Abbey Square, Deanery, and Palace.—The Abbey Gates.—Chester Markets, and Abbot’s Fair.—Northgate, and old City Gaol.—St. John’s Hospital and Blue School.—Newtown, and Christ Church.—Railway Tunnel.—St. Thomas’ Chapel.—Training College.

The smell of sanctity yet fresh upon us, let us now continue, as best we may, our peregrinations northward.

Yonder, at the lower end of this Street, we catch a glimpse of the Walls; and, turning ourselves about, take a rapid look at Abbey Square (the only Square old Chester can boast!) with its Deanery and Bishop’s Palace,—the former occupying the site of the ancient Chapel of St. Thomas, nay, resting indeed on the foundations of that sacred edifice. The latter is a gloomy-looking pile of red sandstone, erected by Bishop Keene in 1753; but within it have resided as goodly a fellowship of mitred heads as ever graced the episcopal bench. Markham, Porteus, Cleaver, Law, Blomfield, Sumner, and last not least, Graham, our present amiable diocesan, have each in turn found here their house and home.

But what is this massive and substantial structure, under which we are now passing,—so massive and strong as almost to have defied the ravages of time? Behold in it the principal Gateway of the Abbey, an imposing edifice even in this our day, but one which had seen the meridian of its splendour ere Harry the Eighth, hypocritical Harry! sacrilegiously sealed and decreed its doom. In those, its halcyon days, few gates indeed might “stand between the wind and its nobility;” for ‘regal pomp and lordly retinue’ sought ever and anon a welcome here. And not in vain: for as we have already shown, when once its ponderous doors moved back to give them ingress, the tables of the Refectory and the bonhommie of the monks never failed to sustain the hospitable character of the Abbey. Look up, through the gloom, at the solid masonry of this ancient pile, and at the admirable groining which supports the superstructure;—gingerbread architecture was all unknown in those mediÆval times! On the west side of the archway, we can still see the rust-coated staples, on which, three or four centuries ago, swang the oaken gates of the Abbey. Times have changed; and the hoary old porter, with his shaven scalp, and keys of ‘trewyst steele,’ has flitted away from the scene, while the tide of life now flows freely, and without obstruction, ’neath this venerable Gate. Here, in 1554, it is traditionally said that George Marsh, a ‘champion for the glorious truth,’ was first imprisoned, preparatory to his trial and martyrdom at the stake. And why,—what evil had he done? What was “the height and might of his offending?” Simply this,—that “after the manner that man then called heresy, so worshipped he the God of his fathers.” The heretics of one age are not unfrequently the saints of another; and certain it is that the memory of Marsh and the faith he died for, gained rather than lost by those Marian fires! Not long afterwards, if not indeed before, this structure was turned into the Episcopal Registry; and here are deposited, in its well-kept archives, the ‘last wills and testaments’ of all who have died, and ‘left aught to leave,’ within the scattered limits of this widespread diocese. The beautiful condition and systematic arrangement of these important records put other and similar Offices terribly to the blush, and are in the highest degree creditable to the zeal and ability of the present Registrar, Henry Raikes, Esq. [96] Half a century or so ago, the then deputy registrar was one Mr. Speed, a Joseph Andrews in his way, though scarcely perhaps so free from guile as that immaculate hero. Now it so happened that a frail daughter of Eve had found her way into Master Speed’s domain, probably to administer to some will in his possession, or for divers other “urgent private affairs.” While thus engaged, a party from without required Mr. Deputy’s assistance; so locking the lady in the inner office, he turned to attend to his unseasonable visitor. Mademoiselle, finding herself immured, in so “wilful” a manner, in this dusky prison, and having the remembrance of Marsh and his martyrdom in her mind, became seriously alarmed. Having however, like most women, a “will of her own,” she threw open the window which looks into Abbey Square, and springing out of it like a zephyr, quietly allowed herself to descend, buoyed up by her flowing garments, to the ground below! Some waggish artist has perpetuated the event in a characteristic sketch, displaying the “flight of the descending angel;” to which another sarcastic genius, the late Mascie Taylor, Esq., added this couplet:—

Since women are so fond of men,
With Speed she will fly up again!

