Chester Cathedral’s 19th century organ pipes seen over the top of the medieval choir
This is a really remarkable recording of Jonathan Scott playing the organ at Chester Cathedral, filmed by his brother Tom, who clearly understands what goes in to achieving the sounds that the organ, with Jonathan at its helm, is capable of producing.
The organ, which dates to the 19th century, has a rich, vibrant voice. I often feel that the addition of organs to medieval churches and cathedrals destroys something (sometimes a considerable amount) of the internal harmony, with very little in the way of gain, but this video argues that at least in this particular case, there might be great compensation for architectural alterations.
This is an hour-long concert held in Chester Cathedral, beginning with the Overture to Mozart’s Magic Flute, in which the cathedral’s is being played by the remarkable Jonathan Scott, who talks about how the organ delivers its sound via keys, pedals and stops. There is some great footage of Jonathan Scott’s finger work on all four tiered keyboards, and for me it was a particular revelation to see the amazing foot work required. I had no idea. There are also some great internal views of the cathedral on the video. It is a truly illuminating insight into organ music.
The new Gladiators of Britain exhibition at the Grosvenor Museum fits the archaeology of a huge story very cleverly into a relatively small space, with a great many remarkable objects that have been very well chosen to illustrate the topic.
Thanks to Chester Archaeological Society I was lucky enough to be one of a group who were invited to a guided preview of the exhibition in late September 2025, just as it was opening. Many thanks to Pauline Clarke (Excursions Officer at Chester Archaeological Society) and Elizabeth Montgomery (Grosvenor Museum) for organizing our visit. Liz took us around the exhibit in two groups, and explained how the original exhibition had been organized by Glynn Davis, Senior Collections & Learning Curator from Colchester and Ipswich Museums, who had arranged for the loan of objects from both Chester’s Grosvenor Museum and London’s British Museum, partly to contextualize the remarkable and substantially important find of the Colchester Vase, shown both in the above poster and in photographs below. When this exhibition had closed, the various parties who had contributed to the Colchester exhibition were approached with a view to loaning the same objects to enable a travelling exhibition, which is what we see at the Grosvenor today, using objects and interpretation boards to introduce gladiatorial contests in Britain. xxx
The Chester Amphitheatre
Before talking about the exhibition I though that it might be useful to put it into the context of the Chester amphitheatre. For those completely happy with the history of the Chester amphitheatre, what amphitheatres were for and the roles they performed, do skip ahead.
Rome’s Colosseum, which opened in AD 80, shown on a sestertius coin, on display at the Gladiators of Britain exhibition
Gladiatorial conquests took place in amphitheatres. The best known amphitheatre in Europe is Rome’s own stone-built Colosseum, which remains even today a stunning piece of architectural ambition, remarkably preserved and awe-inspiringly vast. The exhibition has a video running on a small tablet that shows a super 3-D reconstructionof what the Colosseum may have looked like in the past (by Aleksander Ilic). It provides a sense not only of an amphitheatre’s structural components but also of its monumental grandeur, reflecting its importance to Roman ideas of the necessities of urban infrastructure and social identity.
Like all other Roman military centres and towns, Chester (Roman Deva), established c.AD 74/75 was provided with an amphitheatre, currently the largest known in Britain. As the museum curator, Elizabeth Montgomery, made clear when guiding us around the exhibit, that statement comes with the caveat that at the important northern centre of York (Eboracum) the amphitheatre has not yet been located, but the scale of the Chester amphitheatre is a very impressive feather in Deva’s cap. Located just beyond the southeast corner of the fortification, just beyond the city walls and the New Gate (formerly the Wolf Gate) on Little St John’s Street.
The Chester amphitheatre as it is today, showing the small room that housed the shrine to Nemesis at bottom right
Britain was attractive to Rome as a target for invasion partly because, at the edge of the known world, it was an quick win for both Julius Caesar and then Claudius. It was far more prestigious to expand the Empire to its geographical limit than to merely curate its existing holdings. It is clear too that by the first century AD the Romans stationed on the Rhine had begun to become materially aware of Britain via her trading relationship with Gaul, benefitting from her produce, raising an awareness of her resources, and providing a strong secondary reason both for the Claudian invasion and for sustained occupation. Although Britain remained a peripheral province in a world where Rome was the centre of the geographical and cultural universe, the province had successive governors who were responsible for maintaining Britain as a component part of the Empire, with most of the infrastructure to mark it out as Roman territory. Every major fortress and town boasted an amphitheatre and Chester had one from shortly after the establishment of the legionary fortress in the first century AD.
A wall map from the exhibition showing the location of 17 known amphitheatre or amphitheatre-like structures in Britain
An amphitheatre such as the one we have in Chester was multi-functional. Although usually exclusively associated in people’s mind with spectacular and often gory action, where trained gladiators fought both other humans and wild animals, it was also used to execute criminals, to host military displays, to offer less lethal forms of entertainment and to display religious ceremonies and rituals. It also doubled up as an additional training space for the military, only a very short march from the parade ground that was on today’s Frodsham Street, where training and drilling, manoeuvres and tactics, to prepare soldiers for the realities of military engagement against a potentially fractious population; and at the same time kept large numbers of men sufficiently busy to minimize the disputes that might break out.
Because many of the activities, particularly the gladiatorial events, attracted large audiences (in their 1000s), they had in common with football stadiums that they were designed to accommodate a large number of spectators, funnelling them via staircases and ramps to the raked seating, providing them with ease of access and clear visibility of the spectacle that unfolded below, a major task of civil engineering based on an understanding of crowd control. The large number of entrances at the Chester amphitheatre is indicative of this understanding of how people flowed into a central location.
Gladiatorial event shown on a 2nd century slate found in Chester, on display at the exhibition
Sadly, although the Chester amphitheatre may have been used following the abandonment of Britain in AD 410 as a local defensive enclosure, the amphitheatre’s vast walls were subsequently robbed for building materials so thoroughly that it was reduced to it to nothing more than its foundations and the arena floor. This denuded space was subsequently used as a dump, slowly filling in, and eventually becoming completely covered over and forgotten. Buildings and gardens obliterated all evidence, with only Little St John’s Street, bending in a puzzling way, following the old line of the amphitheatre walls. Perhaps the first hint that an amphitheatre may have been part of the Roman footprint of Chester was a slate plaque found in 1738 that showed a gladiatorial scene.
The Chester amphitheatre was rediscovered in 1929 when a new extension to the the Georgian and Victorian Dee House Ursuline Convent School, still sitting over the southern part of the amphitheatre, (and now known simply as Dee House), required a new basement for heating equipment, and the works that followed encountered Roman remains. These were quickly recognised by W.J. Williams of the Chester Archaeological Society, who knew of the slate plaque, and shortly afterwards trial trenches were excavated by the Grosvenor Professor Robert Newstead of the Grosvenor Museum and Professor J.P. Droop, confirming that this was indeed the Roman city’s amphitheatre.
