Cheshire: Traditions and History

By T. A. Coward

“Cheshire” takes a detailed look at this beautiful English county, exploring its people, places, and customs. This illustrated volume will appeal to those with an interest in history of Cheshire or those looking for a glimpse into England in the late nineteenth century. Contents include: “Cheshire and Chester”, “Wirral—The Dee Side”, “Wirral—The Mersey Side”, “The Royal Forest of Delamere”, “The Forest Outskirts”, “The Story of Vale-Royal”, “The Dee Valley and the Welsh Border”, “Beeston Castle and the Peckfortons”, “Nantwich and Combermere”, “Halton and Norton”, “The Roads from Warrington”, “Northwich and Salt”, “South of the Lancashire Border”, etc. Thomas Coward (1867 – 1933) was an English ornithologist and amateur astronomer. He wrote on natural history, local history and Cheshire for a number of publications and books. Other notable works by this author include: “The Vertebrate Fauna of Cheshire and Liverpool Bay” (1910), “The Migration of Birds” (1912), and “Bird Haunts and Nature Memories” (1922). Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Feb 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9781528784214

Book preview

CHESHIRE

CHAPTER I

CHESHIRE AND CHESTER

THE story of Cheshire, as indeed of any county, is a conglomeration of truth and fiction, history and tradition. Dogmatically to affirm that any incident or episode is historical, or that it is mere tradition, is dangerous, very dangerous. Any such statement is certain to rouse the wrath of historians—of some, at any rate, for these students of the past differ so greatly in outlook and conclusion, that where we make an enemy we are certain to find some friend. Historical facts, repeated and copied as they are bound to be, are too easily corrupted by political or religious prejudice; hopelessly distorted, they may become traditional or legendary.

We must not overlook, however, the undoubted fact that most tradition has some historical foundation, though basic truth may be deeply buried beneath a super-stratum of invented falsehood. Indeed, many of the old chroniclers, from whose picturesque and imaginative writings the earliest records are culled, had, apparently, the schoolboy’s belief in the efficacy of a lie—an abomination in the sight of God, but a very present help in time of trouble.

Speed, who described Cheshire as a seedplot of gentilitie, was a Cheshire man and possibly prejudiced when he gave the county and its sons so prominent a place in his History. Holinshed, also, it is stated, a Cheshire man of either the Sutton Downes or Bosley families, made much of the military prowess of the county, though his accounts do not agree invariably with those of the earlier Froissart. Fuller had no such incentive to eulogize its worthies, yet he says that the gentry of the county are remarkable upon a four-fold account—more numerous than in any other area of similar size, famous for antiquity, seeing that many of their ancestors were fixed here before the Conquest, for their loyalty, especially against a northern enemy, heartily hating a Scot, and lastly because of open-handed hospitality, no county keeping better houses, which, because all grows in their own, may be the better afforded.

To a 17th century historian, who minutely describes certain places in Cheshire which, on his own admission, he had never seen, such virtues may have had sound foundation; but more exact history does not support a tale of continuous loyalty, nor of invariable open-house hospitality. The monastic chronicles of St. Alban’s, for instance, present a different picture of Cheshire men, though of which period is uncertain. Referring to vengeance and rapine, they tell that—

Because of their fickleness the people of those parts are more ready and accustomed to doing such things, because of former wars and local disputes they more readily resort to arms; and are more difficult to control than other people.

Surely there was excuse for suspicion and hasty temper in the inhabitants; for centuries Cheshire was a battleground for contending forces from north or south, east or west. Owing to its geographical position it was a buffer state, a cock-pit. Natural defences—the rivers Mersey and Dee on north and west, the hills of east and south-east—tempted the invader quite as much as the native to dig-himself in to check the advance of opposing forces. Thus, constantly invaded, fortified and held as an outpost against aggression, the inhabitants were forced either to side with the new-comers to protect themselves against worse enemies, or to see their lands devastated. W. Stevenson aptly describes Chester as a blockhouse, at the end of a line of offence or defence.

