This post looks at the walk around the hillfort and its ramparts, with its section of Wat’s Dyke at its foot, and lovely views across the landscape. Parking details are at the end.
Old Oswestry from the southwest, via the footpath across the field from Gatacre car park
This makes a great day trip with a visit to the Whittington Castle (see Wikipedia), only 2.5km away to the east, or the market town of Oswestry just to the south (see the official Visit Oswestry site here). It is free of charge to visit at any time, with one main parking area and a small lay-by. See Visiting details at the end.
Signage from Old Oswestry. Click to expand.
Old Oswestry hillfort is a magnificent archaeological site and local landmark dating to the 4th to 7th centuries BC during the Iron Age with terrific views over the surrounding lowland landscape. Seen from above the pentagonal shape is particularly distinctive, and you notice this whilst walking, as it is one of the few hillforts at which you reach corners. It is also undulating – as you walk around the top you will notice that they path goes up and down, never at all steeply but just enough to draw attention to the varying levels. If you keep looking across the plateau you will see that this too is undulating; sometimes you can see across it but at other times you can’t. It is one of the most impressive and least-understood hillforts in the country, excavated only twice with sample trenches, with much more knowledge remaining to be discovered.
In April there are bluebells, celandines and wood anemones, and to keep the scrub down there are small herds of black sheep (Soay and Hebridean crosses) roaming the banks and ditches. On my visit this August, just a few days ago, the long-term drought had left everything incredibly parched, and the plateau grass had died off. Some of the young trees and shrubs were in fruit with red hawthorn berries, blackberries and dark purple alder berries. There had obviously been rosebay willowherb recently in flower, with its fluffy seeds catching the sun, and some gigantic thistles had recently gone over. Otherwise, it was the bracken that was winning the fight against the drought, in spite of a fine herd of attractive black sheep.
Banks and ditches at the western entrance looking north
The site of Old Oswestry is built on a hill of clay, sands, gravels and mixed boulders left behind after the retreat of the last glacier, the whole thing lying on a bed of glacial clay. You can see boulders underfoot as you walk around the perimeter of the plateau. Old Oswestry is the largest of three similar hillocks, one of which is immediately visible to the south. The hillfort was excavated in 1939 and 1940 with seven trenches cut mainly across the ramparts, followed 80 years by a small excavation of three trenches in 2021 and 2022, again across the ramparts. The interior has never been subject to excavation.
Hillfort phases. Source: English Heritage
The earliest known occupants used the hillfort during the Neolithic, and left behind two polished stone axes and a set of worked stone tools. The story of the archaeology of the Iron Age hillfort is complicated, but in essence it began with two banks that supported ramparts (defences built of stone), separated from each other by a ditch. The first pair of banks and ditches followed the natural line of the hill, only interrupted by two entrances, on the east and west sides. Over the 300 years that the hillfort remained in use, additional banks and ditches were added, in a less straight forward arrangement, causing the entrances to become corridors with banks along their sides. In total, there are two banks on the eastern side, five on the southern side, four on the south and seven on the west where a complex of hollowed out depressions were added either side of the western entrance. To date it is not known what the hollows were used for and they remain unique in Britain. There are photos of them below.
The hillfort was incorporated by Wat’s Dyke, which arrives at the hillfort’s southern corner, and departs at its northern end, using the hillfort’s presence as a component of the linear boundary that extends over a 60 km (37 mile) stretch of the Welsh border built in the 8th or 9th century AD. It begins in Maesbury, just south of Oswestry and extends all the way to Basingwerk, near Holywell, on the north Wales coast, roughly parallel to Offa’s Dyke, but much shorter. Although its purpose is currently a matter of speculation, it is thought to mark the border of Mercia in the west, and to be both a defensive and a symbolic structure, marking differences is political allegiance and administrative systems. There is only one small part of it visible at Old Oswestry, at the southwest corner, but the line of the Dyke is marked by a line of hedgerow and trees that heads north from the hillfort.