Detail of John McGahey’s 1852 painting of Chester from an air balloon (with my rough indicator of location of amphitheatre in red show how completely the amphitheatre area was covered over). Source: Ainsworth and Wilmott 2005 / Chester City Council
The site was already under threat from a new road, preparatory work for which had already taken place to run it across the centre of what was now known to be the amphitheatre. The public and heritage organizations instantly responded, and different sources of pressure caused the plan to be cancelled. Chester Archaeological Society (C.A.S.) took the lead in raising funds to clear the site and enable access for further excavations. Although these plans were interrupted by the Second World War (during which air raid shelters were dug into the amphitheatre, destroying archaeological material), these excavations took place in the 1960s, lead by F. Hugh Thompson, who proposed a phased build for the amphitheatre. In the 1990s a proposal to develop the site as a heritage destination led to planning permission for the Grade II listed Dee House to be knocked down to enable the excavation of the land beneath, but this met with financial problems, the plans faded and the planning permission lapsed in 1995 (a real lost opportunity). In 2000 the site was again excavated, this time by Keith Matthews of Chester Archaeology, who revealed more data and came to different conclusions about the phasing the amphitheatre.
In January 2003 Chester City Council joined forces with English Heritage to initiate the Chester Amphitheatre Project, covering both the amphitheatre and flanking areas. Objectives included non-invasive survey, excavation where appropriate and publication of the findings. The work took place between 2004 and 2007, led by Dan Garner (Chester City Council) and Tony Wilmott (English Heritage). The survey and excavations between 2005-2006 led by Tony Wilmott and Dan Garner, published in 2018, were particularly informative. The presence of the listed building Dee House on the other side of the site, although derelict, has prevented any further progress being made.
Phasing of the amphitheatre shown in blue (first amphitheatre) and orange (second amphitheatre). Source: Ainsworth and Wilmott 2005, p.23
The outcome of all this work has been a narrative of the large oval (rather than elliptical) amphitheatre’s two-phase construction. The first phase was erected early in the fortress’s history probably shortly after the establishment of the legionary fortress after AD 74/75. The early date of the amphitheatre at around AD80 is not unusual, with other early examples known from, for example, Dorchester, Silchester, Cirencester and Caerleon. The second amphitheatre has destroyed some of the evidence of the first. The first amphitheatre was built in more than one phase, but it appears to have matured as a wooden scaffold holding seating, with a wall at its back, and another wall separating the seating from the arena. The access to upper levels was via an external staircase, an arrangement that is otherwise only known from Pompeii at a similar date. An interesting feature of the early amphitheatre phase is a small painted shrine dedicated to the deity Nemesis, which was retained in the second amphitheatre.
The second main phase of amphitheatre construction resulted in Britain’s biggest example of this type of building. A new outer wall was built following the line of the earlier amphitheatre, a vast 2m (6ft 7ins) thick and 1.8m (5ft 11in) outside the outer wall of the first structure. The original four entrances identified in the first amphitheatre were retained but new entrances were added that lead to the interior (vomitoria) to allow access to upper seating, suggsting that the outer wall was much higher than the earlier amphitheatre, an impression that is reinforced by the sheer size of the new outer wall. As Willmot and Garner say (2018) “its size; the number, complexity and organization of entrances and the treatment of the exterior facade all place it in an architectural class beyond that of the other amphitheatres in the province.” It is estimated that the new amphitheatre could have accommodated up to between 7500-8000 spectators. It is to this phase that the tethering stone belongs, as well as a coping stone (rounded stone topping for a wall) that contains the inscription “SERANO LOCUS” (see photo of both at the end of the post).
Julian Baum’s incredibly life-like reconstruction of Roman Chester, showing the dominance of the amphitheatre, with the parade ground to its north. See more details of the amphitheatre on Julian Baum’s site at https://jbt27.artstation.com/projects/bKDayr?album_id=332464 Copyright Julian Baum, used with kind permission (click to expand)
As well as being essentially a part of the urban townscape, albeit excluded from the fortress, the tall, impressive structure that would have made an impression far beyond the immediate environs of the city. The surrounding landscape would have been in no doubt that the Ro mans had arrived, settled, and were here to stay, their amphitheatre not unlike a medieval cathedral in its powerful messaging. This is abundantly clear in Julian Baum’s reconstructions, such as the one here, demonstrating how the amphitheatre could act as a symbol of Roman presence, sophistication and power. Another of Julian’s reconstructions, showing the city at sunset, is on display in the exhibition, and both clearly demonstrate how dominant a feature the amphitheatre must have been and how important it was to the inhabitants of the fortress. xxx
The Gladiators of Britain Exhibition
As there are no written records of the events that took place in Britain’s amphitheatres, the focus of the exhibition is on archaeological data and its interpretation. There are some very short inscriptions in stone that hint at the importance of the gladiatorial events, but the bulk of the data that informs ideas of what remains are the amphitheatres of Britain themselves, and the objects that record the spectacles that people attended. The exhibition has brought together some very evocative pieces. All the photos below are from the exhibition.
The exhibition does not attempt to analyse the Chester amphitheatre and nor does it set out to answer the bigger questions about how gladiators were trained, where they came from, or how they were deployed. What it does superbly well is demonstrate how the gladiatorial spectacle was captured both in massive architectural endeavour and in material remains preserved in the archaeological record.
The Colchester Vase
The exhibition opens with some details about the amphitheatres in which gladiatorial confrontations took place. Not only is there a video by Alexander Illci showing a reconstruction of Rome’s magnificent Colosseum, but there is a fabulous, splendidly detailed coin showing the amphitheatre in raised relief, dating from AD 80. The exhibition then goes on to explore the world of gladiators via specially chosen objects that reflect the impact how amphitheatres and gladiators contributed to o Roman urban life, even far from the heartland of the Roman Empire.
The Colchester Vase, being perhaps the key object that inspired the exhibition, is worth taking time over when you visit. Apart from the fact that it is superbly well crafted, a piece of real excellence, it tells more than one story, with each component moulded in high relief. To ensure that the vessel can be appreciated in its entirety, a mirror has been placed behind it, and the lighting highlights the relief figures very clearly. It shows a gladiator versus another gladiator, a gladiator versus a beast, and beasts chasing beasts.
Gladiatorial Helmet from Hawkedon, Suffolk
Another key object in the exhibition is the helmet from Hawkedon in Suffolk, one of the most important objects to be found in connection with the history of gladiators in Britain. Unlike the Colchester Vase, or any of the other objects depicting gladiatorial action discussed below, this was design to participate in the action, worn to protect the gladiator and give him the best chance of survival. The frontpiece is modern, added to give a complete impression of what the original item looked like. Analysis of the metal suggests that it was made on the continent and hints that both it and perhaps its owenr may have travelled to Britain for participation in the amphtheatre.
Amongst many other discoveries during the excavations , the one that confirms that gladiatorial bouts undoubtedly took place in the Chester amphitheatre was a huge sandstone tethering stone, which tied animals and some human contestants alike to a central point to prevent them seeking refuge at the sidelines where they could not be viewed by the full circle of spectators (shown at the end of the post). This somewhat daunting object is on display in the exhibition. Although by far the crudest of the many lovely objects on view, it is the one that moves the exhibition from art-works to action, forcing the visitor to engage with the the very savage and bloody nature of the contests. It is one thing to look at a pretty scene on a vase or stone; it is quite another to be confronted with the block that physically chained the victim to its unavoidable fate.