There were other reasons why Cheshire was an attraction and the scene of frequent competition—it had mineral wealth. The copper and coal in a comparatively small area were not to be despised, but its salt-deposits were exploited at a very early date, and were coveted by those who did not possess them. The history of Cheshire, turbulent or peaceful, is closely connected with salt, and salt to-day is its most important commercial asset.

Stone Age dwellers, some doubtless colonists, brought flints to the hill fastnesses; they polished celts from glacial boulders. They were pushed out by the advancing and victorious Celts, retreating into Wales or, crossing in primitive dug-outs, to Ireland. The Goidels, if they ever gained firm footing in the Cheshire plain, were driven westward by the Brython Celts, whose descendants held Wales, as, we may say, they hold it to-day. The Britons with domesticated cattle may be claimed to have introduced another industry in pastoral Cheshire, which, in due time, evolved into the milk and cheese trade.

The actual dates, even approximate dates, of British earthworks, ditched and banked, some of which retain names, some even original shapes, on various hills and eminences, are unknown; they mark an age of struggle to protect property from acquisitive neighbours. Bucton, geographically if not now politically in the county, Kelsbarrow and Maiden Castles are British; others, probably many times repaired and refortified, were at Oakmere, Eddisbury, Helsby and on the Macclesfield hills. Barrows and tumuli, stone circles, menhirs, and remains of hutment dwellings have left evidence of long-lost tribes. But were they lost? Were they not rather merged? Who with certainty can trace ancestry from a single stock? With each succeeding wave of adventurous invaders new blood was introduced, and it is unlikely that any race was entirely wiped out. Were all male defenders slain, captive women would produce new stock of mixed blood. Those who claim unbroken Saxon or Norman descent can never be sure that some of their forbears were not British or Romano-British. Indeed the Romans found the descendants of Brythonic Celts in Cheshire, the Cornavii, far too valuable a people to annihilate, and when subdued they were not enslaved though treated as subject races. Britain became a colony of the Roman Empire.

For nearly four centuries the Romans ruled, on the whole beneficially, making their own roads or improving the forest tracks which had served for earlier commerce whenever intertribal raids permitted peaceful intercourse. The Romans improved the existing arts of pottery and metal-work; they introduced new arts and sciences—architecture and engineering. They taught their art of war, proving the value of discipline, of skill over brute force. Commerce they fostered, laws they introduced or improved; Britannia Felix was a flourishing colony or Province, sending grain and other produce to Rome.

Pottery, even when fragmentary, is the archaeologist’s guide-material; texture, style, and especially potters’ marks, are his date indicators. At Holt, above Chester, the Romans established a pottery; a somewhat elaborately planned settlement covering some twenty acres, so Professor Newstead tells me. Tiles as well as vessels and utensils were manufactured here; the river was convenient for transport. Much of the Roman pottery discovered in Chester was local, Holt made, and on some is stamped LEG XX VV—the Legionary official mark.

Early vessels of the ist century often show traces of Celtic art. Were these the work of British captives toiling under hard task-masters? Rather let us think of Romano-British potters, though eagerly learning new arts and designs from their skilled instructors yet unable or unwilling to cast aside their traditional and hereditary ideas. An instructive collection of Holt pottery may be seen in the Welsh National Museum at Cardiff.

Many Britons joined the Roman army, but when about A.D. 380 the XXth Legion was withdrawn from Chester, its garrison town, the fertile lands of Cheshire were left without protection. The Picts, rapacious savages, waiting like ghouls for the retreat, ravaged and sacked in the rear of the evacuating forces. Roman power had declined and her forces were needed nearer home; enlisted Britons were fighting to save Rome whilst the land of their birth was being destroyed. Rome had crippled but never destroyed the turbulent Welsh, and to unprotected Britain invaders swarmed from Scandinavian and Teutonic lands. Picts and Scots swept south, Welsh Celts eastward, and the troubles of the now civilized Cheshire inhabitants began afresh. Saxon invaders, Jutes and Angles, more ready to subdue and colonize than to utterly destroy, crossed in ships, and, advancing north and west, swept the Pictish and northern hordes before them, but Cheshire, for centuries, was a war-wasted land, a martyred country where contending forces met.

