THE FORTRESS CITY
Bigger than York, older than Hadrian: the city walls of Chester are the ultimate testament to Roman genius. And you can walk every step of them.
It’s a popular schoolroom fact that the prefix or suffix ‘chester’ always tells you that the place you’re looking at was built by the romans. It comes from ‘castrum’, or camp, and you can find versions of it from Manchester to Gloucester to Chichester to Chesterfield.
But where better to start an exploration of roman walking than the placename that doesn’t even need a prefix or a suffix? Chester. perhaps the most roman place in Britain.
Not that the romans called it Chester. to them, this camp was Deva Victrix, or simply Deva. and it was the first ever Northern powerhouse.
at its peak, Chester was 20 per cent larger than any other fortress in roman Britain. sitting on a strategically important river delta (the Dee, which in those days was navigable to ships right to the walls of the fortress), in a defensible plain but with
quick access to any troublesome neck of the woods ( Wales, the North, the Midlands – they all gave the occupying forces some hassle at various points), and linked to the Roman capital of Colchester by the Via Devana, it was the perfect advanced basecamp for locking down north-western Britain. (York, meanwhile, controlled the north-east.)
The fortress of Deva was established between 70 and 80AD, and giving it good, strong walls was priority one. The walls were originally built as a rampart of turf topped by a wooden palisade; but from 100AD to 200AD they were completely rebuilt in locally-quarried sandstone – the same stone that you’ll find on the glorious 34-mile Sandstone Trail through western Cheshire.
The legion that was garrisoned here – XX Valeria Victrix – became renowned as expert wall builders, so much so that in 122, they were diverted north to start another wall-based project, at the whim of a new emperor named Hadrian.
The exact scale of the Roman walls is hard to pinpoint, for the simple reason that after the empire crumbled, they were developed, expanded and built on by the Saxons, and still further through the Norman Conquest and the Civil War. But there is still a Roman heart to the walls; for example, the 13-layer high section of wall to the east of the Northgate, which is the most complete section of Roman fortress wall in northern Europe. Here you can still see the original Roman ashlar (fine-cut cuboid masonry), bereft of any later embellishment.
And the Romans still define the very layout of Chester. Its main streets are wide, like Roman streets, not narrow like medieval ones, and they still meet at the hub of the Roman fortress, now known as Chester Cross. The city’s two largest gates are still on the site of the Roman originals. One stands on the northern side, ready to let the legion rush out northwards or westwards to Wales. Its exit is called the Porta Decumana, as the gate was wide enough for ten soldiers to pass through in line abreast. The other gate, the Eastgate, connected the city with the rest of ‘civilisation’.
All of this makes walking the walls a fascinating experience. First off, although you’re in a city, it is such a green and well-preserved city, with meadows and riverbanks close by all the way, that it feels like it could be the most ‘countrified’ city in the land. One reason for this is that the Industrial Revolution barely touched Chester. In fact it became the city that rich and prosperous industrial barons moved to in order to enjoy their wealth, because of its
fresh, clean air and lack of heavy industry. This lack of exploitation is also why so much Roman paraphernalia survives in the city.
As they now stand, the walls represent a complete circuit of medieval-era Chester, and they’re a smidge over two miles long. So you can combine a circuit of the walls with a longer walk into the river meadows beyond the city very easily, although if you go on a guided walk of the walls, or just take a good guidebook, it might well be the longest twomile walk you ever do – there’s that much to stop and explore. And on a clear day, you can stare down from the Eastgate and see the sweet lumps of the Clwydian Hills (minus barbarian hordes these days) shining in the distance. This is a city with country roots.
Along the walls there are steps, ramps, turrets and towers. There are legends and legacies, big views and quiet breathing spaces. You’ll find the remains of the largest stone-built Roman amphitheatre in Britain. You’ll visit a garden dedicated to Aesculapius, the Roman god of healing, where the herb borders form the shape of the Aesculapian snake, symbol of medicine the world over.
And if you’re on an organised tour, you can descend into the basements of unassuming frontages like Pret a Manger on Northgate Street and find Roman columns from the Principia building sitting in the store-room. Until it closed earlier this year, you could also see an original Roman hypocaust in the basement of Britain’s last remaining branch of Spud-U-Like. But if the store is still empty by the time you read this, don’t worry – there’s a reconstruction in the Roman Gardens (of the hypocaust, not the Spud-U-Like.)
And of course, unlike with certain other Roman walls we could mention, walking on top of these ones is perfectly permissible. In fact, it was always part of the plan. The Romans patrolled the wall-
“Along the walls there are steps, ramps, turrets and towers… and the remains of the largest stone-built Roman amphitheatre in Britain.”
tops themselves, and later, in the 1700s and 1800s, the walls were specifically revamped as leisure promenades, as they were just broad enough for a lady in a wide-hoop dress to walk arm-in-arm with a gentleman.
This, then, is why we began our Roman expedition in Chester. Walking is part of the story here, rather than a modern-day adaptation of an old structure. And the story is still alive and still moving; people live, work and walk among the structures and ruins of our imperial overlords. Their nick-nacks are still found with every excavation; their artefacts inform new building projects and inspire civic art.
All around this city, a little bit of ancient Rome is still proudly walking tall.