Georgian / Victorian Chester (1701-1900)
GEORGIAN CHESTER: Chester was typical of many 18th century county towns: prosperous, expanding, confident and fashionable. It was the centre of county administration, judiciary and politics. It was a garrison town, cathedral city and the main retailing centre for the srrounding area. It also flourished as a social centre for the leisured gentry and professional classes, who gravitated to the city for company, entertainment and pleasure. To cater for their increasingly sphisticated needs, Georgian Chester became a centre of skills and craftsmanship, providing the luxury goods and quality services which polite society now required.
GEORGIAN ECONOMY Chester's economic prosperity during this period was largely due to its role as a retailing and servicing centre. The main markets were clustered around the Exchange in Northgate Street, but there were also poultry, cheese and butter markets in Bridge Street and a beast market which moved from Northgate Street to Gorse Stacks in 1818. The Midsummer and Michaelmas Fairs attracted merchants from all over the country, while specialist hop fairs were held in large warehouses behind the Blossoms and Hop Pole inns in Foregate Street. Trade continued to be controlled by the City Assembly and the guilds, so that only freemen were allowed to trade in the city apart from during the fairs.
Georgian Chester developed a diverse economy, with a wide range of trades and crafts, specialising in high quality and expensive luxury goods. Traditional industries like ship-building, leather-working and glove and snuff manufacture all declined. However, the city became renowned for its clockmakers, silversmiths and pewterers. There was a marked increase in the number of specialist shops, including wine and spirit dealers, booksellers, hatters, mercers and drapers and wig makers. Chester's first department store originated Susanna Brown's millinary and haberdasher's shop in Eastgate Street.
18th CENTURY PORT The port prospered in the first half of the 18th century, with an important coastal trade and also trade with the Mediterranean, the Baltic and North America. Parkgate replaced Neston as the main embarkation point for Ireland. However, the old problem of the silting of the Dee continued to cause concern. In 1732 the Assembly obtained an Act of Parliament to make the Dee navigable from the sea to Chester for ships of 200 tons. The channel or 'new cut' was dug in 1735-36 and a new quay was built at Crane Wharf. In 1740, the River Dee Company was incorporated to recover and preserve the navigation. Although it reclaimed several thousand acres of valuable marshland in the Dee estuary, it neglected and failed to improve the channel. Nevertheless, trade remained steady throughout the 18th century and any decline was only relative to the meteoric rise of the port of Liverpool, which had established its supremecy by the end of the century.
SOCIAL CENTRE After the Restoration of 1660, Chester became the occasional residence of many county gentry, who left their country estates to live in their new city town houses during the winter months. It also attracted a powerful nucleus of city gentry and rising professional classes who lived in the city all year round. These wealthy families demanded an active cultural and social life and Georgian Chester became a centre of fashionable entertainment. By the early 18th century, there was a winter social season, with a continual round of asemblies, card evenings and theatrical performance. The climax was the spring race meeting in the first week of May, when gentry from all over the region flocked into the city. New facilities were built to meet the demands of fashionable society. The Exchange in Northgate Street, completed in 1698, housed an assembly room, a coffee house and a subscription library. There were assembly rooms in Booth Mansion in Watergate Street and in 1777, new purpose-built assembly rooms were erected through public subscription in the Royal Hotel (rebuilt as the Grosvenor Hotel) by the Eastgate. In 1773, the former St. Nicholas Chapel in St. Werburgh Street was converted into a theatre. The Theatre Royal became one of the leading provincial theatres in the country. Many inns had their own meeting rooms, newsrooms and subscription libraries. The Commerial Newsroom in Northgate Street, designed by the leading architect Thomas Harrison opened in 1808.
HOUSES The rise of Chester as a fashionable social centre had a significant impact upon the city's buildings, as wealthy families began to build or remodel their town houses in the latest neo-classical styles. Many of the finest new houses were in the Lower Bridge Street area, where brick mansion houses like Bridge House (1676) and Park House (1715) replaced medieval Row buildings. Elsewhere, in the Row system rebuilding was not permissable, so older properties were remodelled or refronted in brick, so that the Row was preserved in the front of the building. Booth Mansion in Watergate Street was built in 1700 by George Booth, later Earl of Warrington. He acquired two medieval houses and converted them into "one commodious dwelling", by raising the height, altering the plan and encasing the the building in brick. The result is Chester's finest classical Row building, which still retains much of the original medieval fabric inside.
From the mid-18th century, there was substantial speculative development, with elegant terraces built "in the London style" for the city gentry and professional classes. Abbey Square was redeveloped by the Dean and Chapter of the Cathedral between 1754 and 1761 and similar developments grew up along Nicholas Street and Stanley Place. Medieval lanes like King Street and White Friars were rebuilt with modest brick town houses.