Sometimes Mercian Saxons held sway, sometimes Northumbrian Angles, sometimes the raiding Danes were in temporary occupation. The history of this period, gleaned from early sagas and chronicles, is full of myth and tradition; few give it much attention, but there is too good evidence that the repeated stories of bloody fights, of massacres of Welsh by Saxons and Saxons by Welsh, a long war of retaliation, have true foundation. Doubtless these tales are full of exaggeration, due to partisanship; but on the other hand, their worst elements, for similar reasons, may be obscured. Victorious and consequently valorous deeds in the eyes of the victors are made much of; cruelty and rapine, treachery and ruthless slaughter, are glossed over, except when the foe was guilty.

The British had some excuse for striving to regain Cheshire, and when the West Saxons, a mixed crew of invaders, raided as far north as Nantwich, Brochmael and other princes met and defeated them. According to doubtful chronicle Cadvan was proclaimed king and Chester became the capital of a British and Welsh kingdom. Against the Northumbrians they had less success, and Brochmael’s Christian forces suffered a terrible reverse. Rome, not the beneficial military power which had so unfortunately deserted them, but the ecclesiastical enterprise of Papal Rome, it is broadly hinted, led to their undoing. Pelagian heresy, a shocking sin in the eyes of St. Augustine, its hottest opponent, had spread throughout Wales, where the considered philosophy of the better-educated monks had appealed—aided no doubt by the good deeds of these missionaries—to the simple Britons. Pelagius, who it is believed was himself of Welsh origin, had grave doubts about the doctrine of original sin and remission by baptism, as well as of other dogmatic creeds. Missionaries were sent to combat the growing primitive Rationalism, amongst them one Augustine, avowedly to convert the heathen Saxons. He visited Bangor is-y-coed, where he seems to have found little favour with the abbot and British bishops who had gathered to receive him; he treated them with censorious disdain, and it is stated prophesied that if they refused to convert the heathen by the methods dictated by Rome they would feel the Saxon sword.

When, later, Æthelfrid with his Northumbrian followers attacked and seized Chester and marched on to conquer Wales, Brochmael’s British and Welsh troops opposed them in the Dee Valley; the monks of Bangor is-y-coed, to the number of a thousand or twelve hundred, encouraged the defenders in this religious war. Æthelfrid declared that the monks by praying to their God were just as much combatants as the men with arms, and ordered No Quarter. If the reports are true no quarter was given; monks, prisoners, and everybody were ruthlessly slain. Dean Howson, who tells of the trouble leading to the misunderstanding between Rome and the followers of Pelagius states that Augustine has been credited with treachery, arranging the massacre and later converting the Saxons to the orthodox views of Rome.

When Penda defeated the Northumbrians, Cheshire became part of Mercia, and for a time the great ditch constructed by Offa from Holywell to the Severn—Offa’s Dyke, still to be traced in places—kept out the disgruntled Welsh, or at any rate helped to check their advance. Still, one chronicler records, in two years seven Welsh raids laid waste many Cheshire towns and villages, the raiders retiring with much loot. Egbert is credited with the final overthrow of Northumbrian domination. Peter Langtoft, in French rhyme, inspired, according to his own assertion, by St. Beada, tells how Æthelwulf held parliament at Chester, when tributary kings from Berwick to Kent paid homage.