Second century pottery lamp from Italy in the Gladiators of Britain exhibition
Although the gladiators were the stars of the events, the members of the audience were just as important for the success and ambience of the amphitheatres, and many of the other objects in the exhibition reflect the sense of involvement and enjoyment that individuals took from amphitheatre events. One item that clearly demonstrates this sense of involvement is A coping stone, inscribed SERANO LOCUS (shown at the very end of this post), may have been part of the arena wall, perhaps marking the place (“locus”) of a spectator named Seranus. Although the more remarkable of the items in the exhibition, such as the Colchester Vase, were probably specially commissioned, other items are far less prestigious. The many oil lamps in the exhibition, showing scenes of gladiators in action, were probably purchased like souvenirs when peformances were taking place. It is thought that traces of outer buildings and the remains of food items at Chester represent snack stalls, and it is entirely likely that souvenirs could also have been sold in the same vicinity, or after the event in marketplaces.
Altar dedicated to Nemesis by Sextius Marcianus, found in a shrine at the amphitheatre.
Also on display is the shrine to the goddess Nemesis, apparently retained in the second amphitheatre after being built for the first one, adds a religious dimension to proceedings, a feature known from other amphitheatres in the Empire as well. Representing fate, Nemesis was appropriate to the prospective fortunes of both winner and loser. Nemesis was particularly appropriate for a gladiatorial outlook, whether winner or loser, representing fate. It was dedicated by the centurion Sextius Marcianus who had it made after experiencing a vision.
There are a great many more objects in the exhibition. Each has been well chosen to show different aspects of the gladiatorial experience, and each is well explained in the labelling. A wide variety of materials are represented, including stone, metals, wood and pottery, and many are decorated with great imagination. Some were component parts of the amphitheatres themselves. Others were items used in the arena, whilst a wide range of items were designed for the home. Most of these were the objects that people chose to commission or purchase, took into their homes and cared for, maintaining them in beautiful condition. As the exhibition demostrates so clearly, when they were buried, broken or lost in transit, they became archaeological remnants, and in doing so became threads of several different lines of investigation that continue to feed into broader research about the Roman occupation of Britain.
As well as the objects themselves, the information labels and interpretation boards not only inform, but create an all-encompassing experience that helps visitors to get to grips with a fascinating if gory subject matter. The interpretation boards are beautifully designed, giving the exhibition a good sense of coherence. Fortunately there is no gore on show, so this is entirely child-friendly (with games and dress-up outfits available for children) and whilst the exhibition does not judge, it leaves visitors in little doubt that this was a form of entertainment that potentially had a life or death outcome, whether for human or animal.
The exhibition may be small but it makes a terrific impact, making superb use of the space available, and seeking at every turn to inform and involve. The art work on the interpretation boards is attractive, and there is a lightness of touch to the whole presentation and the delicate artwork that manages to complement rather than overwhelm the exhibits and the themes. It is really well done. Don’t miss it!
With many thanks to the Grosvenor Museum’s Liz Montgomery for a really engaging guided tour of the exhibition.
The exhibition is free of charge to enter, and the museum opening times are shown on its website: https://grosvenormuseum.westcheshiremuseums.co.uk/visit-us/. Do note, as shown above, that group tours are available on Mondays, and you can phone up to arrange them. The exhibition is on in Chester until January 25th 2026.
Enjoy!
For anyone wanting to gain an impression of what the Chester amphitheatre may have looked like, the following YouTube video by 3-D modeller Julian Baum in collaboration with archaeologist Tony Willmot may help to visualize the building:
Sources and further reading:
Books and Papers
Hunt cup from Colchester
Ainsworth, Stewart and Tony Wilmott 2005. Chester Amphitheatre. From Gladiators to Gardens. Chester City Council and English Heritage
de la Bédoyère, Guy 2001. The Buildings of Roman Britain. Tempus
de la Bédoyère, Guy 2013. Roman Britain: A New History. Thames and Hudson
Carrington, Peter1994. Chester. B.T. Batsford / English Heritage
Wilmott, Tony and Dan Garner 2018. The Roman Amphitheatre of Chester. Volume 1, The Prehistoric and Roman Archaeology. Oxbow (also available on Kindle, although not all of the tables are fully legible)
Based in Churton Peter Carrington’s excellent guided walk of Roman Chester during the Festival of Ideas. Andie Byrnes, July 6th 2025 https://wp.me/pcZwQK-7OD
John Douglas. A photograph that apparently first appeared in “Building News” in 1890. Source: Wikipedia
For those who are interested in local heritage, it is probably not possible to live in or near Chester without knowing the name of the architect John Douglas. John Douglas (1830-1911) was a prolific architect, working right at the end of the Victorian era but demonstrating a fundamental affiliation with Victorian architectural ideals. According to Chantal’s research, between the buildings he built and those that he renovated and adapted, he contributed to over 500 buildings in Britain. Not much is known about him, but he trained in Lancashire where a new middle class, rising in both wealth and influence, was creating an unprecedented demand for domestic, commercial and civic architecture. His are some of the most imaginative and and engaging of Chester’s Victorian buildings, providing the city with an important additional layer of interest and texture. He was also responsible for other local buildings at Eaton Hall (including Eccleston), Aldford and Port Sunlight, as well as many other UK locations. Although never bowing to the past in his architectural inventions, Douglas incorporated elements of Chester’s earlier architectural styles into his unique creations, remaining sensitive to the original city whilst leaving a highly distinctive and creative legacy of his own.
Grosvenor Park Street
Our guide on the Heritage Open Day walk was Chantal Bradburn, art historian and head of Outreach at the University of Chester, who had done such a splendid job several days previously, introducing a large group of us to the Western Command at the Churchill Building. Called “John Douglas in Chester,” this was a brand new walk, and a great idea to add it to the many events offered last week. Instead of taking us on a route-march of every building that Douglas built in Chester, Chantal selected a representative few, which both captured different aspects of his work and at the same time demonstrated an underlying thread between them all. By choosing a careful sample of Douglas’s total Chester output, she was able to impart far more knowledge about both Douglas and the individual buildings than if she had tried to include more, although she did finish up the tour with recommendations for other buildings to inspect nearby. As with her Churchill Building talk, and perhaps even more so, it is impossible to do any sort of justice to all the facts that she imparted, and particularly to do any justice at all to her ability to contextualise the architecture within its social and economic environment, as well as discussing it in art-historical terms, so this is just a short taster of a really great guided walk.
We started at the lodge in the Grosvenor Park, an obviously Victorian take on the Tudor half-timbered buildings that partly define Chester’s heritage, commissioned by the Grosvenor estate to provide a touch of additional elegance to the second Marquess of Westminster’s 1867 philanthropic donation of the land to create a park.
Grosvenor Park Lodge
The Grosvenor Park Lodge by John Douglas
Grosvenor Park Lodge from the rear
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Detail of carved woodwork on the Grosvenor Park Lodge: “Nobilitatis virtus non stemma character”
With Ruabon brick at its base and half-timbering at first floor level, it features sculptural elements and carvings that provide it with real charm. Douglas apparently thought it entirely appropriate to add a medieval-style sandstone extension to his building, which as Chantal pointed out, reflects the multi-period character of many of Chester’s buildings.
It became clear as we proceeded on the walk that this willingness to go with the flow of Chester architecture by echoing some of its variety and diversity, without ever trying to replicate it, was a key characteristic of Douglas’s approach. He always preferred local materials, and this too indicates a real wish to connect with Chester’s earlier architectural heritage. It’s great to see it being used as a café, providing a useful service on the edge of the park.
