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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The Ancient City of Ephesus

Monday 15 June 2015. Continuing our excursion from the Thomson Majesty cruise ship, we arrive at the ancient city of Ephesus.

Fran and I have been here twice before, in 2009 and 2010. After a gap of five years though we immediately notice the results of work that has been done in the intervening time. This area was just rough scrub. It has been cleared, levelled and excavated stones stored waiting to be matched and identified and perhaps re-erected.

The pathway was rough gravel but this has been improved also and extended. On the extreme left are some Japanese girls in vivid scarlet. They are taking photos of each other against the backdrop of the ruins.

They do look very decorative but we can't bring ourselves to take their photographs so brazenly. But wait! David has found a cat!

We come to two standing columns and David decides to do his Samson pose. Unfortunately his arms are not quite long enough... Why, why, why...? Delilah...

The Odeon was a small roofed theatre. It held 1400 people and was also used as a debating chamber. Whilst it would be impressive on its own, it almost pales into insignificance here, given the theatre that we will see at the other end of our walk through Ephesus.

I wasn't paying much attention but suddenly heard O.J. in mid explanation mention my name. I looked round to see everyone grinning at me. "What???" I stuttered.
"I love you really John!" she called.
"I applaud your taste!" I said which raised a laugh amongst the party. I've still no idea what she said first...

The Pollio Fountain dates from 97 A.D. and is the tomb of C. Sextilius Pollio who constructed the Marnas Aqueduct that brought water to Ephesus. We saw a chunk of it from the hill when we stopped by the golden statue of the Virgin Mary.

At various places in the city we saw groups of archeologists working. Universities all over the world contribute willing diggers and experts.

O.J. is talking about the Temple of the Vestal Virgins. "They served in the temple until they were forty years old and then they left to live as free citizens," she explained, "hence the saying 'life begins at 40'!" She nudged me and said brightly "There you are John - life begins at 40!"
"I'll look forward to it!" I said.

We are at the top of Curetes Street which descends down the hill to intersect with Marble Street, leading to the Great Theatre and ends in a large open space before the Library of Celcus.

The Trajan fountain, Trajan being the emperor before Hadrian. The fountain was erected between 102 and 104 A.D. It is one of several public baths. Water flowed through the arch into a pool in the foreground.

The Library of Celcus is an awesome reconstruction to two storeys. Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus between either 105-106 or 106-107 AD was the proconsul of the Asian province, the capital of which was Ephesus. When he died in 114 AD at the age of 70 his son, Tiberius Julius Aquila, built the library as a mausoleum for his father.

It is assumed that the construction of the library was completed in 117 AD. It was destroyed by fire following an earthquake in 262 AD. The facade was left standing but it too was toppled by earthquake in either the 9th or 10th centuries. The facade was reconstructed with as much original stone as possible between 1970 and 1978.
"Why have they rebuilt it then if it might be destroyed by another earthquake?" demanded an idiot of O.J.

The Great Theatre, first constructed in the Hellenistic Period, in the third century BC during the reign of Lysimachos, but then during the Roman Period, it was enlarged and formed its current style as seen today. It seats 25,000.

"It's awesome isn't it?" enthused a young lady with an Australian accent, "Michael Jackson performed here!"
"That's a bit sad..." I said, "both St Paul and St John the apostles preached here and you're more excited by Michael Jackson???"
She looked confused and said hesitantly, "But he was really good..."

Harbour Street runs from the Great Theatre to what used to be the harbour. With the silting of the river, the sea these days is six miles away. Mark Anthony walked hand in hand with Cleopatra down this street. It wasn't to be a love affair with a happy-ever-after ending though...

Huge amounts of uncovered stone has been laid out here to be matched together and re-erected perhaps at some point in the future.

We rejoin the coach and head back towards Kusadasi and the end of our excursion. We stop on a hill overlooking Kusadasi for a photo stop. It's just a two-minute photo stop but the Clicky-Monster hairs off enthusiastically for the horizon and the mythical lure of the viewpoint-around-the-corner, leaving Jeannie to have to hurry after him to bring him back.