PUBLIC BUILDINGS The spirit of enlightenment which characterised the Georgian era was reflected in the public buildings. Chester's first charity school, the Blue Coat School was built between 1714 and 1717 outside the Northgate. A statue of a Blue Coat boy, wearing his distinctive uniform, stands over the central entrance. The General Infirmary was built in 1761 by public donation and subscription. It originally had beds for 100 patients and sick poor from Chester and the sirviving area could be admitted on the recommendation of a subscriber.
CHESTER CASTLE
CITY WALLS AND GATES By the 18th century, the City Walls were no longer needed for defence. During the reign of Queen Anne (1702-14), the Corporation began to repair the walls and turn them into a promenade. Work continiued later in the century, when medieval towers were pulled down. The four medieval gateways were demolished and replaced by ornamental bridges: Eastgate (1768-69); Watergate (1778) and Bridgegate (1782). The last medieval gate to be demoished was the Northgate, which housed the city gaol. Prisoners were held in the gate and also in cells hewn out of the sandstone below. One cell, called Little Ease, was only 1.3m (4 ft 6 ins)high and 43 cms (17 ins) wide. Northgate was demolshed in 1808 and the new bridge by Thomas Harrison was built in 1810. A new gaol was built on land to west of the city, on the site of the present Queen's School.
REGENCY CHESTER: 1811-1820 During the first thirty years of the 19th century, there was a sharp increase in Chester's population, rising by over a third to over 21,000 in 1831. The city became increasingly overcrowded, with the poorest families living in the Foregate Street area and beside the canal. Behind the prosperous shopping streets, familes were crowded into hundreds of squalid court-yard dwellings. Wealthier people moved out of the city centre. Boughton developed as a fashionable new suburb of stuccoed villas overlooking the river. New streets like Bold Square and Egerton Street were laid out for the midle classes.
VICTORIAN CHESTER:
THE RAILWAYS The opening of the railways transformed Chester.The first lines to Birkenhead opened in 1840, and over the next decade the city became an important railway centre, connected to London, Manchester, Birmingham and North Wales. The General Station, built in 1847 -48, well outside the city centre on the boundary of Hoole parish. It was designed by Francis Thompson and the contractor was Thomas Brassey. The introduction of cheap transport increased Chester's importance as a tourist destination, particularly visitors from the US who disembarked at the port of Liverpool. City Road, linking the General Station with the city centre was laid down in the 1860s, with many new hotels including the Queen Hotel of 1861 and the Queen Commercial Hotel (now the Town Crier) which opened in 1867.
TRADE Chester's reputation as a retailing centre grew throughout the 19th century. Soon Eastgate Street was being compared to London's Regent Street and Brown's fashionable store was known as the 'Harrod's of the North'. Chester's ancient fairs declined in importance and their business began to be transacted in commercial halls; Union Hall (1808) and Commercial Hall (1815) in Foregate Street. Following the destruction by fire of the old Exchange building in 1862, it was decided to move the traditional outdoor markets to a new covered market. The exhuberant Baroque facade of Jame M Hay's Market Hall, was a much-loved local landmark until its demolition in the 1960s.
CHURCHES Chester's medieval parish churches were transformed in appeaance during the Victorian period. During the 1840s and 1850s, the local architect James Harrison restored or rebuilt a number of churches in the Gothic Revival style, including St. Michael's (1849-50), St. Mary's (1861-62) and Holy Trinity ((1865-69). The great weSt tower of St. John's Church collapsed in 1881, destroying the north porch which was rebuilt by John Douglas. The Cathedral was radically restored between 1868 and 1876 by Sir George Gilbert Scott. He entirely recased the worn sandstone exterior, adding turrets, pinnacles and flying butresses and other fanciful embellishments which dramatically altered the appearance of the old abbey church.
THE 'BLACK AND WHITE REVIVAL' The most remarkable legacy of Victorian Chester is the townscape of picturesque black and white buildings, dating from the second half of the 19th century. Until this time, Chester was still essentially a Georgian town, with uniform brick facades interspersed with ancient and decaying timber buildings. Then a group of local architects, working independently, began to transform the city. Their influence was the timber-frame tradition which had characterised local domestic buildings in medieval and Tudor times. The spirit of architectural change was best expressed by the newly formed Chester Archaeological Society who, in 1857, heartly condemned the "miserable brick, and incongruous piles of heavy Athenian architecture", whilst calling for the return of the "rich and lively facades, the curiously carved fantastical gables, which distinguished the brief but gay rule of the Stuarts". The buildings of the revival period
The earliest black and white revival buildings were by T.M. Penson.