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Our next stop was just over the road, on Grosvenor Park Street. The 1872 Grade II* listed houses, numbers 6-11 on Grosvenor Park Street make up of a row of terraced houses and a Zion Chapel have long been a favourite of mine. Together they are a fabulous, wildly imaginative mixture of different elements all of Ruabon red brick, including gothic style features, turrets, and a dozen other twiddly bits. It is always wonderful to see how brick can be used to create elements that are more conventionally associated with stonework in this country. Whether the mullioned windows, some with original leading, let in a lot of light I doubt, but they are wonderfully ornamental. It was particularly interesting that Douglas built these houses on land that he owned, renting them out afterwards. He did not skimp on materials or architectural design in order to make a bigger profit. This set of buildings argues that he really cared about not only the quality of his own work, but about what he as an individual could contribute to Chester.FULL RUN HERE
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Perhaps one of his best known buildings in this part of extramural Chester is quite unlike either his lodge or his fantastic domestic extravaganza. However, as Chantal pointed out, the Chester Public Baths are still in proportion, a good fit with the domestic buildings in this part of Chester in spite of its being a public leisure facility. Chantal positioned the idea of swimming and the provision of a public baths in the social context of Victorian values and ideals, but made it clear that Douglas had put his own particular spin on the resulting building. Both practical and decorative, it is a very fine example of a building that is at once distinctively Victorian but also takes admired aspects from Chester’s past.
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Further down Bath Street, I would not have guessed at first sight that the Grade II listed buildings on the right were another Douglas innovation, but the signs are there when you pause to look more closely, and particularly when you have Chantal’s expertise to provide detailed knowledge and insights. Except for the building at the far south, nearest to the Baths, which is more typical of other Douglas buildings nearby, the main run of houses is built of buff sandstone, quite different in material, colour, and texture from other Douglas buildings and, for that matter, from anything else that I recall seeing in Chester. It dates to 1903, quite late in Douglas’s life, and perhaps this accounts for some of the distinctive features discussed by Chantal. There is an echo of the buildings on Grosvenor Park Street, but this has a much more monumental feeling to it and even with the decorative features and the short spires, seems less light-hearted and, in spite of the ornamental features, a little more monumental in feel.
If you follow the building all the way round the corner you will see that the houses link to a building built by Douglas to house Prudential Assurance. It’s name today, Lombard House, reflects a later use by the eponymous bank. To the left of the entrance, just around the corner, there is a charming female statue inset into a niche holding a snake and book. This is Prudence, one of the four cardinal virtues (the others being Justice, Fortitude and Temperance), adopted by Prudential Assurance as their emblem in 1848 for her qualities of foresight, intelligence, thoughtfulness and knowledge. Although more traditionally shown with a mirror representing self-awareness, a book is also part of her iconography, representing knowledge, wisdom and and good judgement. xxx
xxx Our final stop for the day took in two architectural features, bringing us into the city within the walls – the wrought iron extravaganza that sits on top of the Georgian East Gate, with its splendid clock, and the former Grosvenor Club building immediately to its west. These both speak of late Victorian Chester’s ambition and its delight in ornament and display, giving an unmistakeably Victorian sparkle to this part of the city. Chantal gave us details about the clock that I hadn’t heard before concerning its construction, as well as an entertaining factoid about the date of construction, reminding me that it is very easy to become complacent about even such a dominant landmark. I had known nothing about the Grosvenor Club (including its name and purpose) so this too was a learning curve.
The Grosvenor Club
The Grosvenor Club on the right with the rest of Eastgate Street taken from the top of the East Gate bridge, under the clock.
When the tour was over, and Chantal had pointed us at other Douglas buildings in the vicinity so that we could investigate further on our own, she was still surrounded by a group of people asking many questions, and this had been the trend of the entire walk, with tons of information being imparted and lots of questions following. Keep an eye open for this walk being offered in the future. It’s a good one!
The nearby Parker’s Buildings
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Grosvenor Park Lodge detail
Thinking about John Douglas and his work over the following few days, and looking up other examples of his work, his buildings generally aim to provide an attractive environment of well-being, based on the idea that past and present reinforce one another in a very comfortable and attractive way. Although many of the John Douglas buildings were impressive, and some of them were intended to be imposing, others were homes along streets that made use of vernacular features both from Chester, with inspiration taken from European cities, and from the medieval period onwards. His preference for local materials is clearly demonstrated, and his love of decorative features is a real celebration of life. He took a modern approach to architecture, incorporating traditional styles into his new interpretive schemes, as well as Germanic and French ideas that gave his work a rather more cosmopolitan edge than other architecture in the city, and in doing so added real value to Chester. The best of the Victorian architecture of Chester simply oozes a sense of excitement and self-confidence about their lived present and their anticipated future, and John Douglas reflects this unfurling era with real exuberance. His contributions to places like wealthy Eccleston and Aldford are also attractive, but perhaps Douglas is at his most appealing when contributing to Port Sunlight, the village built in the late 1880s by Lord Lever for his factory workers, contributing his skills with around 30 other architects, to create a very different type of community. It must have been a real pleasure to live in one of his remarkable houses. It is very nice to see that the ones that I have found to date seem to be very well maintained. It is only a shame that subsequent architectural projects in Chester have only occasionally managed to live up to both his high standards and his creativity.
On Wednesday 17th September, as part of Heritage Open Day, Paul Newman from the Cheshire Archives and Tim Brown from the architectural firm Ellis Williams, explained to a well-attended audience at the Grosvenor Museum how the new archive project had been rolled out and what we can expect next year when the new Chester building opens. I am dying to get my hands on the Cheshire Lunatic Asylum records that they hold, having already written a long screed about the asylum between 1854 and 1870 (across four posts here), so I was attending the event with a real sense of anticipation.
The Cheshire Archives, which since 1986 have been located in Duke St in Chester, closed in 2022, having won a Lottery grant to build two brand new buildings. The former Duke Street premises of the Archives were in a set of lovely Victorian buildings, which were once warehouses of the legendary Browns Department Store, but the Archives were beginning to outgrow them. The archive collections go back to the mid 12th century, and continue to be added today, representing different aspects of community life, working and domestic, at different periods. As its role became more important, the Archive outgrew the building, with boxes that would reach 8km if laid end to end, and it had a number of environmental issues as well as providing less than ideal facilities for both staff and researchers. Targets to reach a larger and more diverse audience were difficult, and it became clear that a move was the only realistic solution.
An initial investment of National Lottery money to explore the project in 2020 was successful, and a full National Lottery Fund grant was subsequently allocated, with work began in earnest in 2022. The locations in Crewe and Chester will spread the collection between east and west sides of Cheshire to provide accessible storage for the archive collections in conditions that are much more favourable. Outreach programmes will be more viable, reaching a much wider audience of different ages and backgrounds. Digital access will be much improved, with new ways to access local collections and historical data, including a postcode search and community-selected highlights referred to as “Gems.” At the same time, the salt mines in Winsford will continue to store other records, which are available to order to either location with a one-week turnaround. A permanent exhibition will be set up, and exhibition spaces will eventually be available for those using the archives. The new offices will open in 2026, and the project will continue as a measuring and monitoring exercise into 2027.
