A Virtual Stroll Around the Walls of Chester

Some Old Photographs of the River Dee

(better quality versions of these pictures will be posted here soon...)

ere is an interesting photograph of fishermen on the Dee sometime during the late 19th century, before Thomas Harrison's County Gaol, in the background, was demolished. (Those cells which faced towards the river must have had spectacular views!) This had been built in 1807 to replace the squalid prison in the Northgate- you will see another picture of it when we come to the Infirmary section of our walk. The site has since 1957 been occupied by County Hall, which today unfortunately obstructs the view from the river of the fine medieval church of St. Mary-on-the-Hill. Our photograph shows it entirely unhemmed in by buildings.

The church is also known as St. Mary-Within-the-Walls to distinguish it from the first church to be built on the other side of the river, St. Mary-Without-the-Walls in Handbridge, whose fine tall spire is clearly visible from all around. Built in 1887, occupying a site of a Roman cemetery, it was a gift to the city from the Duke of Westminster.

St. Mary-Within-the-Walls, however, has a far more reaching history. The original church on the spot, dating from the 12th century, was known as St. Mary de Castro ('of the Castle'). The present structure dates from the 16th century and the porch contains stones brought from the nunnery of St. Mary's, which once stood overlooking the Roodee where, for the moment, the unsightly Police HQ building stands. The tower was once much lower than it is today- as a precaution against attack it was forbidden for any neighbouring building to overlook the walls of the castle. The ornately-carved upper parts of the tower we see today were added by the castle's re-builder, Thomas Harrison in 1861-2. The interior of the church is very fine and boasts a splendid English oak inner roof, brought from Basingwerk Abbey (whose picturesque ruins still survive near Holywell in North Wales) when that establishment was dissolved by the agents of King Henry VIII. Many of Chester's greatest citizens were buried here and some of their monuments are likely to surprise the visitor, being as they are painted in bright colours. The church was deconsecrated in 1972 and today hosts an education centre operated by Cheshire County Council.

You can just glimpse the Agricola Tower of the Castle on the far left- one of the few medieval sections to survive Harrison's radical rebuilding in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The River Dee has for long been one of the most important salmon rivers in the country. The important reaches for salmon angling are the Dee and its tributaries upstream of Bangor on Dee; angling downstream of this point is important for trout and coarse fish, but in virtually the whole of the river system trout can be found.
There are two hatcheries on the river system, a trout hatchery operated commercially and a salmon and trout hatchery operated by the Water Authority. The latter is used to improve the salmon and trout stocks of the river, and the Authority uses a number of moorland streams cleared of trout and other predators, as "nurseries" for the small salmon bred at the hatchery.

In the estuary and the canalised reach of the river, a limited number of salmon netmen operate, and the estuary is also the source of flounder and shrimp. Small flounder may be observed to be a favourite of the growing number of cormorants that inhabit the river, especially in the vicinity of the Old Dee Bridge and weir.
The salmon fishing community lived in Greenaway Street and the courts surrounding it in Handbridge, across the Dee from Chester. They all had their own jealously-guarded named spots to fish from, such as Marshead, Lane End, Under the Hills, Crane and Littlewood. Once there were fourteen such places within two miles of the Old Dee Bridge, today there are six remaining.

Joseph Hemingway, writing in 1835, said, "In that useful article, salmon, no market in the kingdom did, some few years ago, excel it; indeed, such was the profusion of that valuable fish, that masters were often restricted, by a clause in the indentiture, from giving it more than twice a week to their apprentices. Though the bounty of providence, in this particular, is yet unabated, such restriction is no longer necessary- some artificial cause, or other very kindly, rendering this fish, at the present day, a delicacy even to the masters themselves... The supply was so great, that after furnishing our own market for the city and neighbourhood, five or six carts were employed in conveying it for sale to distant places".

Right: A view of the area today known as The Groves, taken sometime prior to 1881, when the tall medieval tower of St. John's Church, which you can see in the background, collapsed.

In the foreground is the weir constructed in the 11th century to direct the flow of the river toward the last two arches of the Old Dee Bridge where waterwheels powered a series of mills. In the 18th and 19th centuries, if a barge on the Shropshire Union Canal needed to unload at the mills, the lock gate into the Dee could only be opened on a flood tide. Navigating a craft designed for canal use was risky work; extra hands were needed with long poles to help keep the barge straight. The picture shows the result of getting it wrong. Having failed to tie up at the mill, the barge has been carried on under the bridge and stranded in top of the causeway as the tide recedes. It was recorded that "It took nearly all the carthorses in Chester" to pull her off.

When this photograph was taken, the river bank has not yet been formerly 'laid out', planted with trees and provided with the seating and bandstand we know today.

Go here to see a beautiful etching of the area by A.Godwin from around the same time.

