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Watergate part I

A Virtual Stroll Around the Walls of Chester

14. The Watergate part II

Infirmary

Welcome to the second part of our exploration of the Watergate area

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f we look up Watergate Street, on the right is one of the few examples of a town house by Thomas Harrison, builder of the Grosvenor Bridge, Northgate and Castle: Watergate House was built in 1820 for Henry Potts, Clerk of the Peace for the County of Cheshire. Harrison's villas were usually stuccoed but his use of brick with stone dressings may have been used here to allow the house to blend in with the older houses in Watergate Street.
In 1907, it became the first headquarters of the Army's Western Command. Western Command stretched from Hadrian's Wall on the Scottish border to Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire and included Lancashire, Cheshire, wales and the West Midlands and, from 1907 to 1972, the garrison city of Chester was its HQ.
The Army eventually outgrew Watergate House and moved into temporary premises in Boughton in 1935 until a vast, purpose-built neo-Georgian building was completed overlooking the River Dee at Handbridge in 1938.

yacht inn A little further on we encounter the traffic noise and stench of Nicolas Street, now part of the modern Inner Ring Road. On the right-hand side once stood the ancient Yacht Inn (of which more below)- seen here in a photograph of c.1900, which shows the view up the street towards Chester Castle. It is hard to believe that only thirty ago, this scene remained almost unaltered. Now, however, the chaos of the Inner Ring Road makes this quiet scene difficult to imagine.

The fine row of town houses along the western side of Nicolas Street were designed by Joseph Turner, who also built the Watergate and Bridgegate, and erected in 1780-81. They were formerly known as Pill-Box Terrace because of the number of doctors residing and practicing there.
Watergate Street was a place of great bustle and business as it was the main entrance to the wharves and crane on the river, which formerly approached much nearer to the city. As the Dee silted up, so the importance of the city as a port declined, but nevertheless, in 1637 there was still sufficient business to justify building, opposite the Yacht, a new Customs House.
Bear in mind that the Port of Chester- which technically still exists- at that time stretched from Barmouth on the west coast of Wales to Morcambe Bay in northern Lancashire. Flintshire landowner and travel writer Thomas Pennant (1726-98) wrote that "In this tract are several other ports, subordinate to the comptroller of Chester, and even Liverpool is styled a creek of the Port of Chester".
The Customs House still exists, and having been used for a number of purposes over the years, today houses a restaurant. Our photograph (below) shows the stone coat of arms atop the building and behind it, the tower of Holy Trinity Church.

Should you find yourself in need of refreshment at this point, you will find, just across the road, an establishment that, though it may share its name with the long-defunct Customs House, is very much alive and well. Unlike the many Victorian imitations in the city, this is the real thing- a genuine 17th century pub, the splendid Ye Olde Customs House Inn. It was originally a town house built in 1637 for Thomas and Anne Weaver (after who the little lane next to it, Weaver Street, is named)- you can still see their initials carved on the front. Once called The Star Inn, the pub was extended in the 18th century to incude the old Row and the house next door. You can see an old photograph of it below- it looks much the same today and serves some of the best-kept beers in town.

The old Yacht Inn was described in the 19th century as "without exception the most picturesque and curious of all our Chester inns" and a century before that was considered "the premier hostelry in the city on its most important street". Both the London and Ireland stage coaches called at its door and it was noted for its feasts, entertainments and godd accomodation. However, the great churchman, satirist and author Jonathan Swift was somewhat less enthusiastic...

Swift did not, however, confine his comments to the clergy, as is hilariously illustrated in the following:

The walls of this town
Are full of renown,
And strangers delight to walk round 'em;
But as for the dwellers,
Both buyers and sellers,
For me, you may hang 'em or drown 'em.

By the mid-nineteenth century, the place had fallen on hard times; in 1853 it was described as "now reduced to very humble pretensions compared to its former character" and, a century on, had become just another street corner pub. Then, in 1965, the ancient Yacht, its windows and scratchings- together with every other building on the left-hand side of the photograph above- were bulldozed during the creation of the Inner Ring Road, and their foundations and cellars now lie beneath the left-hand carriageway of busy Nicolas Street. (To learn much more about the vanished inns of Chester, go here).
Also lying under the ringroad is the site of Lower Lane, which Hemingway described as "a miserable receptacle of vice, chiefly inhabited by the lowest order of people".