Let us now pass on.

Leaving behind us the Abbey Gate and its bygone associations, we are once more in Northgate Street, and may stay to cast “one withering glance” at those melancholy-looking buildings on either side, the Fowl, Butter, and Butchers’ Markets of the city. Hideous as specimens of architectural taste, destitute of convenience or comfort in use, furthermore heavy and cheerless to look upon, these Markets have, of themselves, nothing to rivet the attention of the sightseer. But the ground they stand on was in old time an open area; and here, from the time of the great Hugh Lupus to the glorious advent of the Reformation, did the monks of St. Werburgh hold their annual Fair at the great feast of that saint. It was during one of these fairs that Earl Randle was besieged in Rhuddlan Castle by the Welsh, when attempting the subjugation of those Cambrian mountaineers. The Earl, perceiving the nice pickle he was in, despatched a messenger to De Lacy, his constable at Chester, a “ryght valiaunt manne,” who, rushing into the Fair, presently collected to his standard a “noble army of fiddlers” and drunken musicians—the “tag, rag, and bobtail” there assembled—and with these he forthwith set out to the relief of his beleagured lord. The Welsh, who had previously felt sure of their prey, seeing the immense host approach, and hearing withal the terrible discords of “harp, flute, sackbut, psaltery, and other kinds of music,” reasonably enough concluded that Bedlam was let loose; and with that doubtful sort of valour sometimes nicknamed discretion, precipitately took to their heels, and so raised the siege. The Earl returned to Chester at the head of his victorious minstrels, and immediately chartered the holding of this Fair with numerous privileges and immunities, granting to the brave De Lacy, and to his heirs for ever, the licensing of and custody over the “Minstrels of Cheshire;” which prerogative was regularly exercised by his descendants, until the middle of the last century. So much for the Abbot’s Fair, and the bloodless “fight of the fiddlers;”—we may now “fair”-ly enough continue our course of inspection.

Proceeding direct north, we come to another postern, now ruinated, the mere arch itself alone remaining. This is the Little or Higher Abbey Gate; and from it, in days past, ran the wall of the Monastery in a direct line southward to the Great Abbey Gate; the wall itself has now given way to a row of shops and other valuable buildings.

Nearly opposite to the Little Abbey Gate, retiring somewhat from the street, stands a neat, modern-built house; in the courtyard of which we may see a handsome piece of statuary, purchased by a former proprietor at the close of the French War: it represents the British Lion,

With tail erect and aspect terrible,

trampling majestically on the Eagle of France,—typical of the overthrow of the first Napoleon. Little did the sculptor suppose, when he proudly chiselled ‘that angry mane, and tail of grim defiance,’ that the Lion and the Eagle would so soon be united in such friendly bonds, nay even fighting, side by side, the almost unaided battle of right against might, justice against oppression! If that classic group had to be sculptured anew—

Such are the strange mutations of the world,—

the prostrate Eagle might haply bear an additional head, emblematical of the ruthless despoiler of Finland, the Caucasus, and Poland!

In a step or two we are passing the higher end of King Street, formerly Barn Lane, at the corner of which stands an ancient hostelry, yclept the “Pied Bull.” Here again we have before us the degenerate type of those strange old Rows, which so filled you with amaze in our earlier rambles. There can be no doubt that, originally, these wondrous piazzas ran continuously along the four great streets of the city, except where they verge upon the confines of the Abbey; but these isolated portions are gradually disappearing before the “march of improvement.” Doctors differ, alas! in Chester, as elsewhere, about the actual wisdom of this aforesaid “march!”