A couple of planty-like things are growing here for the benefit of my own camera!

We get back to Kusadasi and we leave the coach and say goodbye to our excellent guide. "A round of applause for me and John!" she says over the mic... A couple of score passengers point me out during the next few days saying things like "Who does he think he is...?" duh...

As we pass through the cruise terminal we see some new crew members heading for the ship.

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Caister Roman Fort

Monday 1 October 2012. After leaving Sheringham we drove around the coast back to Great Yarmouth for our final evening before heading back to Blackpool on Tuesday.

On the way out I had taken a wrong turn and ended driving through the town of Caister instead of using the bypass which affords a view of the castle, which we have visited many times, but which closed for the winter season the day before we came down to Norfolk!

I was intrigued to see a brown sign for "Roman Fort" and glimpsed some low walls of a familiar type behind the hedge. So on our way back we passed through the town again and stopped in the lay-by at the side of the site.

The fort was built around 200AD to the Roman standard plan. It defended the huge estuary of four rivers, the Ant, Bure, Yare and Waveney. The land it stood on was a small island at the time to the north of the estuary which covered a large area to the south now covered by land. In fact, now covered by Great Yarmouth...

We are looking at the foundations for one of the gate towers. We are inside the fort and the gate was to the left of the structure with a similar but mirrored tower on the other side. The line of the wall runs off to the right and beyond is a ditch with a deeper ditch which has been filled in and would have been under the modern roadway.

Some of the building foundations from inside the fort. After about 60 years another fort was built on the opposite shore of the estuary at Burgh. This has also been partially excavated and can be visited or seen from the many cruises up the River Yare from Great Yarmouth's dosckside area.

The site is owned or managed by English Heritage and there is a page with a map of the area at the time and a reconstruction of how the fort might have appeared from the air as sketched from an original roman Tigus Moth... Go to the link I have provided then search for "Caister roman fort"

Well, that concludes the entries about this holiday weekend - I'm going to have to go somewhere else now!

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The Oracle and Temple to Apollo, Didyma

25 May 2012. After we left Miletus we motored for a short while admiring the rain before arriving at Didyma. Here are the remains of a massive Temple to Apollo which, although never fully completed, would have rivalled that of Artemis, not too far away that was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

The original temple was run by the Branchidae family claiming descent from Branchos, a youth loved by Apollo. The wooden steps were quite slippery from their soaking and Fran was not best pleased I stopped her and expected her to turn round for a photo! In ancient times, once at the temple, a High Priestess answered questions in an unknown tongue which was translated by the Branchidae family members. This gave the family a certain degree (i.e. total) of opportunity to influence the advice given by the oracle!

It was the main temple of Miletus and was reached from there via a 17km Sacred Way, which had ritual waystations and statues of the Branchidae family including their animals. They were making sure of their franchise...

The marble has been badly marked by fire - hence the blackened state of the remains. The Persians under Darius invaded in 493 BC and presumably having had unpalatable advice offered by the Oracle promptly threw a wobbly and kicked out the Branchidae family and set fire to the place saying things like "Stuff your Oracle!" and "From now on we'll go to Delphi...!"

Once a visitor had climbed the steps and puffed themselves out, they then found themselves breathing in the heady fumes of incense mixed with certain other additives that left them feeling, shall we say, a touch light-headed...

On a high they were then directed down a narrow steeply sloping passage that was not only dark but narrow, the steep marble flooring requiring them in their befuddled state to reach out to touch both walls in the dark to keep their balance.

Arriving here in an enclosed temple space, but open to the sky, they then had to climb back up the steps shown at the far end.

If they were breathing heavily before, by now they were positively gasping and therefore drawing in yet more of the intoxicating fumes. At the top of these steps they found the room of the Oracle. A High Priestess, also somewhat off her head, wailed and garbled whilst members of the ever accomodating Branchidae family ("An offering? How kind!") translated the utterances of the Oracle out of the goodness of their hearts and to the growth of their purse.