In July 2000, Watergate Street has become the latest of Chester's main streets to be completely resurfaced- the old tarmac having been replaced by attractive stone setts.
While on the subject of road conditions, here's a final offering from Jonathan Swift concerning the state of the highroads he was forced to endure on his journeys between London and Chester...

When soon by every hillock, rut and stone,
In each other's faces by turns were thrown...
Sweet Company! Next time, I do protest, Sir,
I'd walk to Dublin ere I'd ride to Chester.

Just as the modern view from the Watergate provides rather a challenge to the imagination in evoking the scenes of yesteryear, so too the following short stretch of Chester's city walls. Very pleasant, but rather mundane- and in a sense providing a brief relief from the continuous magnificence of spectacle and history we have thus far experienced during our journey.
So, descending from the Watergate, we leave behind us the noise and traffic, and enter leafy City Walls Road.

Priory and Prison
queens school

In the middle ages, this entire area, from the site of the recently-demolished Police HQ to the fine old towers on the northwest corner (which we have yet to visit)- and stretching back beyond the present ring road- were occupied by the buildings and estates of various religious foundations, the area not becoming built up until the late 18th century. Indeed, when one studies old maps of the city, it is amazing just how much land inside the walls was used for grazing, agriculture and gardens, the Deanery Field at the northeast corner being the sole survivor today.
The wall here, as with the stretch along Nun's Road, is not readily apparent until we look over the parapet on our left and see the sheer drop down to the playing fields below and the massive sandstone buttresses that extend all along the outside of the west wall. (They may be seen in an old photograph on the next page).These attractive playingfields and tennis courts belong to the Queen's School for girls, which you can see on the other side of the road. The school had been founded in 1878, "for the education of the daughters of the Middle Classes" and had originally occupied a large 18th century house- 100 Watergate Flags- on the corner of City Walls Road and Watergate Street, which, as we learned earlier, had been built on the site of an extra-mural Roman bath house. It was considered an ideal location for the new school, despite its reputation for being haunted.

In 1806-8, a new City Gaol and House of Correction had been erected on this spot and its first prisoners were transfered here when the ancient Northgate Gaol was demolished. Designed by the prolific Chester architect Thomas Harrison, whose works we have encountered throughout our wanderings, it was built of brick at a cost of £3,500 and contained a gaol in the western half for people awaiting trial and a house of correction on the east, for those found guilty of a misdemeanour. Each building was shaped like a cross with a square courtyard within each angle. Everything was surrounded by a high wall with two separate entrances, each with its stone porch on four Doric columns.
Until the gaol's eventual closure, those citzens so inclined would assemble to witness public executions carried out on a scaffold mounted above the gaol's main entrance. No doubt the crowds would have attracted refreshment sellers, hawkers, and the like, shouting their wares- the resulting racket may well have resulted in frequent fallings-out with the nursing staff of the Infirmary next door!
In 1856, Thomas Hughes, in his Stranger's Guide to Chester wrote, "Surely the day is not far distant when 'death by the hangman' will be a punishment unknown to the criminal code of England! What adds to the evil, as far as Chester is concerned, is that the authorities of the City are compelled, by some antediluvian charter, to see execution done on every condemned criminal within the County, though for what reason this especial 'honour' was first conferred on the citizens, is an enigma susceptible of no clear solution".

(Another 113 years were to pass until Hughes' wish was granted and capital punishment was finally done away with in Britain in 1969- except for Northern Ireland, where they had to wait until 1973. Go here for a grim history of the subject).
A 1940s contributor to the Cheshire Sheaf, when a small boy, overheard a friend of his father relating that, while a passenger on the railway, he had seen the body of a criminal suspended on the gallows erected on this gaol.
You can see what the place looked like in an old illustration on the next page. It was demolished in 1872. The old prison fire bell, which once hung over the debtor's yard, was long displayed at the Pied Bull Inn in Northgate Street.