The architectural firm Ellis Williams, who had undertaken the ambitious and successful conversion of Chester’s Story House, was appointed to develop both of the new buildings. Interestingly, although they have many of the same internal features, their appearance is very dissimilar. Both have very modern appearances, but each has been adapted to its own immediate neighbourhood. Initial design ideas were more radical, but certainly in the Chester case the emphasis soon shifted towards meeting planning requirements for some degree of continuity between the proposed new building and the surrounding architectural context and local character. Documents detailing some of the plans can be found here: https://www.cheshirestoryshared.org/home/the-plan
The new archive building in Chester will be located on the mainly residential Lightfoot Street, which runs along the railway line behind the Chester railway station. This has created some challenges in terms of accessibility, and the Council were unwilling to sell the entire site, so parking is confined to 35 spaces.
A low wall with indented panels on Chester Lightfoot Street, which separates the archive site from the road. Source: Google Maps.
The site is divided from the road by a low wall with indented sections, and it was a planning requirement that this should be preserved. The idea here is to knock through some of the indented panels, whilst leaving others in tact, replacing those that are to be knocked through with wrought iron artwork, so that the Archive site is visible through the panels, creating a linkage between both sides of the wall. There is a slight slope of around 2.5m downhill from the road level, which requires stairs and slopes to enable ease of access. Parking will include spaces for school coaches and there will be a loading bay at the rear. The shape of the building itself will echo the twin-gabled shape of railway sheds and platform roofs, but is super-modern in design, and it will feature an “active frontage,” a term that refers to the integration of the building with the street onto which it faces. Work began in 2017.
Inside, the two-storey Chester building will be split between a public-facing space on the ground floor and a more staff-orientated space on the first floor. It will total 3000 sq ft (c.270 sq m). The ground floor foyer, which although north-facing should be light-filled, will be an exhibition space, and will include a theatre area with movable walls, lighting and seating, to ensure maximum flexibility. A help desk will be located at the rear. The research rooms will have desks for research, with a total of six computers available at any one time (most people apparently bring their own kit) and there will also be a chill-out area. The first floor will include, with archive storage in rolling racks, offices and meeting rooms. Energy considerations have been factored in, making best possible use of the available technologies, and various levels of security and fire-safety measures are part of the overall plans.
The foundations have been established and work is underway on the lower level brickwork, whilst a steel frame and roof have also been erected. Archaeologists from Oxford Archaeology had been given time to carry out an assessment, but found very little of interest beyond sundry 19th century railway features. The resulting report can be found here.
The archives will probably be open for a 5-day week. I should have asked whether this was Monday to Friday, or whether a weekend day would also be included, but it did not occur to me at the time. I am really looking forward to visiting the new Cheshire Archives building when it opens in late summer 2026, and experimenting with some of their upcoming digital services. In the meantime there is a website showcasing some of the Archive’s activities at Cheshire’s Archives: A Story Shared.
Thanks very much to Paul Newman and Tim Brown for not only delivering a terrifically informative presentation but for answering the numerous audience questions.
The portico dates from 1997, but the original Neo-Georgian military Western Command building can be seen behind it.
With many thanks to Chantal Bradburn for an excellent lecture in the Churchill Building in the University of Chester’s Queen’s Campus. Chantal is the University’s Outreach representative, with a strong background in art history and a particular interest in architecture in its social context. Her talk, entitled “Western Command (Churchill Building),” covered the design and original purpose of the building as the headquarters of the Western Command, including the fascinating underground bunkers, and the building’s subsequent phases of use. The presentation and the subsequent walk around the building’s exterior brought the Western Command to life. Chantal’s ability to convey an impression of the building as it was in military times, based partly on her research and partly on feedback from people who have attended the talk or contacted her over the years, was of critical importance, because the interior had been completely re-envisioned in grandiose style by the subsequent bank, and converted once again in more pragmatic terms into the University of Chester’s Business School. Only the exterior retains the essential character of the Western Command building.
The eastern wing of the Western Command (Churchill Building) gives a good impression of how the building appeared when it was first built
The building, then known as Capital House, was completed in around 1938, almost certainly in response to the threat of war. Neo-Georgian is not my favourite of the various architectural experiments in Chester. I have grumbled on and off about the Wheeler Building on the blog for years, and there are a number of more modest buildings dotting the streets of the historic city whose architects seem to believe that slapping some symmetrical rectangular windows into plain blocks of undifferentiated brickwork will do the trick nicely, completely missing the point of refined elegance and delicate embellishments that characterized Georgian harmonies. On the other hand, as Chantal pointed out, at least in the case of the Churchill Building there are good reasons for this style, which is better than most of its siblings, relating not merely to the practicalities of budget constraints for such a large building.
The eastern entrance to the Churchill Building with subtle nods to Art Deco
The importance of establishing a dignified military presence referenced the power and prestige of the city’s Georgian predecessors, which were themselves influenced by Classical architecture, whilst some low-key features nod to both the medieval military past and, in an even more subtle way, other contemporary styles. I would not have noticed these had Chantal not pointed them out. Although the subsequent Northwest Securities bank slapped a gigantic Classical-style portico on the front, the original building consisted of flat-roofed blocks that provided an impressive frontage, which relies for its impact on the size of its footprint rather than the height of its two-storey walls. Chantal pointed out that the position of the building was strategically very fine, with its views over the river and the city beyond, only matched in its vantage points by the site chosen for the castle.
As the northwest HQ for intelligence on what was quite literally Britain’s western front during the war, the personnel serving in the Western Command building had a critical role not only leading up to and during the war, but for a surprising amount of time after it. Chantal told us a great many stories about the role of the building and the people who worked there, highlighting the complexities that different levels of security caused for both employees and contractors, and emphasizing the degree of secrecy that was associated with the activities that took place within the Churchill Building.
Bunkers excavated into the sandstone at the Churchill Building. Source: 28DaysLater
To the east of the building, up-river, the remarkable and extensive underground bunkers were built to provide shelter and a command centre should it become necessary, both during and after the Second World War. They extend from the level of the building down towards the river. It is reputed that Churchill, who is known to have visited the building, may have met there with President Dwight D. Eisenhower and General Charles de Gaulle. No documentation supports this view, but there are apparently anecdotal accounts that support the possibility. The bunkers are now too dangerous to visit (see a photograph of a point of collapse on the 28DaysLater website). The sandstone through which former miners in the army excavated to create the bunkers is sponge-like, attracting damp that is not helping with the stability of the underground structures. Chantal showed photographs and explained past survey work and future plans (dependent as always on funding).
The building passed to the Royal Army Pay Corps in 1972, and from 1972 it was taken over as offices for a banking corporation. The presentation took place in a huge room with an enormous table, all very glossy and highly polished, and heavily influence by Art Deco designs. This was part of the bank’s improbable legacy. It is quite staggering how the bank took over a military building and turned it into an extrovert and financially corrosive expression of self-indulgent excess. Where these details have survived, the legacy is huge fun, but quite mad. The bank’s vast portico, converting the Neo-Georgian blocks into a pseudo Classical temple, is equally pretentious. I am very fond of the University, having had a great time doing some post-graduate research there a couple of years back, but it really does seem to have saddled itself with buildings that for all their scale and practicality are amongst the least aesthetically charming of the various Cestrian styles. In their favour, the University does make the most of them.
The opening of the Churchill Building by John Spencer Churchill (centre in grey suit), when it became part of the University of Chester in October 2015. Source: Cheshire Live
It is interesting to note that in the case of both military base and commercial bank, the building was off-limits to the public, not only physically but visually. The arrangement of buildings at the time meant that the view through the gates, then in a different position, blocked any view of the heart of the complex. It has been particularly interesting for local people who have lived in the area for a number of decades to have access to the building at last, and to be able to see what was so long hidden from view, perhaps particularly when family members and friends worked there.