LiDAR view of Old Oswestry, with Wat’s Dyke (red arrows) and the craters and trenches (pink arrows) clearly visible. Click to enlarge. Source: Lock, Gary and Ralston, Ian. 2024. Atlas of Hillforts of Britain and Ireland: https://tinyurl.com/mputmk3d
In the LiDAR image of Old Oswestry to the right, Wat’s Dyke can be seen at the bottom left, where it meets the corner on a perpendicular on the southern side and extends from northeast corner of the hillfort, both visible as a shaded bank leading into and out of the hillfort. The builders were obviously great pragmatists, making good use of a natural barrier in the landscape!
During the First World War, the interior of the hillfort enclosure was used for military training purposes, including the digging of practice trenches and setting off mortars and other explosive devices that left small craters in the top. Marks of both the trenches and the craters are visible in some aerial photographs, and are visible in the LiDAR image right (click to expand).
The photographs are a mixture from April 2025 and August 2026, showing the difference between the well-watered spring and the long-term drought of 2026.
View from the foot of the west entrance to the west
View across the fields at the entrance to the hillfort
The west entrance towards the plateau
From the bottom of the west entrance there is a shallow slope, with wide wood-framed stone steps to avoid mud slippage, leading up to the plateau. Here, there is a walk that follows the circumference of the hillfort.
East side of the top of the hillfort. Note that this photograph was taken in April 2025; in August 2026 the plateau was completely parched, and a light yellow colour as in some of the photographs below.
The middle of the interior is fenced off for pasture most of the way round, although you can enter it at the eastern entrance, where you also get a good sense of how undulating the plateau actually is, even though it looks completely flat in aerial photographs. At this point, as with many others, you cannot see from one side of the enclosed space to the other. Walking to the highest point of the plateau from the eastern entrance, up a slight slope, gives you panoramic views.
View across the eastern entrance towards the north in August 2026
The ramparts and ditches can all be explored freely, and these give an excellent idea, even after centuries of erosion, of the scale of the construction work that made up the site. All of the rampart banks are so magnificently high that if you stand in the ditches, all you can see is the walls of the banks either side of you. It is in the ditches and on the side of banks, rather than along the plateau itself, that most of the wild flowers are to be found.
Across the top two banks and ditches to the view beyond
Optional stairways that lead across the banks and ditches from the circumference walk, showing the surviving depth of one of the ditches
The line of Wat’s Dyke marked by the hedgerow and trees, heading north from the northern edge of the hillfort
April 2025
April 2025
Rosebay willowherb, August 2026
View east from the plateau
Perimeter walk around the plateau
Upper and second ramparts looking west
Walking along the top of the second rampart to the east
Walking to the west along the third rampart
The hollows at the west end are reached most easily from a black metal kissing gate on the north side (left, going up) on the slope from the western entrance. This lets onto a single track footpath that passes at the bottom of the hollows and lets you get a sense of the scale of them, which is impressive. The hollows on the other side of the footpath can also been seen, but are much smaller. A footpath actually goes across the middle of them, but they are best seen from the second (looking down) or third ramparts (looking back).
One of the ponds or cells that you can see in the illustration at the top of the page, to the left of the west entrance as you go uphill, in April 2025. This was dry in the drought conditions of August 2026, but some of the hollows still had marsh plants at their edges.
Soft-stem bulrush growing around the base of the hollows even after a drought
Returning to the car via the west entrance
The great bank at the base of the hillfort and the lesser bank below it
The hillfort itself is dramatic and breathtaking, but the surrounding landscape also bears unmistakeable signs of Oswestry’s heritage, whilst beneath the fields there may well be more of the area’s prehistory to uncover. The hillfort used to part of the Park Hall estate, which once had one of England’s most impressive Tudor houses at its core before it tragically burned down in 1918. The Oldport Farm immediately below the hillfort on its southeastern side dates at least to the 17th century, and perhaps earlier, and the fields retain the imprint of much earlier agricultural heritage. During the First World War both the centre of the hillfort and other places in the vicinity, was used for digging practice trenches, both a chilling and touching reminder of the realities of the war. A Prisoner of War Camp and cemetery were both established nearby. There are even glimpses of the impact of the Industrial Revolution from the top of the hillfort, with the 19th century railway and Thomas Telford’s A5.
