This map appeared in G.Braun's Civitates Orbis Terrarum of 1572-1618 and is a clear indication of how Chester appeared in the middle of the 16th century. It shows a community still living largely within the ancient city walls, with suburban settlements beyond the Northgate, the Eastgate, spreading up Cow Lane- today's Frodsham Street- and over the River Dee in Handbridge.

Notice how the river curves round and joins the walls at the Watergate, where ships are berthed, and that the Watertower stands actually surrounded by water.
Beyond the Eastgate, on the right of the map, you can see a secondary defensive gate and wall, known as The Bars and beyond that, where the road branches, is Barrel Well Hill, at this time known as Gallows Hill in the suburb of Boughton- the town's chief place of execution- Chester's Tyburn- where was situated the gallows and the stake, for burnings...
Inside the entire length of the west wall are the former fields and gardens of the Grey and Whitefriars and the nuns of St. Mary, which had been dissolved thirty years earlier.

Much remains familiar, and a modern citzen, whisked back to the Chester of the 1500s, would probably find their way about without too much difficulty- there are the Walls and Gates, the Cathedral, Castle, Old Dee Bridge, St. John's Church, the Market Square and all of the major and most of the minor streets, situated just as today.

Two great changes in the street plan have, however, occured since that time: the building of the Grosvenor Bridge and Grosvenor Street in the 1830s and the Inner Ringroad of the 1960s.

Today's Cestrian would envy the fields full of grazing cattle that still surround the little town, but fortunately the Roodee, Deanery Field and Meadows (where cattle still graze) remain today as open ground.

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