The building had been out of use for a decade when the University took it over in 2015 to make it the centre for their Business School, with most of the building adapted to this task with the usual collection of teaching, research and computer rooms, areas for socializing and a café. Wisely, the decision was made to preserve some of the more elaborate flourishes of the bank’s idea of good taste, and there are some distinctly New York style decorative features in the foyer. More to the point, the building’s foundation stone and its frame, appropriately made of carved stone rather than the less expensive brick, has been preserved and is now installed above the reception desk as a very welcome piece of the building’s material heritage. The exterior, now sporting a leaded dormer roof, still retains the essence of its stern and uncompromising military purpose, but its survival first as a bank and then as a major component of a university campus is a testimony to its durability.
It is impossible to do justice to Chantal’s talk, which was stuffed full of information. Chantal does these talks quite frequently, and I do recommend that you keep an eye open for her next ones, because she provides a vivid insight into a world that is not normally associated with Chester, and which was clearly a very important part of the city’s social and economic profile from the 1930s onwards. More than any other talk that I have attended since moving to the area, this is the one that surprised me most, and left me with a new set of insights into Chester’s less publicized wartime and post-war history. Splendid.
Many thanks to professional visual effects and 3-D graphics modeller and independent researcher Julian Baum for a really fascinating presentation about new research into the River Dee.
One of Julian Baum’s beautiful reconstructions of Deva and its outer buildings in the mid 3rd Century, based on data from archaeological excavations, showing the Roman town in the context of the river and the widening estuary beyond.
The talk focused on how the Dee’s formation, archaeology and several historic maps have raised a number of questions about the Roman river. Julian made it very clear that the presentation would consist of a number of hypothetical scenarios based on observable features, none of which can yet be fully supported by the available data. He and his fellow investigators Rod Hobbs and Peter France have been compiling their data for the last six years, and have produced a 17,000 word paper that has been sent out to experts on Roman stonework and hydraulic engineering for consideration. As they continue to assemble responses to their proposals, the team are also looking for opportunities to work with other specialists to extract more data from the field. So, accepting that these ideas need more data to test the hypotheses presented today, what are the questions being asked?
The presentation followed the formation of a new research group, which met in June for the first time and included specialists in a number of relevant fields. A great many questions were asked at that meeting, but the two overarching research questions are as follows:
1) What do we know about the geology and geomorphology of the Dee valley in the Chester area? Although multiple glaciations impacted the underlying geology of Britain, it was the impact of the last glaciation that is of most interest for the second question.
2) What do we know about Chester and the nearby archaeology, from the prehistoric to early Medieval periods, with particular focus, initially, on the Roman period?
Julian Baum’s presentation then went on to introduce the geology and glacial history of the Dee valley before going on to describe three key archaeological questions.
The Chester weir
First, how old is Chester’s remarkable weir? Traditionally it has been dated to the Norman period when the notorious Hugh d’Avranches, better known as Hugh Lupus, began to introduce substantial architectural and civil engineering works to develop a strong economic, religious and social foundation for Chester. There can be no doubt that Hugh Lupus undertook works on the weir. What is less certain is if he was the first to establish a weir here. The proposal by Julian Baum, Rod Hobbs and Peter France, just an intriguing theory at this stage, is that the weir may have been a Roman innovation, mirroring hydraulic works elsewhere in the empire, required to raise the level of the river upstream to enable the vast barges carrying essential building materials from Holt. The initial round of research described in the presentation has produced considerable quantities of data about the river bed, about post-glacial sea levels and tidal information, as well as looking at all the available archaeological data published to date. Divers have been consulted and the river boat captains have provided invaluable information about their own experiences with the river depth today, as well as seasonal variations in the navigability of the river. As the presentation emphasized, much more research is required to test this proposal. An academic paper has been written by the three researchers and is currently being circulated amongst specialist in the field, who have all expressed an interest in assessing the hypothesis.
The Braun map of 1571
The second question concerns two 16th century maps of the Roodee that show that the north western edge was an almost straight line. How can this straight line be explained? Building on earlier archaeological discoveries the same researchers propose that this edge may have marked the position of a very long Roman timber jetty. The line of wall usually identified as the old Roman quay near the modern HQ building at the east of the Roodee has been widely discredited, so the question of where the Roman quay was located remains open. This proposal makes a great deal of sense, but it too needs testing, and Julian Baum proposed a number of ways in which this could be done using specialist equipment and taking advantage of the upcoming building works at the Roodee. An interesting corollary to the proposal is that if there was indeed a jetty there, supported on presumably vast timbers, and of a width to enable wheeled vehicles and horses to reach ships moored up along its length, its collapse would have created a major disruption to river flow, and could have had a considerable impact on the silting of the river.
Chester amphitheatre
The third question concerns the archaeology of Chester and its environs prior to the arrival of the Romans. Iron Age remains were found during the amphitheatre excavations of the 1980s, and there are other indications that there was a healthy Iron Age presence in the area before (and when) the Romans arrived. This data needs to be collated before it can be assessed, and this is another aim of the research group.
All findings will be made available online on a dedicated website that is currently being built. The website address will be made available as soon as it is launched.
With many thanks to Julian Baum and other team members, who were present on the day, for such a fascinating presentation.
Dr Peter Carrington, an experienced archaeologist specializing in Roman history, author of the English Heritage book Chester, and editor of the Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society always heads a guided walk as part of the city’s two annual festivals. This year he introduced a large group of us to what remains of Roman Deva. We had all received an introductory handout beforehand by email, which as well as outlining the history of the city, included maps and images of aspects of Roman Chester that could only be represented visually. We met up at the canal bridge just outside the Northgate, so that we could look back towards the stretch of city wall that extends east, high above the bedrock channel that contains the 18th century canal.
Here, just on the other side of the bridge over the canal, a line of Roman wall is still clearly visible, originally topped by an ornamental cornice, the remains of which still survive, bizarrely incorporated into the later walls. It is thought that the wall originally stood to around 15ft (c.4.5m). It was news to me that the original defences had been turf-built, and that single layers of stone walling, leaning up against the turf wall, were subject to subsidence and patches of collapse. The inward-leaning profile of that surviving section above the canal may be explained by that process of subsidence, and this is probably responsible for much of the rebuilding necessary around the walls. We went up on to the walls and as we proceeded clockwise towards the cathedral, looking over the edge at key points along the way, some of the complexity of the original Roman design was explained.
Walks around the walls are always popular with tourists and residents alike, but sometimes it is what we can see at the base of the walls that tell us most about the Roman past. When we left the walkway along the top of the walls to examine sections of Roman wall at the foot of the later walls, in Northgate gardens and the Kaleyard and opposite the amphitheatre we learned about the difference between the massive, uncompromising blocks of Roman stonework and the later medieval and Victorian sections of much smaller, sometimes rounded stonework.
The amphitheatre itself is one of Chester’s most well-known tourist attractions but because nearly half of it remains buried under a hideously decaying eyesore of a building, part of which is Georgian and all of which has been abandoned (shocking tourists), the story is only partially told. Even so, two sets of excavations have revealed an enormous amount of details about the chronological history of the site, which was the biggest Roman amphitheatre built in Britain, with clearly visible phases of enlargement preserved in what remains today. Peter talked us through the different phases, and explained how the interior would have looked and how the timber sections of seating would have been built and arranged, painting a verbal picture of a much more elaborate building than we see today. As Peter pointed out throughout the walk, understanding the vertical past of Chester is far more challenging than getting to grips with its horizontal footprint. It is hoped that the report on the post-Roman history of the site, also of profound interest, will be published in the upcoming months.