If you are looking for a great place for a short walk that focuses on a splendidly impressive and nationally important site, this should not be missed. The walk can be extended via other footpaths, or can be combined with a visit to Oswestry itself, which is a very attractive market town. You can download the Visit Oswestry’s Heritage Trail here.
The site was owned by Lord Harlech until 1946 when he handed it over to the state, and it is now the responsibility of English Heritage.
The route to Old Oswestry Hillfort, showing the main parking area at Gatacre car park, as well as the lay-by at the foot of the west entrance. Source: Old Oswestry Hillfort website – visiting page
The site is managed by English Heritage and it is free of charge to visit at any time, with one main parking area a five minute walk away from the hillfort, and a small lay-by. There is brown heritage signage from the A5, which takes you through a residential area to the Gatacre Playing Field car park where there is plenty of parking (What3Words ///spray.funky.tasters). There is also a layby with room for four or five cars. Both parking areas are shown on the map produced by the Old Oswestry Hillfort website.
From Gatacre Playing Field car park showing the field route and the lane route to the western entrance to the hillfort. Source: What3Words
I always park at the Gatacre car park because there is always plenty of room and it is only a five minute walk from the hillfort’s west entrance (the main access route to the hillfort). The route to the hillfort is all on the flat, along a metalled path and a small, very quiet lane.
If it hasn’t been raining, there is an even shorter route if you use the footpath (Oswald’s Way) from just beyond the car park to cut across the field – this was a gorgeous vista of sunflowers in August 2026, and would probably be even more sunflower-intensive in years that have had a bit of rainfall.
There are no facilities at the hillfort of any description, but there are plenty within Oswestry itself, only a short drive (less than two miles / 3.5km) from the site, or at Whittington Castle to the east.
The west entrance is a long, shallow slope now provided with long wood-framed steps lined with stone to protect visitors from muddy conditions, that leads up to the top. At the top, there is a footpath all around the plateau. The western and eastern entrances also offer access via gates and footpaths to the lower banks and ditches as well as the puzzling hollows that flank the west entrance. Note that sheep roam the banks and ditches, so gates must be closed and dogs must be kept on leads.
Bracken on the banks and ditches at the northwestern corner of the hillfort
Although the entire plateau walk is a nice easy stroll all the way around, well-worn by dog walkers, some of the lower ramparts are more challenging. Most of the hillfort walks along banks and ditches are very easy to access on the south and west sides, but bracken can be a perpetual problem on some of the ramparts and ditches beneath the plateau on the north and east sides of the hillfort, particularly in the summer. It seriously impedes passage, as well as potentially doing significant damage to archaeological deposits, whilst its density eliminates other species, significantly reducing biodiversity. Love it or hate it, one has to admire the tenacity of bracken under such extreme conditions. Both volunteer work and sheep are combining to reduce the impact of such invasive species, managing the site for the benefit of biodiversity, the archaeology and visitors. If you find one of the rampart or ditch walks a bit of a struggle, there are plenty of others to try.
There are plenty of well thought out information signs along the course of the west entrance as well as on the footpath around the top, providing details about the archaeology and history of the site.
The walk can be extended via other footpaths. For example the diagonal route across the field from the car park to the hillfort’s west entrance is part of Oswald’s Trail, a 12 mile / 13 km circular walk about which you can read more on the Shropshire’s Great Outdoors website. Or it can be combined with a visit to Oswestry itself, which is a very attractive market town. You can download the Visit Oswestry’s Heritage Trail here.
View from the hillfort towards Oswestry
Sunflowers on the path across the field from Gatacre Playing Fields to the western entrance of the hillfort
Artist’s reconstruction of Old Oswestry Hillfort based on the surviving earthworks and entrances and the discovery during excavations of the ephemeral remains of two roundhouses. There are no ramparts shown on top of the banks, but the illustration gives a sense of how the interior might have looked, and how the east entrance may have been configured. By Ivan Lapper. Source: English Heritage
To celebrate World Elephant Day, Chester boasts splendid elephants in Upton at the zoo, as well as a medieval wooden carving in Chester Cathedral, a bronze sculpture opposite the Northgate visitor centre, and fluffy, cuddly elephant toys in the Northgate market hall.
