ALDFORD
5
Bridge on the River Dee Only for the Duke
What a beautiful bridge this is over the River Dee, four miles south of Chester: Grade I, single arch, 150-foot, cast iron with ornate lattice work. It dates back to 1824 and links the village of Aldford with the Duke of Westminster’s country house of Eaton Hall at an idyllic setting where the Romans’ Watling Street crossed the river. It was even designed by transport engineer Thomas Telford, known as the ‘Colossus of Roads’ (sic) and famed for the Menai Suspension Bridge. The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings has described it as ‘probably the most elegant iron bridge in existence’. There’s just one problem: you can only use it occasionally folks. It’s private. Mostly, only the Duke and his people are allowed on it. It was commissioned in the 1820s by Robert Grosvenor, the Marquis of Westminster and lord of the manor, so that well-heeled locals could get to his grand property, Eaton Hall, seat of the Grosvenor family since the 15th century. It is still the real-life home of the Duke of Westminster. Eaton Hall has been rebuilt several times. For around a hundred years it took the form of a grand Gothic-styled mansion designed by no less a figure than Alfred Waterhouse (Natural History Museum, Strangeways prison). Sadly for aesthetes, that building was almost entirely demolished in the 1960s due to the high cost of upkeep and replaced by white, rectangular Dennys Hall, which has not been universally praised and was described by Pevsner’s Cheshire as ‘Château style, but also Tesco style’. Well, every little helps. At least Waterhouse’s chapel remains. It looks as if someone has sliced off a tower of the Houses of Parliament. Although Eaton Hall is private, the gardens are open three days each year to raise money for charity and the chapel is open for the annual carol concerts. Your chance to see how the very rich other half lives.
ADDRESS Chester Approach, Chester, CH4 9JD TIP Head south for a glorious walk along the River Dee, parts of which still form the border between England and Wales.
ALDFORD
5
Bridge on the River Dee Only for the Duke
What a beautiful bridge this is over the River Dee, four miles south of Chester: Grade I, single arch, 150-foot, cast iron with ornate lattice work. It dates back to 1824 and links the village of Aldford with the Duke of Westminster’s country house of Eaton Hall at an idyllic setting where the Romans’ Watling Street crossed the river. It was even designed by transport engineer Thomas Telford, known as the ‘Colossus of Roads’ (sic) and famed for the Menai Suspension Bridge. The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings has described it as ‘probably the most elegant iron bridge in existence’. There’s just one problem: you can only use it occasionally folks. It’s private. Mostly, only the Duke and his people are allowed on it. It was commissioned in the 1820s by Robert Grosvenor, the Marquis of Westminster and lord of the manor, so that well-heeled locals could get to his grand property, Eaton Hall, seat of the Grosvenor family since the 15th century. It is still the real-life home of the Duke of Westminster. Eaton Hall has been rebuilt several times. For around a hundred years it took the form of a grand Gothic-styled mansion designed by no less a figure than Alfred Waterhouse (Natural History Museum, Strangeways prison). Sadly for aesthetes, that building was almost entirely demolished in the 1960s due to the high cost of upkeep and replaced by white, rectangular Dennys Hall, which has not been universally praised and was described by Pevsner’s Cheshire as ‘Château style, but also Tesco style’. Well, every little helps. At least Waterhouse’s chapel remains. It looks as if someone has sliced off a tower of the Houses of Parliament. Although Eaton Hall is private, the gardens are open three days each year to raise money for charity and the chapel is open for the annual carol concerts. Your chance to see how the very rich other half lives.
ADDRESS Chester Approach, Chester, CH4 9JD TIP Head south for a glorious walk along the River Dee, parts of which still form the border between England and Wales.
BIRKENHEAD
11
Cammell Laird Shipbuilding – it’s all we’re skilled in
The most famous British shipbuilders have been Harland and Wolff (the unsinkable Titanic), Swan Hunter (RMS Mauretania), and of course Cammell Laird, masters of the Mersey, wonders of the Wirral. Cammell Laird came about through a merger of the Laird Company, originally the Birkenhead Iron Works, and Sheffield’s Cammell, in 1903. Laird’s featured in Jules Verne’s 1870 classic Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. They built the Ma Robert in 1858 for Dr Livingstone’s expedition along the Zambesi river in Africa. Highly controversial was their 1862 vessel, the CSS Alabama. This was a Confederate ship, that is to say on the slavery-tolerating side during the American Civil War. It was built amidst the strictest confidentiality and secretly slipped out of Birkenhead on 29 July 1862. Astonishingly, Britain was neutral during the conflict, but it was okay legally to build a warship in the UK as long as it wasn’t armed until it was in international waters. After the merger, Cammell Laird turned to trains for the upgraded London Underground, making vehicles with doors operated by compressed air. In 1927, they built 160 passenger coaches for use in India. In the 20th century, the company made more than a thousand vessels in Birkenhead. Pride of fleet were the Mauretania, a follow-up ship of the above, and the Ark Royal, a World War II Royal Navy aircraft carrier involved in taking out U-boats, torpedoed on 13 November 1941, sinking the following day. All things must come to a sort of end. The company was nationalised in 1977 ( Jim Callaghan, Labour), there was a major strike in 1984, and Cammell Laird went back to being privatised in 1986 (Margaret Thatcher, Conservative). Closure came in 1993, but rebirth for repairs took place in 2007, followed by a triumphant return to shipbuilding for the polar research ship, the RRS David Attenborough.