Again we move onwards, passing under a substantial arch of white stone, referred to in our “Walk round the Walls” as the Northgate of the city. While the other three Gates were vested, by serjeantship, from time immemorial, in various noble families, this, the porta septentrionalis, as anciently belonged to the commorant citizens. Prior to 1808, when the present arch was erected, the Northgate, if we may credit the engravings handed down to us, was a miserably effete and incongruous erection. What made it appear more so was the Gaol, or common prison of the city, which occupied a great part of the space around, above, and below it. A prison existed here from the earliest period; it is quoted in documents of the Norman earldom, and was at the time of its demolition a terrible specimen of legalised corruption—an establishment defying even the besom of a Howard to purge or purify. The city sheriff here saw execution done on all criminals capitally convicted within the county; here again the unfortunate debtor got “whitewashed,” and relieved of his “little odd scores;” and here were practised those “tortures thrice refined” which might put even the Great Inquisition to the blush. Far away from human gaze, fathoms deep in the solid rock, were chambers hewn, dreadful to survey, horrifying to think upon. Of these, two bore the distinguishing titles of “Little Ease,” and the “Dead Man’s Room.” The latter was the spot where condemned criminals awaited their execution, and was “a dark stinking place” in which snakes and other venomous reptiles gambolled at discretion. The “Little Ease,” as we read from a contemporary work, “was a hole hewed out in a rock; the breadth and cross from side to side was seventeen inches from the back to the inside of the great door; at the top seven inches, at the shoulders eight inches, and at the breast nine inches and a-half; with a device to lessen the height as they were minded to torture the person put in, by drawboards which shot over across the two sides, to a yard in height, or thereabouts.”

In those blissful times when Oliver Cromwell ruled England with an iron sceptre, these two “pleasantly situated furnished apartments” were in great request by the Barebones magistracy; and it is matter of record that,

Locked in their cold embrace,

numerous unoffending, peaceloving Quakers endured the rod of persecution for conscience sake. And yet, forsooth, those were your oft-vaunted days of civil and religious liberty! Away with them all, say we! The Gaol, with its attendant miseries, has gone, but the dungeons we have pictured abide there still, beneath the ground we are now standing on,—though filled up, it is true, and for ever absolved from their ancient uses.

Having just passed under one arch, we are now walking over another which spans an abyss formed by the deep cut of the Ellesmere and Chester Canal. Yon little parallel archway, a few yards to the westward of us, is the Bridge of Death,—the path along which the felons about to die usually went to receive the “last consolation of the church” in the Chapel of St. John, on the opposite side of the gulf.

Northgate, and Bluecoat Hospital

Pass we on once more for a few yards, and then turning round, a prospect awaits us the very similitude of that depicted in our engraving. To the left we have the Northgate, and portion of the Walls—those rare old Walls!—while the foreground to the right is occupied by that useful charitable institution, the Blue-Coat Hospital. For centuries prior to the great Civil War there stood, on this site, a venerable asylum, founded by Randal, Earl of Chester, for “poore and sillie persons,” under the name of the Hospital of St. John the Baptist. In the reign of Edward III., a jury of free citizens was sworn to report on the “vested rights” of this house, and the verdict these worthies returned was this:—

“That there ought to be, and have accustomed to be, in the said Hospital, three chaplains to say mass daily—two in the church, and the third in the chapel—before the poor and feeble sustained in the said Hospital; and that one lamp ought to be sustained at mass every day in the said Hospital, and to burn every night in the whole year; and that thirteen beds, competently clothed, should be sustained in the same Hospital, and receive thirteen poor men of the same city; whereof each shall have for daily allowance a loaf of bread, a dish of pottage, half a gallon of competent ale, and a piece of fish or flesh, as the day shall require.”

Not bad fare this for the thirteen brethren, “poore and feeble,” who, from all we can judge,

Must have gone to bed merry (as who could fail),
On their foaming “half-gallons of competent ale!”