Danish and Scandinavian Vikings had acquisitive eyes on the fat lands of England, and, fearless sea-rovers, they raided wealthy monastic settlements on the East Coast, landing colonists as well as fighting men. Bit by bit they annexed the conquered lands; the West Coast was visited, Ireland and the Isle of Man suffered, and finally the Wirral Peninsula engaged their attention. The great Mercian kingdom, unwieldy because of its size when transport was so bad, yielded up tract after tract to the victorious Norsemen. They encamped on Hoole Heath, centuries later to see another decisive struggle, and fell upon and captured a ruined and food-depleted Chester. Famine stricken, they could not hold their conquered town against King Alfred, and retreated impoverished by their recent success. Æthelred, husband of Alfred’s daughter Æthelfleda, often called the Saxon Amazon, repaired the ruined city walls, and after his death his militant widow refortified Eddisbury and built a fort to guard the Mersey ford at Runcorn. Edward, son and successor of Alfred, continued the struggle against the Danes, though many by now had become peaceful settlers, converted to Christianity. Athelstan, in a famous battle, chronicled but never satisfactorily localized, the battle of Brunanburgh, cleared the air and the country for a time. Two places in Cheshire—Bromborough and Faddiley—claim to be the site of the fray when the Scots and Danes suffered so severely, but Lancashire, Northumberland, and Yorkshire, as well as other counties, have their story that this chronicled fight was within their borders. Fifty years later Cheshire found peace under Edgar; but at the beginning of the next century a Dane was proclaimed king, and under his son, Cnut or Canute, England was ruled by a Danish king. Before the end of the 11th century, almost all that the Romans, the Roman taught Britons, the Saxons, and Danes had accomplished, and others had tried to do, was undone. Under the conquering Normans, Cheshire was laid waste.

Exact history began with the Norman Conquest; that, at least, was what we were led to believe in our schooldays. Unfortunately this is not true. Norman chronicles and the writings of Medieval historians are so tainted with superstition, myth, prejudice, and deliberately misleading propaganda, that they are seldom trustworthy, unless existing relics provide evidence. In these relics, whether they be architectural, or the utensils and implements of domestic and military life, confirmation or refutation of the old stories may be discovered. In Chester, throughout the hub of Cheshire story, the most reliable and exact history is of a much earlier date, those days of Roman occupation in the early centuries of the Christian era. During the long years of internal and international struggle for this city of strategic importance the substantial structures of civilized Rome were ruined and buried, and for ages after the arrival of the Normans no one took intelligent interest in discoveries of relics of the past. Archaeology was hardly invented before the end of the 16th century; not until the 19th was it a popular and reliable science.

For many generations Chester has been a happy hunting-ground for antiquarians, for the repeated unearthing of the buried city has revealed visible evidence of the life of the past. The Roman story has been pieced and confirmed; the errors of some workers have been corrected, the guesses of others have been proved to have sound foundation. Though there are gaps to be filled, differing opinions and theories to be discussed and investigated, every new excavation, due to improvement and modernizing of a growing city, brings to light something which adds to knowledge of the past. Thoughtful students of Chester—especially of Roman Chester—have built up this revealed history, are still building it every year. To none of these, perhaps, do we owe more than to Professor Robert Newstead, to whose understanding eye a shaped stone, a nail, or a shard may be a clue which opens a fresh page in the story.

A walled city—few now remain—has fascination. Though on all sides an overflowing population has erected its dwellings and commercial buildings, the walls, the ancient defences, mark the limits of the historic town. From the walls we look down on the modern though hardly recent overflow; though hard to realize what Chester was like in the past these walls and what they encircle give imagination a visible clue. Chester has kept its walls; may it keep them always, though Chester within the walls is but a nucleus of a growing industrial hive, the county town of a county Palatine, and to some measure, as in the past, though Caernarvon will dispute the title, the capital of the northern portion of the Principality of Wales.

Who built these walls, and why? Ranulph Higden, a monk of St. Werburgh’s Abbey, early in the 14th century wrote the Polychronicum, borrowing his facts or fictions from earlier gleanings of one Roger, of the same monastic institution. Caxton printed Trevisa’s translation, a lytel embelysshed fro tholde. In this translation Higden is stated to have affirmed, with suitable caution, that the foundour of this citee is unknowe.

The citee of legiouns, that is, Chestre, stondeth in the merche of Engelond toward Wales, bytwene tweie armes of the see that hatte Dee and Merse. This citee in tymes of Britouns was heed and chief citee of al Venedocia, that is, North Wales.

Higden’s historical résumé is interesting though vague. He declares that in this citee somtyme in Brittische speche heet Caerleon, Legecestris in Latyn, and hatte now Cestria in Latyn, and Chestren in Englishe, the knights that Julius Caesar sent to win Ireland lay for the winter, and later that Claudius sent out from Chester legions to winne the ilonds that hatte Orcades. He tells how Northumbres destroyed this citee sometyme; but afterward Elfleda, lady of Mercia bulde it age’ and made it wel more. A thousand or twelve-hundred murders, the numbers given by other chroniclers, was not lurid enough for Higden, for when Ethelfride, Kyng of Northumber destroyed Chester we learn that he slogh there fast by nygh two thousand monkes of the mynistre of Bangor.

