We arrived in Chester for dinner and settled in for a long day ahead.
We started with a walking tour of Chester (it was raining). Chester is a walled city with the most complete city walls in Britain. It was founded as a Roman Fort in 75 A.D. King Arthur is said to have fought his ninth battle here. We began our tour at the town hall, a Gothic Revival style building that dates from 1869. Black and white half-timbered buildings are characteristic. It was early and most places were still closed. One unique feature is the two-story shopping areas called the Rows. We stopped by a silversmith’s to look at antique silver. Then, we walked down to the East Gate, the most famous gate because of the Eastgate Clock. It is the second most famous clock in Britain. The Chester Town Hall is built in the Gothic revival Style and dates from 1869. In from is the iconic British Telephone Booth
At nine when the cathedral opened, we we able to tour it. Its history goes back two thousand years. Legend has it that first there was a Druid temple on the site. Then when the Romans came the temple was dedicated to Apollo. When Christianity came to Britain in the 4th Century, it became a Christian church. The church was founded by King Wulfhere in 660. In 875 the relics of St. Werburgh were brought to Chester to protect them from the Vikings. King Alfred’s daughter, Queen Etelfleda, founded a church dedicated to St Werburgh in 907. In 1092 a Norman monastery was built. In 1541 King Henry VIII established it as a Cathedral. Restoration was done in the 1830s.
Walking along we came to the Nine Houses, a row of historic almshouses. Despite their name, only six of the original nine cottages survive today. Built around 1650 during Chester’s post-Civil War restoration period, they are the only surviving pre-19th-century almshouses in the city. Then we saw The Tudor House, dating back to roughly 1603. It is widely celebrated as one of Chester’s finest and least altered remaining examples of genuine 17th-century black-and-white timber framing. The Crypt House blends Victorian Gothic with an old foundation, creating a crypt underneath the house.
From Chester we traveled through the Lake Country to Scotland.
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