Alexander the Great captured Miletus in 334 BC and began a restoration of the temple and started the tradition of the Oracle again. It was said that the sacred spring which had dried up a couple of hundred years before the Persians burnt the place, started to flow again once Alexander had visited. He probably made sure of it by digging...

There was by now a 160 year gap in the Oracle's tradition. Luckily someone was found who knew how to wail incoherently and someone learned to interpret this. Just over 600 years later, Rome was leaning heavily on the Christians and in 302 AD Galerius urged Diocletian to step it up somewhat.

Uncertain, Diocletian asked the Oracle for guidance. At Didyma the Oracle's utterings were given in written form. At Delphi they were merely spoken. The record shows that the response was interpreted as in favour of the persecution, marking the beginning of what has become known as the Great Persecution of 303, lasting for ten years.

You may get slightly biassed guidance from a High Priestess of one religion if wondering whether to persecute another... A few people from our party climbed the steps expecting to find themselves able to simply walk down the steps of the temple on the other side. And as the Oracle's rooms are no more they would have been able to do that had they been willing to jump the 12 feet or so to the floor of the first platform.

Instead we had to climb up the steep passage again. I've brightened the photo considerably, it was very dim in there. Miss Franny blinked at the wrong moment - it wasn't so dim that she could see just as well with her eyes shut...

A couple of gorgons' heads sculptures are displayed here but most of the sculpture including some statues from the Sacred Way have been removed to the museum. A few of the Sacred Way statues are apparently to be found in the British Museum in London. By the way, although we were told they were Gorgons' heads, I think they just had wavy hair - those are not snakes...

Once back at the ticket office, the current High Priest came looking for an offering...

We say goodbye to Didyma and Apollo and head back to the ship which is next to Princess Danae and a Saga Cruises ship.

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Unseen Things No.1 - Petra

Of all the things I have never experienced in person, there are some I have a chance of seeing, some that it is unlikely I will see and some that I will never see.

In terms of those that I will never see, it could be because they no longer exist, or because seeing them would involve more stamina, effort or energy than I currently have. Or in some case perhaps because they involve more danger than I care to accept as would be the case with some ruins I recall seeing on TV where you had to abseil down a cliff and do various mountain goat-type things to reach them, or where going to see them might damage or be bad for the things being seen.

The first on my list is perhaps one of the latter as, since listed as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in 2007, it has been described as having "unsustainable levels of tourism" during a time when the monuments themselves are threatened by flood water damage, salt erosion and age.

This is Petra, in modern Jordan. The ancient capital of the Nabataeans, it was a fortress controlling ancient caravan trade routes to and from Gaza, Damascus, the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea.

It was approached by the Siq, the shaft, a narrow gorge in the sandstone with this impressive structure carved from the rockface at the end of it.

It has been used in several films and the place features as the setting for many books. Indiana Jones, gallops down the Siq in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Macro and Cato visit the city in Simon Scarrow's Roman legionary series in the book The Eagle in the Sand.

There are so many sights to be seen in that vicinity though and to date I have never been to the Holy Land. If I was there and had the chance to visit, perhaps I couldn't and shouldn't resist!

The photograph comes with grateful thanks from the Flickr collection of Mahmood Al-Yousif

The Awe-Inspiring Ephesus

Monday, 24 August 2009. We had left the House of the Virgin Mary behind and travelled to a crowded coach park on the edge of the ancient city of Ephesus.

The city was reputedly founded by the female warrior sect, the Amazons. There were people living here as far back as 6000BC. It became a centre of the Ionians, sided with Greeks and Spartans against Persia, was ruled by Alexander the Great and later by the Romans under Constantine. We are impressed as soon as we enter the city, but the route that tourists take has been cunningly laid out so that it just keeps getting better and better.