The earliest and most venerable of our pachyderm residents is the 14th century elephant in the Chester Cathedral choir (or quire), incorporated into a bench-end in the choir. It was part of the development in around 1380 of a new choir for St Werburgh’s Abbey, when it was still a Benedictine monastery. Many of Chester Cathedral’s misericords (carved hinged choir perches) were based on those at Lincoln Cathedral, but whatever the Lincoln carvers brought with the my way of the weird and the wonderful (and there is plenty of both in the Chester and Lincoln misericords), elephants were not among the imported designs, as there are no elephants in Lincoln’s choir. Several of the bench-ends are Victorian, but this is original. The choir is generally open to the public to visit, unless it is use for a musical event, and all of the carvings are magnificent. Even the Victorian replacements are very well done.
Elephant and wyvern. early 13th century, nature and myth entangles. Royal MS12 C XIX. Source: Wikipedia
The St Werburgh’s elephant is a magnificent, if slightly peculiar creature with delicate hooves, a strangely shaped head, ears that resemble curtains and enormous eyes that give it a rather surprised expression , as though it wonders what on earth it is doing in a medieval abbey. The answer to that hypothetical question lies in the zoological and mythological company in which the elephant finds itself. The monks clearly had a good eye for the unusual, as a quick inspection of the misericords will demonstrate. The carver may have seen a picture of an elephant in a bestiary, a book of real and mythical animals that could be used as a source material for subjects like these. It is probable that there was no clear dividing line between the imaginary creatures like wyverns, unicorns and dragons, and the more exotic animals that only a handful of people in the west had seen, like our elephant. There’s an excellent description from a bestiary manuscript Brit. Lib. Harley MS. 3244, fol.39), a short excerpt from which is as follows:
British Library Harley MS 2344, fol.39. Source: Picryl
They travel in herds, fear the mouse . . . they are pregnant for two years, neither do they reproduce more than once nor have several offspring but only one. They live, however, three hundred years. Moreover, if they want to produce young they go to the eat, near Paradise, and a tree there that is called the mandrake, and the elephant goes there with his wife, who first takes from the tree and gives some to her husband. And when he eats she seduces him and at once she conceives . . . Now the elephant is terrifying to bulls, yet it fears the mouse. This is its nature, that if it should fall, it cannot rise. Moreover, it falls when it leans against a tree in order to sleep, for it has no knee joints.
Carrying a howdah on its back, the Cathedral elephant is a great favourite with visitors.
In 1898 the Barnum and Bailey Circus organized a vast parade through the town, and this too featured elephants, as well as other circus animals and performers. Chester was one of the stops for the Circus’s European tour of 1898-1902. These are the “herd elephants” but apparently they were preceded by elephants carrying howdahs.
The 1898 Barnum and Baileys circus parade through the streets of Chester. Source: Chester History Hub at the Grosvenor Museum, via a post on their X.com account
Just outside the cathedral and opposite the Visitor Centre is Janya, a small bronze elephant, just the right size for engaging eye-to-eye with a child or being patted by the many adults who do so. Northgate is a particularly eclectic part of the city, both in terms of its architecture and its various retail and leisure offerings. The original market square in front of the cathedral was home to the medieval market and the once housed the lovely 18th century Exchange building, which burned down in 1862. The addition of Janya to the edge of this space gave it a welcome lift, particularly as she was designed to be stroked and enjoyed (but not climbed). The plaque set into the pavement in front of the elephant explains that Janya means “life” in Hindi, and that “it symbolises the Zoo’s global role in wildlife conservation.” She was made in 2010 by Annette Yarrow, a gift from Chester Zoo to the city to celebrate the the “strong friendship between the Zoo and the city.” A reference is made to the Cathedral elephant, both in the text and in the small arrow pointing in the direction of the cathedral’s visitor entrance, implying an affinity between the zoo and the city’s older heritage. By showing a year-old elephant, it references the several success stories for the Zoo’s elephant conservation programme, described on the Chester Zoo website as follows:
Pioneering new practices to further improve the welfare for elephants in zoos, sanctuaries and in the wild. This includes becoming the first UK zoo to have a multi-generational family herd, successfully utilising protective contact between elephants and keepers, and spearheading vital new research on behalf of the global conservation community to find a viable vaccine for a deadly virus that affects elephants in zoos and the wild, known as EEHV.