Left: We move forward in time fifty years or so, to February 1929, and this view of The Groves and the frozen River Dee by photographer Mark Cook, whose studio was on the city walls nearby. It shows the same part of the riverbank we can see in the photograph above. Many people have turned out to enjoy the novel new playground, a lot of whom have braved the ice, though the spectators in the foreground seem happy to remain safely on the bank!
You can just see the Bandstand on the left of the photograph and the Queen's Park Suspension Bridge, rebuilt just six years earlier, crosses the river above the heads of the skaters. The original bridge had been erected here in 1851 to link the city to the newly-developed suburb of Queen's Park and was replaced by the present structure in April 1923.

The Dee had previously frozen to this extent in 1895 and again in 1917.

Right: This was the factory of Messrs T. Nicholls, manufacturers of tobacco and snuff, which was established here in the 1780s, and which stood directly opposite the Groves and Bandstand shown in the previous picture. The buildings were entirely demolished in the 1960s, some exceedingly ugly flats were built at the Old Dee Bridge end of the site and the rest was landscaped and a footpath to the Meadows constructed. At the far end, the Salmon Leap survives and the waterwheel which once powered Nicholl's snuff mill has been restored. A small generating station now stands where a smaller tobacco works and a tallow candle works used to be on Cherry Tree Island at the end of the weir.

Right: A delightfully evocative hand-coloured photograph of customers enjoying a sunny Sunday at the old White House Cafe which formerly stood above the river on Sandy Lane in Boughton, just outside Chester.

The cafe had originally been a pub. Reader Mike Lawton found this page and wrote to tell us that "my Great Grandparents Alfred and Sarah Jane Brentnall (ne Lloyd) ran the pub in the early 1900s and I had never seen a photo before. They had 7 daughters and one son (also Alfred) and apparently the girls regularly all trouped down to Hever Castle at the invitation of Lord and Lady Aster to dance at the balls. Why I have no idea.
Alfred worked as a foreman for the leadworks and was found leaning on a bench outside the White House Pub. They thought he was asleep but he had died!" 

The variety of the gentlemen's clothing in the photograph is particularly interesting- the wearers appearing equally comfortable in swimming trunks or sturdy three-piece suit, collar and tie!

Sadly, the cafe no longer exists and the site is now occupied by a mundane block of flats. However, Sandy Lane still remains an attractive area of the city and is very popular with Chester families, especially during the summer months. There is an outdoor swimming pool, playground, boatyard, sailing club (your guide is a member!) and a public slipway.

During the summer, there is a ferry link with the vast recreational open space on the other side of the Dee known as the Meadows- which can also be reached from the city centre by walking along the footpath which now occupies the site of the old tobacco factory in the previous picture. A little further along the river from here- and once one of this writer's favourite summer pubs before it was converted into an expensive restaurant- is the Red House, which boasts superb gardens dropping sharply down to a landing stage on the riverbank and has splendid views over the Meadows, River Dee and the towers and spires of the city of Chester. The garden of the nearby, still unspoiled, Mount Inn offers even more spectacular views over the river and city.

Left: A rather fuzzy view of the Groves from sometime in the 1950s, as viewed from the Queens Park Suspension Bridge.
(You can see a fine photograph of the suspension bridge taken about ten years later here)

The photograph seems to have been taken on a bright day in early Springtime- the trees are still quite bare and everyone is well wrapped-up to enjoy the sunshine. The cars here are bumper to bumper the full length of the road and are making life difficult for the many walkers. Who said traffic congestion was a new problem?

Today, access to the Groves by car has been considerably restricted and priority rightly been given to pedestrians, though not, sadly, to cyclists.

If you're planning to visit, a limited amount of parking is available, but if at all possible, you should try to leave your car elsewhere and explore the area on foot. You'll enjoy it much more that way!

Right: The Earl's Eye flooded by the waters of the River Dee, as would have regularly occured from time immemorial until just a few years ago, when improved management of the river has made this view a strange one for today's Cestrian. Or so we thought- see below..

In Saxon times, the waters of the Dee covered the whole of this area with the exception of a small island upon which stood a stone cross, the stump of which you may still see in the middle of the racecourse today.

Even earlier, in Roman times, the river, which was then much wider and deeper, flowed right up to what is now the base of Chester's medieval city wall.
Here are some photographs of the Meadows in more peaceful mood...

The above reference to improved management making the flooding of the Meadows a rare sight started to ring a little hollow in November 2000 when this aerial photograph was taken.

Chester was by no means the most severely affected area however, as rivers throughout Britain overflowed their banks resulting in massive damage to homes and farmland.

The disaster was blamed upon a variety of factors such as global warming, modern farming methods, overdevelopment of flood plains- or, less realistically, that it was just "one of those things"...

At the time of writing, however, in early December 2000, a mere night or two of heavy rain has once again resulted in rapidly rising water levels and flood alerts are in place on dozens of rivers..