ADDRESS Campbeltown Road, Tranmere, CH41 9BP TIP Explore the riverside with its industrial areas and magnificent views across to the glories of Liverpool.
BIRKENHEAD
11
Cammell Laird Shipbuilding – it’s all we’re skilled in
The most famous British shipbuilders have been Harland and Wolff (the unsinkable Titanic), Swan Hunter (RMS Mauretania), and of course Cammell Laird, masters of the Mersey, wonders of the Wirral. Cammell Laird came about through a merger of the Laird Company, originally the Birkenhead Iron Works, and Sheffield’s Cammell, in 1903. Laird’s featured in Jules Verne’s 1870 classic Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. They built the Ma Robert in 1858 for Dr Livingstone’s expedition along the Zambesi river in Africa. Highly controversial was their 1862 vessel, the CSS Alabama. This was a Confederate ship, that is to say on the slavery-tolerating side during the American Civil War. It was built amidst the strictest confidentiality and secretly slipped out of Birkenhead on 29 July 1862. Astonishingly, Britain was neutral during the conflict, but it was okay legally to build a warship in the UK as long as it wasn’t armed until it was in international waters. After the merger, Cammell Laird turned to trains for the upgraded London Underground, making vehicles with doors operated by compressed air. In 1927, they built 160 passenger coaches for use in India. In the 20th century, the company made more than a thousand vessels in Birkenhead. Pride of fleet were the Mauretania, a follow-up ship of the above, and the Ark Royal, a World War II Royal Navy aircraft carrier involved in taking out U-boats, torpedoed on 13 November 1941, sinking the following day. All things must come to a sort of end. The company was nationalised in 1977 ( Jim Callaghan, Labour), there was a major strike in 1984, and Cammell Laird went back to being privatised in 1986 (Margaret Thatcher, Conservative). Closure came in 1993, but rebirth for repairs took place in 2007, followed by a triumphant return to shipbuilding for the polar research ship, the RRS David Attenborough.
ADDRESS Campbeltown Road, Tranmere, CH41 9BP TIP Explore the riverside with its industrial areas and magnificent views across to the glories of Liverpool.
B R O W N L O W H E AT H
18
Little Moreton Hall Scribbly black, everything shines
Little Moreton Hall, near Congleton is asymmetrical, whimsical, possibly the crooked house of nursery rhyme fame, and is known far and wide as the most black and white black and white half-timbered Tudor house in England. If you’re able to cross the moat, you’ll find that the building is covered with trefoils and quatrefoils, and inside Elizabethan woodwork and plastering. Poet John Betjeman likened it to a ‘giant’s game of noughts and crosses’. But what makes Little Moreton stand out are the inscriptions and carvings that can be found inside. They were left by the Moreton family, who lived here for generations, and go beyond the ‘Can you get some spuds for tea?’ and ‘No milk today/my love has gone away’ variety. It all started in 1559 when William Moreton left an inscription over an upper-storey window in the courtyard: ‘God is All in All things, This windous Whire made by William Moreton in the years of the Lord MDLIX.’ Below, a carpenter has left his mark: ‘Richard Dale made thies windous by the Grace of God.’ Some experts claim they were spells to trap demons. Deffo. Given that Queen Elizabeth Tudor once led the dancing in the Long Gallery, house experts have tried to find anything she might have left. After all, she was fond of writing on windows and wood. When young and confined at Woodstock by order of Mary Tudor, she wrote on a window: ‘Much is suspected of me? Nothing Proved can be. Quoth Elizabeth, Princess.’ The Moreton family acquired their wealth through property deals after the Black Death of 1348, and began building the hall in 1504 on an island. Then they lost everything in the Civil War. The hall stayed with the family until World War II when it was obtained by the National Trust. As for the inscriptions, don’t do this at home unless you think your property will be a museum in 500 years’ time.
ADDRESS Newcastle Road, Congleton, CW12 4SD TIP Finished at Little Moreton Hall? Have a look at the outside of Great Moreton Hall, less than a mile away. It was designed by Edward Blore who completed Buckingham Palace in the 1840s.