It’s a neat way of linking the city with the zoo, reminding visitors and residents alike that the zoo is not merely a tourist attraction but a centre of conservation excellence and a terrific local resource.
The Chester Zoo’s first two elephants arrived in 1941. Chester Zoo was established in 1931 when George Mottershead bought the house (Grade 2 listed and sympathetically converted to a pub in 2018) and seven acres of land. His aim was to build the first zoo without bars. According to the Chester Zoo website, it was a family run-enterprise, and very slow to take off, but eventually became a Chester fixture and great tourist attraction. In 1934 it became a charity, shifting its emphasis from the display of animals to wildlife conservation.
Molly and Manniken with handler Khanadas. Although this page has now been taken off the Chester Zoo website, or moved to somewhere where I cannot find it, the original source of this photograph was Chester Zoo
The elephants were Manniken and Molly. They were given a home when their owner, the proprietor of Doorley’s Tropical Revue, a travelling menagerie, was called up by the RAF for the war. Without anyone to care for them, their situation looked dire as without anyone to take them they would have had to be put down. The story came to the attention of zoo owner George Mottershead, and the pair arrived on 28 August 1941 with their young handler Khanadas, who had cared for them and remained with them at Chester Zoo. Very sadly, although they settled in well, Manniken suddenly died in November of the same year, but Molly lived on until 1955, a zoo favourite, providing rides for children. After the war, a new elephant house was built, made entirely of recycled materials from the surrounding area, including anti-tank blocks, pill-boxes and concrete slabs. A children’s radio presenter came along to open the new house, riding in on Molly, attracting 4000 visitors.
Chester Zoo elephants
xxx
Fluffy toys (including elephants) in the Chester Zoo Shop in Northgate market
Much to my amusement, having just taken photographs of Janya before heading into the market to buy some seafood, I found myself looking at a shelf of fluffy little grey elephants. Chester Zoo has a shop in the new market.
If you have ever wondered when the first elephant arrived in Britain, there’s a nice piece by David Meadows on the Rogue Classicism blog about the purported first elephant to arrive in England, with Claudius in AD43: “First Elephant in Britain?”
Atlas Obscura Why Did Medieval Artists Give Elephants Trunks That Look Like Trumpets? Maybe not just because they didn’t know what elephants looked like. By Sarah Laskow February 10, 2017 https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/medieval-art-elephants
The Chapel of St Nicholas on the Cholmondeley Castle estate
If you visit Cholmondeley Castle Gardens be sure not to miss the chapel dedicated to St Nicholas. I was at the Castle Gardens with a friend for the Summer Plant Fair during the week, and we took in the lovely gardens and the chapel at the same time. I have posted about the gardens, with a map, on a previous post here, but at that time I was unaware of the chapel, so it was lovely to see the signs pointing visitors towards it, and to stroll along the lane for a visit.
Cholmondeley Castle, built 1801-c.1830, replacing the 1571 half-timbered Tudor building
Following the signs you will pass through the former gatehouse, and over a delicious little stone bridge before you eventually reach the chapel, around 15 minutes from the main gardens along a traffic-free lane.
The gatehouse
Looking back at the elegant bridge towards the Lodge
One of the views from the bridge
Looking across the sun-parched Capability Brown style estate on the way to the chapel, actually executed by one of the famous park designer’s followers, William Emes, who was successful in his own right
One of the ornamental gates into the chapel precinct, and the equally ornate banisters of the chapel, gently echoing the elaborate front gates leading into the castle.