The Roman Gardens, which connect the amphitheatre area with The Groves, represent a particularly nice way of bringing together various features of Roman Chester in one place. The signage explains how much of it relates to the original city, and explains how the hypocaust looked and worked and how the reconstructed mosaics were based on those found in excavations.
By the end of the walk the group had been given a great sense of where Deva is still to be found, and what the fragmentary remains represent. Given the importance of the town and the scale of the architecture both within and outside the walls, it is remarkable how completely Medieval and more recent Chester have eliminated Rome’s once considerable footprint.
With many thanks to Peter Carrington for a fascinating introduction to Roman Chester.
Many thanks to Pauline Clarke, the Excursions Officer of the Chester Archaeological Society, for organizing our CAS visit to the Grosvenor Museum Stores, and to Liz Montgomery of the Grosvenor Museum for taking us on a splendid guided tour. All the way round there were dozens of questions from the group, always the mark of a successful event.
It was a real eye-opener, not merely because of the box upon box of objects, but because of the amount of work that remains to be carried out. Many of the boxes represent excavations that have been published, but also those for which post-excavation funding was not available. Intriguingly, there are boxes of items from the excavations that took place when the old police headquarters was replaced with today’s HQ building, where St Mary’s Nunnery once stood.
The storage boxes are stacked on racks, with organic and metallic remains kept in airtight containers and, in one of the storage sections, whole objects and big stone-carved fragments kept on display on some of the racks. It was fun to spot some boxes from Cuppin Street, where I excavated in the 1980s with a great group under the supervision of Simon Ward. Bigger objects, particularly Roman stoneware, are kept on palettes. There is a lot of Roman and post-Roman, including Medieval material, but there is also a collection of prehistoric items from the neighbouring area as well as the Cheshire ridge.
More recent items, from the earlier 20th century, are also lying on the shelves as well as in storage boxes, including wartime and inter-war period plus more recent objects.
All the contents of the storage facility have been carefully recorded, and many of the older boxes have been replaced with more appropriate specialized storage containers. Everything is kept clean and all items are accessible. These measures make the storage collection a very useful resource for researchers, who can take the selected storage boxes to a room equipped with tables and chairs (and an efficient radiator!) to explore the contents in comfort. It looks as though there may be opportunities for volunteers to contribute to this work in the future, which will be an excellent opportunity for non-experts to help the professionals to put the storage collection to good use.
This storage facility is largely dedicated to the museum’s archaeological collection, with a smaller set of items from more recent history, and the whole lot is utterly fascinating. This is not, however, the only storage facility for the museum. The old saltworks caverns have been converted into storage for some organizations, including the museum, and valuable items like jewellery, coins and other perishable metalwork are stored in a vault elsewhere. The 1000+ paintings collected by the museum, particularly under the aegis of Peter Boughton, are also stored elsewhere. As with most other museums, both this and the other Grosvenor stores demonstrate that what the museum has on display is just a fraction of what it holds, but also demonstrates just how much activity goes on behind the scenes, as well as the extent of the museum’s many responsibilities.
The photos below are a random selection of the many, many delights that the stores have to offer. Thanks again to Liz Montgomery for an excellent guided tour, which provided real insights into the value of a storage collection to the work of this and other museums.
Experience life in Shropshire between 4500 and 2000 years ago. That’s roughly the time from 2500 BCE until the Romans invaded Britain in 43 CE.
Before the Romans came, people in Britain didn’t use writing. That means there’s a lot we don’t know about them. But they left many objects and other traces in the Shropshire landscape and by examining these closely, we can try to work out what their lives were like. Come and see how we can tell that heat was vital to them. Find out how they used fire to make beautiful and useful objects, to cook and to cremate their dead.
Explore our interactive exhibition and learn how we once celebrated the sun with huge stone circles and bright gold objects. We can’t be sure why they did some of these things. We can only guess what they thought and believed. But we do know that in lots of ways these people were like us, with bodies and senses like ours. They felt the heat of flames on their skin and the sun’s warmth on their faces. Their lives were full of sensations, sights, sounds and scents.
The new exhibition at Chester Cathedral, Trena Cox: Reflections 100, which is on until the 8th November 2024, a scarily short window of opportunity for visitors, has pulled out all the stops to create a really imaginative and absorbing examination of stained glass artist Trena Cox and an exploration of her legacy in more recent art works.
First, it was a new opportunity to learn more about an important local stained glass artist, a woman engaged in a form of art-craft that was usually the preserve of men. She is, for example, one of only two female stained glass artists represented in the cathedral, and she has nine windows, one large (the St Christopher window in the slype shown below) and eight small ones in the cloisters (four of which are shown further down).
To appeal to different preferences for experiencing exhibitions, there are downloadable audio guides, online information sources via QR codes and real-world interactive screens, as well as beautifully designed and displayed posters and original works of art employing diverse materials in multiple styles.
Detail of Emily Lawler’s “Flock of Five Geese.” The entire composition, referencing the story of St Werburgh and her miracle, is shown below.
Second, it was terrific to see how the four different parts of the exhibition explored different aspects of Trena Cox’s legacy, because this is as much about the art and ideas that Trena inspired as it is about her own work. In addition to well known artists in different types of medium, the pre-exhibition project headed out into the community to involved different groups, including school children. The sheer diversity of responses to Trena’s work is remarkable, many of them picking up not on the main themes of her work, but on the tiny details that make her work unique.
Third, it was fascinating to discover how the entire cathedral was employed in displaying the works on display, drawing visitors into different areas of the cathedral to experience new ideas in a medieval context. The abbey has small, intimate spaces as well as large lofty ones, and the trail makes good use of the architecture. By using the entire cathedral space, the art works could be separated, giving each one the opportunity to create its own impact.
The St Christopher window following restoration. Photograph by Helen Anderson (and copyright Helen Anderson)
Next, it was splendid to experience at first hand how beautifully the St Christopher window has been restored by Recclesia. I attended a Chester Archaeological Society visit, lead by Artist in Residence Aleta Doran who is also the exhibition’s curator, and although thought it was stunning then, it has since been restored and it was fabulous to see not only how it has been repaired and restored, but how new details have been revealed. This can be seen in the window itself, but is also the subject of a splendid video in the cloister that captures the work carried out.
Finally, I was with artist Helen Anderson, and we were given an informal tour of the exhibition by its curator, Artist in Residence Aleta Doran, who is always a joy for her knowledge and enthusiasm, which provided us with a terrific insight into how the entire exhibition came into being, a real learning curve into what it takes to pull together an exhibition that has so many aspects to it. A real logistical tour de force, as well as a visual treat. ===
Finding your way
The exhibition is grouped into four different sections, each exploring a different aspect of Trena’s legacy. As you enter the cloisters from the reception area (free of charge at this time of year), there is an information board that points you to the left, but pause to investigate as it also has QR codes, one of which is a map of the route that you can download to your phone, another an audio guide that relates to the numbered posters and exhibits.