As we enter the site we see the Odeion or Small Theatre which was built around 150 BC. It seated around 1400 people and was used both as council chamber and as a theatre. It was originally roofed - there are no gutters to take rainwater from the stage area. We spent a few minutes exploring it, even though Ghengis,our guide, had told us not to get too excited about this as there was a larger theatre to come later.

The Pollio Fountain. A major statue resides in a museum and the statues grouped here were brought following the collapse of an adjoining building. According to an inscription, the fountain was constructed by Sextilius Pollia in 97 AD.

One of a pair of flying representations of the goddess Nike that adorned the Gate of Heracles which gave access to Curetes Street.

According to mythology, the Curetes were semi-deities who clashed their weapons while Zeus's mistress Leto gave birth to the twins Artemis and Apollo, so that Zeus's jealous wife Hera would be confused and not see the birth. (They led complicated lives, the Greek gods - but they were easily distracted...)

The Trajan fountain. The fountain was erected between 102 and 104 A.D. and as the attached inscription reads, was consecrated to the Emperor Trajan. This is a "reduced" reconstruction as originally the pediment was set 12 metres high. Most of the statuary from here was so fine it is now in the museum.

The Temple of Hadrian on Curetes Street. Here we see the front of a porch - the main building was set back and we shall see an arched pediment on that presently.

On the front of the porch in the centre of the arch is a bust of Tyche, the goddess of the city.

On the arched pediment of the temple itself is what was described as a Medusa. It doesn't look like a Medusa it looks more like a youth with curly hair and on a subsequent visit this was described as a representation of Hadrian's male lover. History can sometimes change as our understanding of events and knowledge becomes clearer or better supported from new archaeological finds.

There are some well preserved fragments of carving here. This row of figures was carved before the year 138, though what we see here is a cast of the original which is in the nearby museum.

The latrina built in the first century AD are the public toilets of Ephesus. The toilets were ranged side by side with no partition between them. In the middle was a square pool. The floor was paved with mosaics. A sponge on a stick was the Roman's version of toilet paper. It would be cleaned and rinsed in the gutter to the left of the chap's feet which would have running water along it.

The Library of Celcus. Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus between either 105-106 or 106-107 AD was the Proconsul of the Asian province, the capital of which was Ephesus.

This is a reconstruction. It was built between 110 and 135 AD, destroyed by fire some centuries later and finally toppled by an earthquake 900-1000 years after it was built. The facade was reconstructed from fallen stone in 1970-78.

The upstairs windows face east so that the morning sun shone into the reading rooms. They were glazed with horn to let in light but to keep out rain and wind which might damage the scrolls kept in the library.

The gate with three passage ways at the right of the Celsus Library was built in 40 A.D by the slaves Mazeus and Mythridates for their emperor, Augustus, who gave them their freedom.

A detail of the carving on the face of the gateway. A damaged bull's head carving can be found in a corner of the gateway interior.

We passed through the gateway and came to the area where both St Paul and St John had preached. St Paul became embroiled in arguments with the silversmiths whose living was dependent on their sale of small figures of the goddess Artemis whose temple was nearby and was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

The magnificent amphitheatre is the second one you come to - even the first which was more a political debating forum is impressive but this is much larger and is why Genghis had told us not to be overly impressed with the Oedion when we first entered Ephesus. St Paul preached here for three years, this being recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. The Acts mention the Riot of the Silversmiths - they made silver figures of the goddess Artemis and Paul's attempts to convert people to Christianity were bad for business...

The Great Theatre was first constructed in the Hellenistic Period, in the third century BC during the reign of Lysimachos, but then during the Roman Period, it was enlarged and formed its current style as seen today. It seats 25,000.

Harbour Street runs from the theatre down to the old Roman Harbour. In the 1700 or so years since the fall of the Roman empire the harbour silted up so much that the sea is now seven or eight kilometers away. St John the Apostle fell foul of the same silversmiths as St Paul and was chased down this street, taking refuge in a castle on the hill in the distance. The Roman general Mark Anthony visited Ephesus often, but in 33 AD he brought Queen Cleopatra with him and they walked hand in hand down this street.

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