Chester St John's - Chester's Original Cathedral

Friday 20 June 2005. We were spending a day in Chester, a place we have visited numerous times since childhood - in fact it was one of the regular annual jaunts on a coach from primary school.

So it was with a touch of surprise that, having walked a little further up the river bank than we usually did, we stumbled across these ruins that claimed to be Chester's original cathedral.

I knew nothing about it at the time - not even the fact that part of it was and still is standing in use as a parish church. At the time of our visit it was thought to have been founded by King Æthelred in the year 869 CE. However it is now thought that Æthelred built over the remains of an even earlier Celtic church and worship here may date from the 3rd or 4th centuries, making the site one of the oldest sites in Europe still in use for worship.

The Saxon church was built of stone and in 973 CE King Edgar, only the 5th King of all England, came here to receive homage of his subject regional kings, being rowed by six of them down the River Dee to this church from his temporary headquarters at a site now known as Edgar's Field. In 1075 the first Norman Bishop moved himself here from Lichfield and pulled down the Saxon Minster to build St John's. It took 200 years and it pre-dated Durham Cathedral by just 13 years. It was known as the Cathedral and Collegiate Church of the Holy Cross and St John the Baptist. It was said to have a fragment of the true Cross - a sliver of wood from the cross of Jesus, brought back from Jerusalem after the Crusades.

In 1468 the central tower collapsed. With Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries, the east end of the church was demolished - it is the remains of these ruins that we are wandering about. The locals petitioned Queen Elizabeth I to retain the church as a parish church. She agreed at the price of taking all the lead from the roof. In 1572 the northwest tower partially collapsed. In 1574 the rest of it collapsed, destroying some of the bays of the nave which were rebuilt to a "magnificent scale".

During the English Civil War a sniper used the roof of the west tower to take a pot shot at King Charles I who was on the roof of the new (current) cathedral, watching the Battle of Rowton Heath, though other versions of the battle have Charles watching from the Phoenix Tower on Chester's city wall. Both versions may be true as, if the sound of a musket ball striking nearby was heard, he may well have been persuaded to move out of range. The surviving parish church was restored in the 19th century, though during the restoration of the twice-fallen northwest tower, it went for third time lucky and took the north porch with it.

To one side of an archway an old medieval coffin, hewn from a block of oak has been built into the stonework. Inside it has an inscription to remind people where they came from and to where they must inevitably go: Dust to Dust. Someday I really must go back and look inside the parish church. The mostly Early English-style architechture is said to be inspiring and contains much of the original Norman masonry.

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Chester Cathedral

We had a day out to Chester yesterday.

It stayed dry for most of the day but wasn't exactly sunny, sparkling weather. Having carried the camera about all day taking what I expected to be (and what in fact were) dull uninspired photos of admittedly wonderful buildings most of which I have already photographed to much greater effect before, I suggested going into the cathedral.

Chester has two cathedrals in fact. The earlier St John's Cathedral is a ruin to be found near to the Roman ampitheatre.

At the Reformation in 1541 the Abbey Church of St Werbergh was saved from destruction by being designated as the new cathedral and it was rededicated as the Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary.

There has been a church on this site since the 900s and it is thought the place was a place of worship since Roman times. Most of the early Christian churches were built over places of pagan worship as it not only got rid of the opposition but people in the habit of going to the same place whether they liked it or not, now had to worship in a Christian setting regardless of which god their prayers were directed towards.

At the Reformation the shrine of St Werbergh was broken up and scattered about the cathedral, though it has recently (1993) been reassembled into the Lady Chapel and is a rare survival. She was a Saxon king's daughter, who brought a goose back to life after it had been killed, cooked and eaten! Not a girl to be messed with!

"But I thought it had a black band around its leg...?"
"Shhh... you'll annoy the king!"
"Ah... Yes... A Miracle!!! Look everybody! It's the same (burp!) goose! Oops...!"

The choir stall tracery did manage to survive not only the Reformation and Henry VIII's men, but the Puritans, who during the Civil War took hammers to everything they considered to be a bit Popist. A knight and his Lady had their hands smashed off their monument because one black-garbed zealot said to his mate, "Hey up, Jeremiah, do you think they look to be praying a bit Catholic-like?"

The tracery shown here was carved around the year 1380, probably the life's work of their craftsman.

We headed for the Refectory, as we both needed something to drink. The Refectory is that of the Benedictine monks, though these days there is no one sternly going Shhhh!!! if you want to talk to your companion or a neighbour at the next table.

I spied some dark blue glass bottles with a wired cap. Oh wonder! Fizzy sasparilla!!! I haven't tasted that since I was a teenager, taking my school dinner money and going into town for a bag of chips instead...

There used to be a shop in Heywood, Lancs in 1967 (where I went to the Grammar School) that opened bottles of Ben Shaws sasparilla, dandelion & burdock, cream soda and all the rest and would sell a glass full in plastic glasses for 6d (2.5 pence for you young things).

It cost considerably more than sixpence but it was with reverence that I pushed the wired top off with a startlingly loud pop (the monks would have had heart attacks!) and poured it into a wine glass (the only sort on offer).

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.... I didn't buy any to bring home. That sort of spiritual joy is fitting in a cathedral and should be an experience kept as a special treat at long intervals and thus Chester Cathedral is assured of my patronage at some future date! And the fact that it was in a small wine glass only added to the experience as I sipped it instead of glugging which, had the glass been a larger one, I may have been tempted to do!

We had a walk along the cloisters with their wonderful stained glass. These two windows were side by side, but I've taken the liberty of moving them closer together on the photograph to fit in a bit more detail.

There are 150 saints represented in the stained glass of the cloister. Shown here are an angel weighing human souls against a couple of demons and one of the archangels, Raphael, although his name is hard to make out, being broken by a cross member of the window's stonework..

We came out of the cathedral into a summer shower. That's all this summer seems to have been so far isn't it? Ah, well, not to worry as they say.

We walked back to the car under the cover of the Rows, Chester's famous 14th century double-decker shopping arcades.

Larger versions of the photos available - cathedral nave, choir stall tracery, stained glass.

Chester Zoo in 1981

Desperately casting about for something to say...

I see from the archives that 17 years ago on the 4th March we took our daughter Gillian to Chester Zoo. She was 4 at the time and by a coincidence so was the date and probably so was the temperature!

So was the baby elephant that had been born in the Queen's Silver Jubilee year and was therefore named Jubilee. Ha - why did we not think of that. See, Gill, you could have been Jubilee Burke!

The elephant shown here is not Jubilee but a bigger one. In the language we used on the day probably either Mummy Elephant or Daddy Elephant. Gill's expectation of our language has developed a bit since then. My own mother's seems to have reverted though, but now I'm digressing...

She's just got back from a week in the Costa del Sol which seems to have been more of a Costa del Pour-Down from all reports. My brother Frank and his wife took her this time and we are booked to take her away later on in the year.
"Think of it this way," Frank reflected, "it'll broaden your horizons..."

Back to the Plot
During the early 1980s I was occasionally freelancing photos to magazines and the photo here was taken on that visit to Chester and was published in a Club Canon magazine and then picked up by a photo developing house and used in their promotional leaflet.

I got about a fiver for each use. Five pounds was worth more then than now but it was still not a viable way to earn a living!