Don’t forget to pick up the booklet, the cover of which is shown at the top of the post, from the reception area. There is some very useful information about the exhibition, its contributors and its partners and sponsors, as well as QR codes to more information online.
Learning about Trena Cox
The first part of the exhibition introduces the visitor to Trena Cox (1895-1980) using, depending on whether you downloaded the audio introduction, either posters or a combination of posters and Aleta’s audio tour. The posters are beautifully designed, framed in slender black frames that emulate the leaded frames of stained glass, showing photographs of Trena Cox glass from many locations, accompanied by isolated motifs taken from her glass works. The only known photograph of her was taken when she was a young teenager and shows a direct gaze and a certain fearlessness.
Born on the Wirral, Trena Cox trained at the Laird School of Art in Birkenhead, receiving a traditional introduction to a broad range of techniques and skills before switching to stained glass. There are over 150 stained glass pieces known, but others may remain to be found. Working mainly in the Cheshire and northeast Wales areas, her works are, however, in other areas, and most of them are in churches. Trena’s story, which has sometimes been a challenge for Aleta to discover, emerges from both the posters and the audio track and demonstrates not only Trena’s talent but her willingness to modify her style to suit the times.
Trena Cox windows showing King Henry II on the right looking somewhat balefully toward Thomas Becket on the left
Trena Cox’s cathedral windows are an important part of the the exhibition and the route takes you first to those in the cloister (the walkway around the garden). The cloister was windowless until the arrival at the cathedral of Dean Frank Bennett, whose energy and enthusiasm created the stained glass sensation that we see today. Eight of Trena’s windows are small lights each side of a corner, in each case two above and two below. My favourites are the paired Henry II and Thomas Becket of Canterbury. There are other connections to St Thomas Becket within the cathedral, but what I particularly like about these two windows is the way that Henry looks out of his window towards Becket in his window, recreating something of the narrative of this impossibly difficult relationship, which resulted in the martyrdom of Becket, and a period of political difficulty for Henry II. You can almost hear Henry thinking “Will no-one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” (almost certainly apocryphal). There is a QR code on one of the information boards for finding out more about all of the cloister windows on the Chester Cathedral website.
Detail of the St Christopher window shown at the end of the post, with Trena Cox’s signature and the bee surrounded by a pattern made of her fingerprints.
The recent restoration and professional cleaning of the main Trena Cox window in the cathedral, the St Christopher window in the slype, has returned from Recclesia with a glowing, incandescent and luminescent quality that is quite extraordinary. Whether or not this is your sort of aesthetic, this is an extraordinary piece with charming details full of symbolism. Minutiae that were not previously visible are now bright and sharp, and the richness of the entire composition can now be appreciated as Trena Cox first designed it. I particularly melted at how Trena’s fingerprints were incorporated into a pattern around the bee in the window. It was also revealed that the lead was used to create texture and relief at certain points, with St Christopher’s remarkable hair not merely painted on, but highlighted with sections of lead. There is an interactive display in the slype (corridor) next to the window which allows you to explore the imagery and symbolism of the window, which are extensive, and this really helps to open up the secondary stories.
Video showing the skilled work carried out on the St Christopher window by Recclesia Stained Glass
A video in the cloisters describes how the restoration work was carried out. It shows footage of the team at work, including the absolutely nail-biting process of putting the window back into its arches after restoration. Aleta says that it was just as bad watching it being taken out, but somehow the sense of being at the finishing line after all that hard work was horribly tense even on a video! But of course these people are experts and everything was fine. Microscope analysis of the stained glass shows how in one section of the glass, which had become damaged simply due to its age, the edges of some of the painted text had begun to deteriorate, so the restoration work was incredibly timely.
Trena Cox in today’s Community
One of the really creative parts of the exhibition, and an admirable requirement for a part of the funding for the exhibition, was that the local community should be given the opportunity to respond to Trena Cox’s stained glass art with art works of its own. I knew about this when I visited the Trena Cox windows with the Chester Archaeological Society, lead by Aleta, but was not at all clear about how this part of the project would manifest itself. What a super surprise to see the inventiveness and imagination produced by local community groups and schools! Here are some examples:
St Werburgh’s and St Columba’s Primary School
Heritage Engagement Window. During the 2024 Chester Heritage Festival in June, children as young as two years old painted panels that were incorporated into this splendid leaded panel, all based on the St Christopher window
Detail of the above Heritage Engagement Window.
Jigsaw, a community artwork based on a Trena Cox window in St Werburgh’s Church, by 15 women of Chester
The Story of Stained Glass
The creation of stained glass is probably one of the most poorly understood areas of art, craft and design. Although it is widespread, and not only in religious buildings, its history and the processes of manufacture and repair are something of a mystery for most of us. The process of demystification has been very much assisted by an enormous but easily digested set of information boards that lead down one part of the cloister, charting the chronological history of the artistic and technical advances in stained glass development. It’s a real revelation and is beautifully written and designed.
Artistic responses to Trena Cox
In Our Hands by April Pebble Owens.
How current artists have responded to Trena Cox is one of the innovative aspects of the exhibition, not only helping to highlight some of the unique features of the original stained glass creations, but also inspiring and forging new creations. These new works of art, some in glass, others in paint and fabric, others engraved, some in mosaic, some in print, certainly demonstrate a wide range of skills but more importantly showcase the diversity of creative and empathetic responses to Trena Cox’s enormous catalogue of artistic expression. I have copied a few of these below, chosen simply to show some of the range of different ideas and interpretations that emerged. In the exhibition accompanying labels explain some of the ideas behind these works, one of which is shown below.
Tamsin Abbot. The Wolf Shall Dwell with the Lamb
Label explaining ideas behind the above panel by Tamsin Abbott. Each of the pieces on display in the exhibition is accompanied by a similar piece of explanatory text
By the River of Swirling Eddies by Linda Edwards, reminiscent of medieval bestiaries
Flock of Five Geese, by Emily Lawlor
Apertures, by Lindsey Kennedy
Birds Without Borders by Gillian Curry
Final Thoughts
Detail of the St Christopher window
The idea for the exhibition was born around four years ago. Work has been concentrated in the last two years. There are so many different aspects to it that there it is difficult to do justice to it, but as a celebration of Trena Cox, of stained glass, and of how communities as well as individual artists can respond to an artist’s output, this was a revelation. Even more than the work of Trena Cox herself, I found the whole conceptualization of the exhibition with its multiple strands of knowledge transfer, and its outreach to the local community and other artists, truly engaging.
The exhibition works, and it works brilliantly. This was demonstrated perhaps more than anything else by the two elderly ladies who walked around it, arm in arm, discussing in depth all the modern responses to Trena Cox’s work. Neither knew much about art, but both were fully absorbed with the narrative of the exhibition, from Trena Cox herself to the evidence of her legacy. Splendid.
Detail of the newly restored St Christopher Window
Find out more
Detail of the Heritage Engagement Window
There is a “Trena Cox:Reflections 100” symposium, which has been arranged to coincide with the exhibition, on 25th October 2024:
“Using the life and legacy of Trena Cox as the focal point, attendees will hear from a variety of respected speakers from across the stained glass, heritage conservation, and art sectors. This evening keynote will conclude the day, looking at the past and future of women in stained glass.”
For those wishing to investigate further afield, Green Badge Guide Katie Crowther is leading a “Trena Cox:Reflections 100” walking tour of Chester on 3rd November to complement the exhibition:
Based in Churton 
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