Chester: A Virtual Stroll Around the Walls

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Contents | Introduction to Chester | Route Map | Starting Point: The Northgate | Site Index | Quotes from Chester's Visitors | Chester's Vanished Pubs History of Cinema in Chester | Millennium Cycleway Virtual Stroll | Contemporary Chester Photographs | Old Chester & Liverpool Photographs Liverpool Photographs | Chester and Other Links | The Fortress of Deva: Chester's History | Chester & Liverpool Guided Walks | Reader's Letters Bibliography & Further Reading | Site Index | Write to Us | Advertise with us | The Black & White Picture Place | GoodHiding Leather | ChesterTalk Forums

What's New? August 2008: A gallery of photographs has been added to our Vanished Pubs of Chester pages. Many more coming soon! • Two new pages of remarkable photographs of Speke Airport (now John Lennon Airport) Liverpool, 1930s-1960s added here. In addition, a new page with many more images of old Liverpool is now here. New material has also been added to the Roodee, River Dee and amphitheatre pages. A lengthy and rather romantic recounting of a European tour ending in a vist to Chester, penned by an anonymous correspondent to the New York Times and published by that paper in 1881 has been added here and the 20th century visitors quotes have been moved to their own new page. • We're pleased to announce the return of the Chester Talk discussion forums! - Chester today / Chester's history / Chester music and arts / Advertisments, services & announcements... You're very welcome to join us and add your two penn'orth here- http://chestertalk.freeforums.org/ • A rare opportunity has arisen to purchase a collection of original, signed photographs by the celebrated Liverpool photographer Edward Chambré Hardman. Go here for details... • After many warnings and months of party political argument and accusations of chronic neglect and penny-pinching, the 'scaremongers' have been proved right and a major stretch of Chester's ancient City Wall has collapsed into ruin! Go here for the unforgiveable details... Our Chester Virtual Stroll now has a 'mirror' site- bookmark us now at www.chesterwalls.info However, this, our original site- www.bwpics.co.uk/chester.html- will also remain online. If you come across any dodgy links, please let us know! • Whether resident or visitor- real or virtual- if you've enjoyed this online stroll around our beautiful city, consider joining us on one of our year-round real Chester Guided Walks.. • In business in Chester? Advertise to the world on this website! (entering 'Chester Walls' or suchlike shows that we are number one on Google!) • Get what you deserve! 'GoodHiding'- fine leather products handmade in Chester.

"My very sincere congratulations on the development and presentation of your fantastically outstanding web site. For the last four hours, tears have stung my eyes at the sight of old familiar places that rekindled half forgotten emotions and memories both sad and happy. I have felt anger too at the vandalism of the developers, aided and abetted by councillors apparently, that have destroyed forever irreplaceable history in the name of progress and the accumulation of wealth. But I mustn’t get political; I really just wish to thank you for a most memorable afternoon, a time that I will no doubt repeat again and again in the future.
It has been thirty seven years since I said goodbye to Blighty, looking back from thirty thousand feet over the English Channel, and strangely since Christmas I have been tentatively formulating plans to return for a short holiday later this year. Deciding on doing a little research I logged onto Chester City Council and I discovered your truly great web site. Thank you".
Allan J Rimmer, Victoria, Australia 5th March 2006

"Hello, I'd just like to congratulate you on being the owner and author of the most wonderful site about Chester which I have encountered. It's bursting with information, images and enthusiasm and is incredibly detailed - fascinating and very useful!
I am a Chester resident myself- in Newton- and have long had an abiding affection for the city. Almost all my holidays have been (voluntarily!) taken within the UK and yet I always return to Chester. Your website reminds me why. It is a valuable resource - I've seen many Chester sites but none have come close.
Kate Fletcher 29/3/05

"Hello to all who created this page and to those who visit it. Today I was feeling melancholic thinking about the time I spent in Chester, so I decided to find something about it in the web and which was my surprise that I found you. I love Chester even more than my own city, I spent lovely moments there, every winter I was anxiously waiting for summer to come to go to Chester; its roman walls, its fantastic walks all along the river, its roads, its pubs, its parks, its shops, its cinemas where I saw many films, the Cathedral so beautiful, its castle, The Northgate Arena swimming pool, The zoo the best in Europe, its history and architecture, its people…Chester is always busy, many visitors enjoy it during the year. I loved to walk around town and look at everyone while I was waiting for the bus. To those who are going to visit it I assure you l will enjoy it. It is a very beautiful romantic, historic and shopping place.
Thanks for the site, it is a perfect work,
 Lola, Madrid, Spain, July 2003.