Thus matters sped with this thriving community for several hundred years; and even at the Reformation, when other and similar institutions foundered in the gale, St. John’s Hospital appears to have weathered the storm. It might, indeed, have retained until now its original position, had not England got entangled in that horrid Civil War. Then it was that, with characteristic loyalty, the men of old Chester declared for the king—then it was that the suburbs of the city became a ruinous heap—and that this venerable Hospital was razed to the ground, lest it should serve as a cover for the artillery of the enemy. But the city, which had so bravely withstood one foe, had, like the Kars of our own day, to succumb before another; for famine at length achieved what the deadly cannon had failed to accomplish! The tale of the Siege has already been told; suffice it then to say, that order and the monarchy being once more restored, the site of the Hospital, and the lands belonging to it, were granted by Charles II. to Colonel Whitley, and at his death to the Mayor and Corporation of Chester, as permanent custodians of the charity. How the Corporation abused their trust, and mismanaged the Hospital; how they sold its estates, and squandered the proceeds; and how, after all, “like leeches satiate with evil blood,” they had to disgorge their plunder, is, we can assure you, a very pretty story, which we might tell, if we chose, but we are mercifully inclined.

A Blue-Coat Hospital was established in Chester in 1700, under the auspices of Bishop Stratford; and, seventeen years afterwards, the liberality of the citizens erected in its service a “local habitation,” on part of the site originally occupied by the Hospital of St. John. But bricks and mortar, like everything else, will not last for ever; so the old premises having gone to decay, benevolence has again put its shoulder to the wheel, and, in 1854, restored the fabric in the handsome manner we now behold it. That graceful little statue over the doorway—a portrait of one of the “Blue Boys”—is a study from the life by Richardson, of London. There are thirty-one scholars on the foundation, all clothed, fed, boarded, and educated at the cost of the charity; besides which, there is a probationary or “Green Cap” School, from which those who have “attained the purple” are usually selected.

As for the “thirteen brethren, poore and feeble,” of the original foundation, their number, which, from causes already hinted at, had dwindled down to six, has recently been restored,—their cottages at the rear of the Blue School rebuilt, and fitted with every convenience,—while each brother and sister now receives an allowance of ten shillings per week. Thus, thanks to Lord Brougham and his charity commissioners, thirteen poor souls—

From chilling want and guilty murmurs free,

here rest their aged limbs; and as they, in turn, go down peacefully to the grave, others will step into their shoes, to the perpetual honour of the Hospital of St. John, and of its Norman founder, the good Earl Randal.

The steep lane running westward from the Hospital is Canal Street, leading down to the canal, and the “banks of the Dee.” You don’t care about going down there, just now? Very well, then, we’ll refrain; but, uninviting as it seems at first sight, a ramble upon the Navigation Cop, at the first flow of the tide, is an enjoyable sort of treat, as you’ll find if you have time to avail yourself of it.

Nearly opposite to the Blue School is George Street, anciently called Gorse Stacks, a wider and more commodious street than the last, leading away to the Cattle Market and Railway Station, as also to the populous and increasing suburb of New Town. We can remember this locality when it was little else but green pasture—the Lion’s Field we believe it was called—but how changed is it now! its verdure has fled,—it is country no longer; for the once open fields now swarm with innumerable homes of men! Near the bottom of St. Ann Street, the oldest and still principal street of this suburb, stands Christ Church, a neat little cruciform structure, with diminutive spire, and small lancet-shaped windows, erected in 1838, to meet the spiritual wants of this growing neighbourhood. The Church has sitting accommodation for about 600 worshippers.

Proceeding along Upper Northgate Street, we soon reach Egerton House, formerly a seat of the Cheshire family of that name; but recently converted into a first-class ladies’ school, under the efficient management of the Misses Williams. Stay here an instant, for we are just over the Tunnel of the Chester and Holyhead Railway, which science, art, and convenience have combined to make the great highway between England and Ireland.