Long before the Romans built the ashlar walls of Chester—in part the foundations of the city walls that stand to-day—there would be earthwork ramparts to check the inroads of troublesome neighbours, for British tribes did not always live at peace. The first founders of the city would need defences, earthen banks or stockades. Two hundred and forty years after the Flood, Magus, grandson of Japhet, perhaps with a taste for navigation inherited from his great-grandsire, voyaged west and north and discovered England, where he founded the city of Neomagus. Sir Thomas Elyot or Elliott, a learned knight, was Webb’s authority for this statement, but Henry Bradshaw was of opinion that Leon Gower, a Celtic giant was the builder, and King Leil or Leir named it Caer-leon. The first walls, unreliable tradition relates, were built in A.D. 73 by the British king, Marius, but if the Romans in this ist century were opposed by walls they razed them before they erected substantial fortifications.

Chester’s Roman walls, Professor Newstead feels sure, may be attributed to the great general, Agricola, governor of Britain, when they were erected, and they have especial interest, for they differ in a marked degree from other early Roman fortifications. As a rule, the Romans when they established a fortress first threw up a massive earthen rampart, and about the time of Hadrian began building a solid revetment of stone against this on either side. At Chester, however, as the recent excavations at the southeast angle of the fortress almost certainly prove, the walls with the internal or angle-tower and the clay rampart or infilling between the walls were raised as one simultaneous structure. The Professor tells me that there is some evidence that Caerleon (Newport) may have been of stone from the first occupation, but that nowhere else is there similar indication of the first walls being of masonry.

The present walls, round which one can walk almost without a break, have varied antiquity. They were erected for defence, ruined by assault, allowed to crumble through neglect, and repaired again whenever invasion threatened. More recently they were repaired and cared for by those who were no longer nervous, but who loved their ancient city. Here and there Roman foundations have been revealed beneath the Medieval superstructure, and in places outside the present walls, but the whole of the Roman defences have not been discovered.

The city walls east of North-gate rest on Roman work. Here, thanks to the excavation for the Shropshire Union Canal, the height of the wall, built on the living rock, can be seen. A moulded plinth, below the present and much later wall, is thought by some to be Roman work, and Professor Newstead tells me that it is certainly classical. The masonry below may be where its builders placed it, for many of the stones, if not all, are Roman, he assures me, and further that from this north wall inscribed stones have at times been removed. Excavation close to the east wall revealed interesting work, five courses of a 14th century drum-tower erected above and stepping over the Roman work, which showed a chamfered plinth and sub-plinth, about six feet in advance of the English wall. Near the Wolf Tower, close to the Telephone Exchange, the English wall crossed the Roman at the south-east angle of the fortress; here the curve of the fortress wall was distinct, as it is close to the New-gate where there has been revealed the base of the internal Roman tower. The Professor shows me that here the Roman wall is about 23 feet in advance of the city wall, which, however, rests on the back or inside wall of the Roman tower; and at this point the English work follows the inner not the outer line of the Roman rampart.

Within the north wall, in the Dean’s Field, Professor Newstead excavated, measured, and by photograph and plan revealed the structure of the barracks of the XXth Legion; outside the wall a more recent discovery in the Convent Grounds convinced him of the existence of a ist century amphitheatre. The City Council and the Excavation Committee entrusted investigation to the Professor, and though that portion of a substantial buttressed wall had to be demolished, careful calculation and an almost uncanny knowledge of where to dig enabled him to direct the work in certain spots in the by-pass road then being constructed, with the result that not only were other parts of the amphitheatre exposed, but that estimates could be made of its size and appearance. The outer wall, 43 feet high, is 9 feet thick; the space from it to the inner wall, 13 feet high, from which the seating bank would rise, is 62 feet. The outer measurements of the oval building would be 315 by 284 feet, and the space for games and contests, the theatre floor of rock, 182 by 162 feet. It is, with one exception, the largest known Roman military amphitheatre, and it is conjectured that it could seat between 7 and 8,000 spectators.