The site of the old gaol was acquired by the Duke of Westminster, who offered it to the rapidly-expanding school for the erection of a new building. Designed in the Tudor Gothic style by A. E. Oulde of Newgate Street, it was opened by the Duke on March 7th 1883. Here you can see the architect's original design drawing for the building- the Infirmary may be seen to its left.
Up to the opening of the new building, the school had gone under the title of 'The Chester School for Girls' but the Duke had a word in the ear of Queen Victoria, who commanded that "the school in question shall be styled the Queen's School".
In 1997, the school had high hopes of being able to expand into the disused 1761 Infirmary building- which we will visit soon- but were gazumped by property developers at the last moment. Instead, they acquired the former City Walls Hotel, just in front of us, where they have successfully developed their new sixth form centre.

Just before the Queen's School is Stanley Place, a development of fine houses dating from the 1780s. The long-defunct Chester Courant of May 1778 advertised the development thus, "There is now to be let for building on, several hundred yards of land in the Yacht-Field, near the Watergate, within and adjoining the City Walls, being a most convenient, dry and healthy situation, commanding a very pleasing prospect of the Flintshire hills and River Dee, with a great part of the enclosed lands recovered from the sea. Its extent will admit of erecting elegant houses, that may be formed into a square that will open to the City Walls, and its situation may, with great propriety, be considered as in the country".

The aforementioned Yacht Field had, in pre-Reformation times, formed part of the estates belonging to the monastery of the Franciscan Grey Friars, of whom we learned in our previous chapter. When the grand houses were eventually built, a private garden was laid out between the two sides of the street where cars park today.
The distinctive porch seen on the end of the right-hand terrace is Chester's last example of a Sedan Porch. The sedan chair was carried by two servants into the centre of the open porch, thereby allowing the occupant to enter or leave the house without being exposed to the elements. A Miss Piper wrote of them: "They came into the parlour and got full of warm air, and nipped you up and carried you tight and cosy into another warm room where you could walk out without having to shew your legs by going up steps or down steps".

Cheese and Linen

At the far end of Stanley Place stood between 1235 and 1538 the monastery of the Franciscan Greyfriars and later Chester's Linen Hall occupied the site. This was built in 1778 by Irish linen merchants as a depot containing many shops in a spacious area from which their cloth- to the measure of millions of yards- was distributed by wagon and pack horse throughout the kingdom.
Here we can see the Queen's School and the large area the Linen Hall once occupied in this detail from the 1896 Chester OS map and a photograph of it is below.
Linen fairs were held on 5th July and 10th October and even though a heavy duty of twopence on every 100 yards was imposed, it was a profitable import through the Port of Chester.
After the linen trade declined, the building was utilised as a cheese store and market. It was said to have been a sleepy and quiet place except during the Cheese Fairs, when in a few hours thousands of pounds could change hands. The cheese was sold by the hundred-weight and only under exceptional circumstanced could a single cheese be bought.

(Traveller and writer George Borrow was, however, less than impressed with the Cheshire cheese and ale he was served when staying at the Pied Bull Inn in Northgate Street 150 years ago...)

It is said that local cheese making originated with the Romans, but it has certainly been made here for many centuries, and delicious Cheshire Cheese was shipped to the world in special 'cheese ships' which departed from the Cheese House Quay in Crane Street, just up the road from the Watergate. Towards the end of the 19th century, the quays went into decline as the trade was transferred to the railways.
photo of linenhall

A very similar- if somewhat grander- structure in Halifax, West Yorkshire- the Piece Hall- will give you a strong idea of how Chester's Linen Hall once looked. Theirs remains as a thriving commercial centre and leisure facility and is, in fact, a Grade I listed building but Chester's is long gone. When it was demolished, the cheese fairs were transferred to the Market Hall in Town Hall Square.
From 1919, the site of the old Linen Hall has been occupied by stables used to accommodate horses taking part in the races on the Roodee. In May 2001, however, the Chester Race Company announced plans to demolish them in order to allow the development of new housing on the site. Nearly two years later, in May 2003, we learned that developers Taylor Woodrow were aspiring to build 144 apartments in 4 and 6-storey blocks on the site. Their architects say the new properties will 'reflect' features of the windows and brickwork of neighbouring Georgian buildings but will include "contemporary timber panels and rendering".

And now, amid scenes of recent redevelopment, we see on our right the old Chester Royal Infirmary...