created an atmosphere of luxury, the Miller of Deo, who “cared for nobody, no, not ho,” held almost princely sway, and the Abbot of St. Werhurgh entertained so royally chat his cook’s perquisites amounted to a fortune every year. But the sands of Deo thwarted navigation—those sad sands which have called for many songs —and by the time of Edward VI. Liverpool had become a rival: pains had to he enacted against burghers so unpar criotic ns to convoy merchandise hither. There were fines of 12d also ,or monks and canons who kept disorderly houses or made a corner in eggs and cheese. CIVIL WAR DAYS.

During the Civil War Chester was prominent, and had muclp to endure, die held out doughtily tor King Charles during a long siege, and still retains many memories ol his visits. Bishop Lloyd’s Palace, where lie held his councils, is one of the most beautiful old houses in Europe, with quaint and eximsito carvings, gables, and colonnades. in a niche of Bridge street stands His Majesty’s statue, very nohlo of mien, with sceptre, sword, and orb; • n a tower on the Wall we may see the spot whence he surveyed the Battle of riowton Moor, and where, as ho was talking with a captain, a hnllot_frora St. John’s narrow!v missed him, hitting the captain m the head with iatai effect. Chester is filled and saturated with trades of the past. The whole subsoil is probably a network of passages like die sewers of Paris or the catacombs ot Pome, and digging operations constantly reveal dungeon%, crypts, or secret labyrinths. The sojourn of the legions has left Minerva's altar, tessellated pavements, and the hypocaust, or heating apparatus of a steam hath—■ little columns with vents in a wonderful state of preservation. The city wails, some six centuries old, tollow the line of the old iiiiman fortilications for n. circuit of nearly two miles, with a zigzag footpath. RED SANDSTONE. It is a strange haunt of beauty and romance, especially when .sunset gilds the red sandstone and twilight steals through the abundant foliage, or the fancy is stirred on very black nights by barge lamps stealing across the waters down below. Graceful towers occur at intervals, and at a sudden turn ol the walls we come upon the famous Wishing Steps, which grant all our desires if we do but run up and down them — eighteen of them—seven times without pausing to draw breath. In other parts of England, even in London, quaint old-world buildings survive only here and there. Some Continental cities Bruges, Lisicux, Nuremberg, or ILilishoiir-attract pilgrims by their fanciful survival of the distant past. But none of them is so completely, gloriously meditoval as Chester, Where her dreamy houses have fallen in battle or crumbled with ago, there has been no thought of replacing them with convenient ugliness. Indeed, the restoration has been so perfect that it seems impossible to tell the old from the new. The dupe is that of Swiss chalets, with tq-nre fronts, each topped by a triangle and adorned in what is known as the halltimbered stylo. The ground floor is usually of white or grey stone, with two doors and wide windows, three broad beams run horizontally across, and between them are squares and curves of timber, latticed windows, sometimes ■weird carvings of saints or heraldic beasts. Outwardly, nothing has changed since the days of Elizabeth and Charles the First. The gables, the barge boards, the doorways, the woodstain, all appear precisely as they were. RELICS OF THE PAST. And if new builders had wished to desecrate, they might have been puzzled to wipe out the famous rows. These cloistered street walks, whose name comes from the French word rue. are peculiar to Chester, running outside the first floor of the houses under cover, very graceful with their staircases and colonnades. There is nothing quite like them in the world, and the wisest disagree as to their origin. Some ascribe them to the Romans, though Roman Chester was entirely razed by invading Danes. Others discern shelters for street fighting against the Welsh, who were so suspect that Henry IV. forbade any to tarry after sunset within the walls 1 on pain of decapitation. A more probable theory is that humble bungalows arose from rubbish heaps in Norman days, that later on it proved simpler to build behind instead of above them, and that their roofs were turned into promenades. All we know is that Rows were mentioned in civic records of the fourteenth century. And now the Rows are mainly surrendered to old curiosity shops, whose medieval windows display spinning wheels and warming pans and glass pictures and the quaint brass candlesticks which lighted old burghers up their corkscrew stairs when curfews tolled.

Perhaps the castle, founded by the Normans, is the only relic, of the city's past to discard its air of antiquity, even Julius Cesar’s Tower seeming modernised in its new coat of red stone. At the ton of Castle street there used to stand a grcy-blno marble block, known as the Glover Stone, to mhrk thc coniines of the city. Here various jurisdictions met, and prisoners were ceremoniously handed over by the constable of the castle or the county sheriffs to be whipped or pilloried or hanged by the city sheriffs, the mayor attending with sword and mace. It was a sort of neutral zone, where minor offenders could claim sanctuary, among them John Wesley when his sermons were prohibited within the walls. THE SANDS OP DEE.

A glance at a map reveals how greatly the life and prosperity of Chester have depended on ‘the _ ])eo, whoso estuary would have remained far richer than the Mersey were it not for the encroachment of, those treach-

erous sands, the sands of Dee, which reveal themselves when tide is low. It is to them that we owe the dainty masterpieces of David Cox. The drowning there of Edward King inspired Milton with his ‘ Lycidas,’ and hero it was that Kingsley's Mary was swallowed up when driving her cattle home: The western, tide crept up along the sand, And o’er and o’er the sand, And round and round the sand, As far ns eye could see. The blinding mist came down and hid the hind; And never home came she. This invasion of sand on the wings of the west wind has robbed Chester of her port, but at the same time given rather more than it destroyed. Many flat miles of good cornfields and pastures, now known as the Sealand, have emerged from the bottom of the waters and increased food stores at the expense of commerce. And the Dee remains famous for water sports and fish. Light fantastic coracles, “tarred nutshells,’’ are still in use for salmon fishing, scarcely changed in their framework of ash and beech twigs during twenty centuries. The Dee is a paradise for anglers, with salmon as the presiding genius. One of the city churches used to give a prize of a ton of coal for the first catch of tho year, and such was the profusion that ’’prentices had to stipulate in their indentures that they should not bo given salmon for dinner every day.