The red-brick chapel with its slate roof looks typically Georgian, but according to Historic England it was originally late 15th century, was altered internally in 1655 and the exterior was rebuilt in brick in 1717. The transepts were added in 1829. Pevsner and Hubbard say that the 17th century furnishings are “the most complete of their date in Cheshire,” with the chancel screen dating to 1655, and elaborate Elizabethan-Jacobean style of wood panelling in the chancel with plenty of ornamental strapwork. The small stained glass roundels in the windows are from the Netherlands, again probably dating to the 17th century. The Cholmondeley family pew, a remarkable feature with a staircase leading up to it and surrounded on three sides by highly coloured hatchments, is at the west end of the chapel, facing to the chancel in the east, looking down over both congregation and high altar. Humility was obviously not perceived as a fundamental requirement. Box pews and ordinary pews sit mainly at floor level, with one paired set of box pews being a little above the rest but far below the level of the Cholmondeley family pew in front of which it sits. The whole thing is truly extraordinary. xxx
Chapel interior showing the raised family pew
Chancel roof
Chancel
Box pews
If you want to know more about the history of the house, the chapel and the family there are interpretation boards hanging on the wall to one side of the door. A shame that it hasn’t been turned into a leaflet, because a lot of people wanted to see them and it was impossible to fit everyone in behind the pews where they are hanging on hinges on the wall.
Dovecote spotted on the way back to the gardens from the chapel
The parkland was looking very dry, but although a few of the plants in the gardens were suffering from the drought, overall the garden team have done a marvellous job of maintaining the flowering borders, the rock garden and the rose gardens. The levels of water in the ornamental ponds were surprisingly high, and the water lilies and surrounding water-loving species were very fine and lush.
I was amazed that neither of us came away with any of the tempting and very reasonably priced plants for sale in the Plant Fair area along the long edge of the field acting as a car park, with a great selection including some very unusual specimens, many of which would have been very suitable for the drought conditions currently being experienced. Most visitors there were draped in every possible type of foliage, which they were taking back to their cars before visiting the gardens. It reminded me of the witches’ prophecy that “Macbeth shall never vanquished be until Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill shall come against him.” There was also a small selection of decorative garden features for sale, and of course there were several food, drink and ice cream outlets. Keep an eye out next year if you missed it this year.
Sources:
Pevsner, Nikolaus and Edward Hubbard 1971. The Buildings of Cheshire. Penguin.
One of the most mellow, blue-skied and sunny afternoons that I have enjoyed in a long time was a sublimely relaxed and chatty visit to The Harp Inn on the Dee estuary, just outside Little Neston. It is a super little pub dating to the 1700s with lovely views over the marshes towards the impressively long line of the Welsh foothills. The pub’s official opening time is 12 noon, but we arrived to find it open at 1145 because due to queues outside their doors at 12 they are currently opening at 11. Very gratifying! The beers and ciders change from time to time (just check their website), there are plenty of soft drinks on offer and the lunches that were being paraded past us as the afternoon advanced looked gorgeous. The staff are lovely, and the atmosphere is great. There are lots of tables perched on the grassland at the edge of the lush green estuary, and on a stiflingly hot day, a wonderfully warm but cooling breeze came off the Dee to make the peaceful, endless vistas a delectable place to linger, interrupted only by birdsong. The breeze was so perfect. I do love the heat, but it is lovely to be able to sit in the sunshine without dripping like a tap. Update: We went back the following week to have lunch after a visit to the Williamson Art Gallery and Museum in Birkenhead, and the food (haddock, chunky chips, tartare sauce and garden peas for one of us and an enormous ham and cheese ploughman’s with all the trimmings and more for the other) was just as good as it had looked as it was passing us on trays the previous week.
Most of the photos taken on my aged iPhone. Enlarge at your own risk!
View from The Harp
Denhall Quay
According to the pub’s website, the building has stood there since the 1750s, when it was originally built as three coal-miners’ cottages, before being converted to an inn in 1780 to serve the expanding coal-mining community at Ness. This segues nicely into the second major benefit of the pub, which is its location a stone’s throw from Denhall Quay, an intriguing and picturesque line of wall, made of massive red sandstone blocks, that stretches out into the marshland, and is clearly the remaining echo of a substantial structure. In fact, the wall is what remains of a long pier that served the Ness Colliery, built in 1839 to replace an earlier quay in the same location. The wall was much deeper than it is now, its lower tiers lying beneath 200 years of silt accumulation, but it it sufficient to give an idea of how impressive the structure originally was.