B R O W N L O W H E AT H
18
Little Moreton Hall Scribbly black, everything shines
Little Moreton Hall, near Congleton is asymmetrical, whimsical, possibly the crooked house of nursery rhyme fame, and is known far and wide as the most black and white black and white half-timbered Tudor house in England. If you’re able to cross the moat, you’ll find that the building is covered with trefoils and quatrefoils, and inside Elizabethan woodwork and plastering. Poet John Betjeman likened it to a ‘giant’s game of noughts and crosses’. But what makes Little Moreton stand out are the inscriptions and carvings that can be found inside. They were left by the Moreton family, who lived here for generations, and go beyond the ‘Can you get some spuds for tea?’ and ‘No milk today/my love has gone away’ variety. It all started in 1559 when William Moreton left an inscription over an upper-storey window in the courtyard: ‘God is All in All things, This windous Whire made by William Moreton in the years of the Lord MDLIX.’ Below, a carpenter has left his mark: ‘Richard Dale made thies windous by the Grace of God.’ Some experts claim they were spells to trap demons. Deffo. Given that Queen Elizabeth Tudor once led the dancing in the Long Gallery, house experts have tried to find anything she might have left. After all, she was fond of writing on windows and wood. When young and confined at Woodstock by order of Mary Tudor, she wrote on a window: ‘Much is suspected of me? Nothing Proved can be. Quoth Elizabeth, Princess.’ The Moreton family acquired their wealth through property deals after the Black Death of 1348, and began building the hall in 1504 on an island. Then they lost everything in the Civil War. The hall stayed with the family until World War II when it was obtained by the National Trust. As for the inscriptions, don’t do this at home unless you think your property will be a museum in 500 years’ time.
ADDRESS Newcastle Road, Congleton, CW12 4SD TIP Finished at Little Moreton Hall? Have a look at the outside of Great Moreton Hall, less than a mile away. It was designed by Edward Blore who completed Buckingham Palace in the 1840s.
CHESTER
33
Roman Amphitheatre The largest in Britain; an impeccable survival
Chester’s Roman amphitheatre is one of the best preserved and the largest of its kind in Britain. It was built sometime around the year a.d. 80 to seat 700 Roman sportsmen and maybe the most honoured of their new English allies to watch cock fighting, bull-baiting, combat sports, boxing, wrestling, and most excitingly of all, gladiatorial combat. Occasionally, criminals were killed in the arena, sometimes by being thrown to wild animals. Cock-fighting, surprisingly, no longer a mainstay on TV’s Grandstand, was taken by the Romans from the Greeks and held on ‘anniversaries as a solemn rite’, a consecration, in effect, a sacred cock fight, to remind men that they should be ‘perpetual imitators of the cock’, according to the poet, Oppian. Roman amphitheatres were typically divided into three main parts: the cavea (seats), the arena (obv) and the vomitorium, which sounds disgusting, but was simply the area below through which players could come and go, and crowds could easily enter and exit. (The Latin word vomitorium does indeed come from the verb to spew forth.) Around the amphitheatre were stables, food stands and dungeons. At the northern entrance was a shrine to Nemesis, goddess of retribution, who controlled the fate of the performers. The size of the amphitheatre has convinced some historians that Chester might have become capital of Roman Britain had Ireland been captured. Only the northern half of the amphitheatre can be seen; the southern half is covered by buildings. The amphitheatre fell into disuse around the year 350. It was probably used as a rubbish dump in medieval times, but rediscovered in 1929 when gardening works at Dee House, the 1730 town house for John Comberbach, a former mayor of Chester, revealed a long curved wall. The Chester Archaeological Society then raised enough money to divert a planned new road and excavate the site.
ADDRESS Little St John Street, CH1 1RE TIP Head to the immediate west for the Roman Gardens, which contain various Roman finds and artefacts gathered from sites across Chester.
CHESTER
33
Roman Amphitheatre The largest in Britain; an impeccable survival
Chester’s Roman amphitheatre is one of the best preserved and the largest of its kind in Britain. It was built sometime around the year a.d. 80 to seat 700 Roman sportsmen and maybe the most honoured of their new English allies to watch cock fighting, bull-baiting, combat sports, boxing, wrestling, and most excitingly of all, gladiatorial combat. Occasionally, criminals were killed in the arena, sometimes by being thrown to wild animals. Cock-fighting, surprisingly, no longer a mainstay on TV’s Grandstand, was taken by the Romans from the Greeks and held on ‘anniversaries as a solemn rite’, a consecration, in effect, a sacred cock fight, to remind men that they should be ‘perpetual imitators of the cock’, according to the poet, Oppian. Roman amphitheatres were typically divided into three main parts: the cavea (seats), the arena (obv) and the vomitorium, which sounds disgusting, but was simply the area below through which players could come and go, and crowds could easily enter and exit. (The Latin word vomitorium does indeed come from the verb to spew forth.) Around the amphitheatre were stables, food stands and dungeons. At the northern entrance was a shrine to Nemesis, goddess of retribution, who controlled the fate of the performers. The size of the amphitheatre has convinced some historians that Chester might have become capital of Roman Britain had Ireland been captured. Only the northern half of the amphitheatre can be seen; the southern half is covered by buildings. The amphitheatre fell into disuse around the year 350. It was probably used as a rubbish dump in medieval times, but rediscovered in 1929 when gardening works at Dee House, the 1730 town house for John Comberbach, a former mayor of Chester, revealed a long curved wall. The Chester Archaeological Society then raised enough money to divert a planned new road and excavate the site.
ADDRESS Little St John Street, CH1 1RE TIP Head to the immediate west for the Roman Gardens, which contain various Roman finds and artefacts gathered from sites across Chester.