"Thank you! I studied the Virtual Stroll pages while flying across the Atlantic and you can only imagine how much your information helped me enjoy my first visit to Chester. Walking the wall made a wonderful afternoon primarily because of the history you shared. Really, there were MANY things in your papers that I appreciated. I can't imagine walking the wall without those tips. Thank you again!
Geoff Gould, El Dorado Hills, California USA, June 2002

"Your site is truly wonderful. You do the marvelous old city of Chester full justice with your telling of her tale. Thank you for all that!"
Eric Hall, Philadelphia, USA (formerly of Liverpool) February 2007

"Our editors have selected your site as one of the best on the Internet when reviewed for quality, accuracy of content, presentation and usability... We know quality is always difficult to accomplish and maintain. Congratulations on being a selected member of the Britannica Internet Guide.
A virtual tour of the Roman and medieval city walls of Chester, England. Offers a detailed history, a description, drawings and photographs of the walls as well as of the buildings and sights of Chester that can be viewed from the walls. Highlights of the tour include the Cathedral, the Castle, the Roman Amphitheatre, and all the wall's gates. Designed for the armchair traveller or for the tourist who is planning a visit to Chester, A Virtual Stroll provides an elegant and engaging history of the city dating from Roman times to the present"
Encyclopaedia Britannica: February 2000

"Your website is wonderful. I have used it to answer various questions and just for interesting facts about the city. I and my colleagues have found it invaluable, very well organised and very easy to find information on it".
Chester Reference Library, Northgate Street, Chester May 2007

"An absolutely brilliant site about Chester and a sterling almost single-handed effort. Well deserving of funding (cos this is the sort of thing that attracts tourists, business etc)"
Review on the Chester Wiki

"This virtual strolling tour around the walls is beautifully photographed, the narration is detailed and interesting, and it doesn't shy away from some of Chester's darker sides. You will be hard pressed to find a more informative, or enjoyable, guide to the city and it's history."
Review on Chester City Council's Chester Portal

"Mr Howe... is betraying the city, putting jobs and livelihoods at risk and undermining the tremendous work being done to maintain Chester's reputation as the 'jewel of the north'... besmirching the city on the World Wide Web is not the way to win an argument and does everyone a great disservice"
Chester City Council leaders John Price (Lab), Graham Proctor (LibDem), Brian Bailey (Con) and Doug Haynes (Ind): January 2000

"Woe to him who courts not dishonour! Woe to him who would not be true, even though to be false were salvation!" Herman Melville: Moby Dick

You can't please everyone, it seems. But read what other visitors have had to say- some of our most recent letters are here...


Enter Chester: A Virtual Stroll Around the Walls

The above is a 'contents' page to help you find you way around and 'plan your route'. Visiting our index first may help you find what you're looking for- or use Google at the bottom of the page to search either this site or the entire internet...

Our site relies upon your contributions, corrections and constructive criticism to keep growing and to stay lively, informative and up-to-date. Your comments and questions are very welcome and will always receive a reply- as well as perhaps appearing on our lively reader's letters pages.

We have always provided the site freely, as a gift to our readers. We are, however, finding it increasingly difficult to both feed the kids, pay the bills and find the time to keep the Virtual Stroll and its associated galleries anywhere near as up to date as we'd like (there are hundreds of new pictures and stories waiting to go online even now!) So if you are in a position to offer donations or sponsorship or would like to advertise your business on this, we think the finest of Chester's websites, go here for details...

All of the original photographs- and many of the older ones- on the site are available to purchase as beautiful, handmade prints- far superior to the online images- in a variety of sizes. Call (01244 345099 / 0775 1521 600) or email for details.

Search WWW Search google.co.uk Search bwpics.co.uk

Don't forget- you can also use the index to search our site. An incomplete bibliography of inspirations & source materials is here.

Recommended for further study: British History Online's A History of the County of Chester and Wikipedia's Chester pages.

"In whatever point of view these old ramparts are considered, they possess an imposing interest and confer incalculable benefits. To the invalid, the sedenatary student, or the man of business, occupied during the day in his shop or counting house; to the habitually indolent, who require excitement to necessary exercise, to all these, the the promenade on Chester walls have most inviting attractions, where they may breath all the salubrous winds of heaven in a morning or an evening walk. Here the enthusiastic antiquarian, who would climb mountains, ford rivers, explore the bowels of the earth, and, regardless of toil, and the claims of nature, exhaust his strength in the search for a piece of rusty cankered brass, or a scrap of Roman earthenware, can scarcely advance a dozen paces, but the pavement on which he treads, or some contiguous object, forces upon his observation the reliques of times of earliest date. Nor can the philosophic moralist encompass our venerable walls without having his mind, comparing the splendid and gigantic works of antiquity with their present condition, strongly impressed with the mutations produced by the lapse of ages, and the perishing nature of all mundane greatness".
Joseph Hemingway: Panorama of the City of Chester 1836.

Vista? you must be joking! click on the apple to find out why

All pictures and text © Steve Howe / B&W Picture Place 1995-2008