Coins and ironwork, relics of various kinds, sifted from the rubbish of the floor, and in particular bits of pottery with their maker’s marks, give the expert his clue to the date of the amphitheatre, between A.D. 81 and 96. Professor Newstead inclines to the earlier date from pottery stamped by Albanus and Vitalis. Later dates indicate that the place was still in use towards the close of the 3rd century. On or near the floor of the arena were some human bones, but these are not, it is believed, remains of competitors slain in the games: the bodies of the slain were removed at once. More likely when the Roman troops had left Welsh or other raiders assaulting the Pepper-gate postern, sheltered in the amphitheatre from the missiles of defenders, or slew and left to rot any inhabitants they caught outside the walls.

The XXth Legion seems to have been withdrawn from Chester during the closing years of the 4th century, but the departure and disappearance of the Legion is strangely unrecorded; this fateful time for Roman Britain remains a mystery. So far as Chester is concerned the discovery of a coin of Gratian A.D. 367–383, is so far the only clue.

CHESTER WALLS: ROMAN BASTION AND THE PEPPER GATE

Centuries of rubbish and debris lay over the stone floor on which the gladiators contested, and as foot after foot was removed relics of each age, from modern days back to that ist century, were discovered. Mainly by the fragmentary pottery Professor Newstead could tell how far they had travelled back in Chester’s history. Alongside the road, between the present wall and the outer wall of the amphitheatre, workmen had cut a trench to lay an electric cable, and the Professor showed me layer upon layer of broken clay pipes a few feet below the surface. It seems that until recently the clay-pipe industry flourished at this spot; but it is doubtful if anyone had realized its antiquity until fragments of pipes, spoils from the 16th to the 19th century were unearthed.

Cox, in 1720, declares that the Tobacco Pipes, which are made here of Clay brought from the Isle of Wight, Pool and Biddeford, are esteemed the best in England, nay, perhaps in Europe.

The by-pass road, for Manchester-Welsh traffic, cuts through the wall a little to the left of one of the lesser-known city gates, called at various times the New-gate, Wolf-gate, or Pepper-gate. An old Chester saying that the Mayor of Chester shut the Pepper-gate after his daughter was stolen, is often shortened to When the daughter is stolen shut the Pepper-gate. What is the origin of the saying? What the story? One version tells that a mayor of Chester wished his daughter to marry one Luke de Taney, but when with him and other young folk she played ball in Pepper Street, she managed to throw the ball on to the wall. Her unsuspecting swain went to fetch it, and she meanwhile slipped through the gate, where a more favoured youth, an armourer, was waiting with his horse. They rode away, the irate mayor ordering, when too late, that the gate should be closed. Later, so the tale ends, the happy pair returned as Sir Hugh and Lady Lacy.

Canon Morris, searching the city records, found a very different story; for in 1573 Alderman Rogerson and Richard Wright were in trouble with the Council for aiding and abetting the elopement of Ellen Aldersey, the daughter of an alderman, not a mayor, four days after the said Council had ordered the Wolfe-gate or New-gate, out of Pepper Street, to be firmly closed at nightfall. Apparently the mayor had the gate permanently closed. Dr. Bridge, however, found a snag, for on consulting the Assembly Book for 1573, where the story is recorded, he discovered that the description of street and gate and of the Mayre’s daughter who was playnge at the baule, was copied word for word from one drawn up in the reign of Edward III. Dr. Bridge suggests that Miss Aldersey, if she did bolt with her lover, knew about the proverb and played the part as well as the ball. He goes further and dates the legend earlier still, for there is an old Welsh nursery rhyme—and these rhymes usually have great antiquity—translated as:

Trotting, trotting, trotting to Chester

To marry the mayor’s daughter.

Further there is a striking resemblance between the tale of Lady Lacy or Ellen Aldersey and the Scottish ballad of Barbara Livingstone—the origin of Lochinvar—for Barbara was playing at the ba’ when she was stown clean awa’.