A little farther on, and our street branches off in two almost parallel directions,—the way upon our right being the old coach road to Birkenhead and Liverpool, and that upon our left—but stay! we are travelling a “leetle” too fast, for we haven’t quite done with our present locale. Before us stands a lofty house, crowned with a lanthorn-shaped observatory, and at present the residence of Mr. Fletcher. It occupies the site of an older house, called at different periods Green Hall and Jolly’s Hall, destroyed before the Siege of Chester, for the same reasons which dictated the fall of other portions of the suburbs. This house, again, had usurped the place of an older tenant of the soil; for here was situate the Chapel and Cemetery of St. Thomas À Becket, founded, no doubt, soon after that prelate’s murder and canonisation in 1170. This Chapel gave name to the manorial court in connection with the Abbey, to which jurisdiction the tenants of the Cathedral are even now subject. Until lately, the bailiff of the Dean and Chapter held his annual court for this manor in the Refectory (now the King’s School), impanelling his jury from among the Cathedral tenants, who, by that “suit and service,” acknowledged the prerogative of this ancient court. Now let us pass on along the roadway to our left.

What is this Elizabethan building we are so rapidly approaching? Surely this has no antediluvian tale to tell—no musty connection with mediÆval times? No, truly: here we have a creation of the present age—a noble institution,—one which, from its character and objects, deserves at least some notice at our hands. This is the Diocesan Training College, the same building we saw and admired at a distance, in our “Walk round the Walls.” Erected mainly by public subscription, in 1842, from the designs of Messrs. Buckler, of London—established for the training and qualifying of masters for the Church Schools of the diocese,—presided over by the bishop, and more immediately by the talented principal, the Rev. Arthur Rigg,—this institution “pursues the even tenour of its way,” by annually preparing a number of young men fitted for the duties of parochial schoolmasters—men firmly attached to the Church of their forefathers, and able to impart to those intrusted to them the blessings of a sound, religious, and useful education.

The College has a resident principal and vice-principal, the former, Mr. Rigg, having held his appointment since the first starting of the project. In its infancy, and while the present handsome edifice was in building, the College for awhile “hid its light under a bushel” in some dreary-looking premises in Nicholas Street, but was removed hither in the autumn of 1842. In addition to the ordinary details of scholastic training, the students are instructed in various branches of manual labour; they are taught how “to handle the chisel and the saw, the mattock and the spade.” They have on the premises a blacksmith’s forge,—at which they manufacture all their own implements and tools;—turners’ lathes, steam-engines, lithographic presses, power looms, and a host of other appliances, are at the mercy of the “happy family;” and it is wonderful to see to what proficiency these amateur craftsmen attain,—and all, be it remembered, during their intervals of leisure from more important duties. Subordinate in some measure to this “school for school-masters,” there is also a Lower School, upon the ground floor, for the children of the poor. Here the incipient masters in turn officiate, and gradually learn, under the superintendence of their worthy chief, the practical duties of their responsible profession. Under the same paternal roof exists another school, more private and commercial in its character and aims, under the special eye and control of the principal, for the sons of the higher and middle classes of society. Of this latter arm it is sufficient to say—

And higher praise ’twere hard to give,
Unjust to offer less,—

that it is conducted on the same scale of intelligence and liberality which distinguish the other main branches of the institution.

Some years after the building of the College, a Chapel was erected at the south-east corner, for the use of the students; and a chaste little edifice it is, inside as well as out; worthy—if aught here below, indeed, can be worthy—of the holy purpose for which it was designed,—the glorious worship of the triune God. The internal fittings and decorations, which are many and beautiful, are almost wholly the work of the industrious students; and, while honourable to their taste in design, reflect the highest credit as well upon their hearts as on their hands.

Beyond, and to the right of the College, stands the Cheshire County Lunatic Asylum; but, this being without the confines of the City, is, by the same token, beyond our pale.

We have now reached the extent of our wanderings northward, for a narrow brook, a short distance away, determines the limits of the city jurisdiction; so, bidding “a long, a last farewell” to the Chester College, and to the enchanting prospect its site commands, we will return, nothing loth, to the heart of the city, and to those ravishing chops so anxiously awaiting us at our own hotel.