Chester walls, gates, and towers all have their history, often repeated, not always correctly. B. C. A. Windle in 1903 and Frank Simpson in 1910 have given us the stories, collected from all available sources. Probably all the history of the North-gate, the old gate with its prison tower removed more than a hundred years ago, will never be known. Delinquents paid 4d. if provided with lodgings for more than one night, and when they attended divine service in the Hospital of St. John, founded by Ranulph Blundeville for the sustentation of poore and sillie persons, they crossed the narrow, closed-in Bridge of Sighs, as it has been nicknamed. They had the doubtful privilege of a final service, and no doubt sermon, before execution. This bridge is not very ancient; indeed, it was built in 1793, some twenty years after the canal was cut through. The Shropshire Union Canal passes right under the north wall, which shows so much original Roman work, and it follows the line of the fortress ditch or fosse through Borrow’s frightful ravine. Simpson tells that the contractors were agreeably surprised to discover that where they had calculated on cutting through living rock they were put to no greater expense than was involved by clearing out rubbish. The deep-cut defensive ditch had long been lost, choked with soil and litter; the prisoners travelled across to their chapel without need of bridge; the canal, however, reopened the gap, and the bridge was built at the cost of £20.

The keeper of the North-gate collected tolls on anything brought through which was more than a man could carry. From the owner of horse or cart who refused to pay he was empowered to annex his bridle; but a horse without bridle is awkward in a narrow street, and when one showed what confusion it could occasion the custom was dropped. The keeper of East-gate, Sergeant of the Gate, had to keep a crannock and bushel to measure salt, one of the city’s most valued imports.

Between North-gate and East-gate, opposite the Abbey, is a small postern known as the Kaleyard-gate, for through this the monks had access to their kitchen-garden, where the name Kaleyard has outlived the cultivation of ecclesiastical cabbage. They were responsible for the right use of this exit, and had to keep gate and drawbridge in order.

The South- or Bridge-gate was perhaps the most important of all ways into the city, for with its watch-tower, vanished ages ago, it guarded that high road into Wales with bridge and causeway. There is no evidence of a Roman bridge at Chester, for the ford opposite the Ship-gate seems to have been their crossing, but the bridge is mentioned in Domesday, and probably antedates the causeway—the modem weir—which Hugh Lupus threw across the river. Grose, indeed, says that it was begun by Æthelfleda and finished by Edward the Elder. The causeway could, apparently, be used by carts; its main object was commercial, for the second Earl of Chester had a business head. A causeway or weir provided a mill-race, and as everyone except the abbot and monks of St. Werburgh had to grind their corn in his mill and nowhere else, the possession of the mills was profitable. Under later owners, in later buildings, others were granted free use of the mills, but always with the somewhat ulterior motive of keeping on the right side of the Church. The mills, burnt down or ruined several times but always rebuilt, were purchased by the Corporation towards the close of the last century, important water rights included; in 1910 they were pulled down, but the race now drives the turbines to generate part of the power which illuminates Chester.

The earlier bridges were of wood, and evidently not over strong; three times in the 13th and 14th centuries flood or tide swept the bridge away. For long no cart with iron tyre might cross, but in the middle of the 14th century, after the third collapse, stone supports were erected. In 1826 the bridge was widened, and a century later, in spite of the convenience of the Grosvenor Bridge, it had again to be made broader; old stone buttresses act as cutwaters when the spring tides top the weir and do not expend their force until above Farndon.

The bridge needed strong defences, for the Welsh wished to use it when the Cestrians had other ideas; a second strong tower was erected at the Handbridge end. This suburb suffered so frequently from raiders that the Welsh named it Treboeth or burnt town. The Welsh did not have it all their own way. Hugh Cyveilioc, in 1170, reduced their numbers at Balderton Bridge, where he slew a multitude and brought their heads to Chester. He dumped them on the city refuse-heaps, known as Boughton Hills, making another hill or mound by the hospital for the sick outside Chester. This and the other mounds were levelled in 1557. Henry IV ordered the sheriffs and aldermen to eject everyone of Welsh blood or sympathy, male or female, every day before nightfall, and to allow no one of them to enter after sunrise with any arms except a knife to cut his dinner. If they did not go or refused to keep out of beer houses or taverns, the authorities were to treat them as Hugh did and cut off their heads.

Naturally this did not tend to peaceful trade, and the Welsh had sayings which, translated, refer to the dogs of Chester. One had to be up early to avoid their visitations. Lewis Glyn Cothi, whose poems pleased Borrow, constantly refers to Chester men as dirty dogs, but his tale of the atrocity which gave origin to the saying To kill the Mayor of Chester on Cevn Cerwyni does not appear to be history. Reinallt, a Welsh outlaw, was reputed to have quarrelled in Chester fair, and having carried off the mayor, hanged him to a staple in his Tower near Mold; then, when two hundred Chester men assaulted the castle, he hid in a wood until they had forced their way in, then bolted the door and burnt his own home. Those who escaped the flames were slaughtered or driven into the Dee. A more likely version is that Reinallt boasted about the sword with which he slew the Mayor of Chester when he came to burn the Tower.

In spite of the severe punishments threatened the Welsh dribbled back, and Henry VI appointed one Ieuan ap Belthyn to the hermitage close to the Dee bridge. What benefit he gave to travellers is uncertain, but the mayor and sheriff kept an eye on him, for his predecessor had given the hermitage a bad name by sheltering robbers and malefactors.

Tradition, very doubtful tradition, tells of an earlier hermit who occupied the cell by St. John’s. It is the story of the end of Harold’s life, very different from the usual version, told in the Chroniques Anglo-Normandes and critically examined and rejected by Freeman. It affirms that blinded in one eye by an arrow and sorely wounded, Harold, after being discovered amongst the dead and dying at Senlac was removed to Winchester, where he was cured by medical and, it is said, oriental skill. After travels abroad in the hope of gaining sympathetic help to regain his conquered kingdom, and a pious pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he returned, an old and disappointed man, and garbed as a palmer reached Chester, where, one version of the legend affirms, Edith or Eadgyth joined him, and in the hermit’s cell he died in peace.

Contracts or, as Simpson suggests, season tickets were issued for use of the bridge, for in 1353 one Hoel ap Oweyn Voil, evidently a trustworthy Welshman, paid 3s. 4d. for the right for himself and retainers to cross for one year. Sir John D’Anyers paid a like sum in that year for a similar privilege, but he had evidently been crossing without paying toll, for in addition he paid up two years’ arrears.

The Stanley family had charge of the Water-gate, a very important place when ships sailed up to the walls—the Roodee was covered by the tide until the end of the 16th century. Stanley Palace, the property and dwelling of the Stanleys of Alderley, and later of the Lancashire branch, the Earls of Derby, is not far from the gate, in a small court off Watergate Street. It stands on part of the ground once occupied by the Dominicans or Black Friars, who were Chester’s early water engineers, bringing an aqueduct from the well at Christleton to the Abbey of St. Werburgh. They had royal permission to cross private lands, but Randle Merton, one of the foresters of Mara, objected, and cut the pipes late in the 13th century. The foresters and the ecclesiastical dignitaries did not always see eye to eye, especially with regard to venison; one abbot of Chester was accused of poaching. It may be, too, that the Dominicans were a little high-handed and officious, for they and the Carmelites, according to Canon Morris, considered themselves responsible for law and order, and, acting as unofficial armed police, made themselves unpopular.

The Stanleys, in addition to wardship of the Watergate, collected tolls at Chester Fair, blowing a horn to announce their rights at Gloverstone. The name of the township of Gloverstone occurs in deeds and documents long after the stone itself vanished. Probably it was a large stone on which glovers scraped their skins, and as it is supposed to have been buried, it was, no doubt, tipped into the ditch when this was filled up. Like the North-gate, it had unpleasant associations for evildoers, for it was here that the sheriff, bailiffs, and town clerk came on horseback to demand the body of anyone about to be executed. At the Gloverstone the constables delivered the culprit to the sheriff, by whom he was placed in a cart and driven to the City Gaol.

The Rows, the covered footways above the lower shops and warerooms, are as typical of Chester as its walls. Their origin has been the cause of many disputes. We may dismiss the