This was not the most obvious location for a quay because the river did not run past the colliery, veering towards Wales just before Little Neston, meaning that a channel had to be created to link the quay to the main river, which became known as the Colliery Gutter. It was not ideal, as vessels often had to wait for two tides to turn before being able to navigate all the way to the quay, forcing colliers to beach on the muds in the interval between tides.
Denhall Quay c.1839 showing the quay, with its distinctive shape, surrounded by subterranean tunnels. Source: Annakin-Smith “The Neston Collieries, 1759-1855” 2019, p.170, fig.10.6
There were two collieries at Ness: Ness Colliery, which opened in 1759, and Little Neston Colliery immediately to the north, which opened in 1820. Most people, myself included, would not automatically associate coal mining with the Wirral, although it is a very familiar industry from North Wales. Fortunately, Anthony Annakin-Smith wrote an excellent book on the subject in 2019, which I read shortly after its publication, and he gave a really enjoyable lecture about the collieries at the Festival of Ideas this year (July 2026). The Wirral coal seams are an extension of the Welsh ones, but although a slither of the seams can be found on the Wirral landmass itself, most of them lie under the estuary, and it was here that most of the mining took place. A whole network of tunnels was built below the estuary, and subterranean canals were added to help remove the coal in long narrow vessels called “starvationers.” Both the tunnels and the canals lead back to shafts where the coal was hoisted to the surface. It was a dangerous and sometimes tragic business. Once extracted and processed the coal was transported to ports in Britain, Ireland, France, Spain and as far away as America and even Barbados.
A “starvationer” of the sort used in the canals beneath the Dee estuary, now in the National Waterways Museum at Ellesmere Port (my photo)
The two collieries were located either side of a border dividing land between two different family interests. The original colliery, Ness, owned by the Stanley family, handled the arrival of the new colliery very badly, and its owner, Sir Thomas Stanley, who sounds like an absolute monster of a man, pursued a course of aggression that eventually, on several occasions, erupted into blatant sabotage, including destruction of machinery, flooding of their rival’s tunnels and, on one particularly violent occasion, an attempt to use explosives to completely obliterate the opposition. The collieries were both closed between 1845 and 1855 due to silting of the estuary, but they were revived in 1875, and the last coal was worked in 1927.
It is difficult to assess just how the collieries initially impacted local people, because most of the coal miners were brought in from North Wales and Lancashire, with Wirral residents only working in minor and administrative roles. But both the collieries and the miners became part of the community, and Denhall Quay is an important reminder of the unexpected industrial and social heritage of this small corner of the Wirral.
The Harp Inn, on Quayside in Little Neston, is at the end of a residential lane, Marshlands Road, turning left along the Quayside, before it eventually becomes a track and then a footpath. There are three main parking areas, first just as you round the bend to turn left from Marshlands Road onto Quayside (What3Words ///regarding.solving.mirroring, about a two minute walk, heading in the same direction), then at the pub itself where there is parking for about 10 cars (What3Words ///when.grumbling.kicks), and finally at Denhall Quay (///bike.outcasts.tarred, about a two minute walk back to the pub).
If you are interested in finding out more about the Wirral collieries I sincerely recommend Anthony Annakin-Smith’s The Neston Collieries, 1759–1855: An Industrial Revolution in Rural Cheshire published by the University of Chester Press (a second edition was released in 2023), and also check out his website at https://www.nestoncollieries.org.
At the entrance to Denhall Quay there are two helpful information boards that are faded but still just about legible, covering the earlier and later colliery phases, and you can walk out into the marshland along well-worn paths (dry in a hot summer, but probably not as foot-friendly in the autumn and winter).
I must have driven past Hampston’s Well several times without noticing it, although when I mentioned an earlier visit to the RSPB Burton Mere, a friend mentioned that there was a well somewhere in the Burton village area. I was not quite sure what to expect when I remembered it on the way to Ness Gardens, and tapped it into the SatNav. On a sunny day, the light filtered through the dense woodland leaves, creating an enchanting dappled effect.
The well is a natural spring now in a stone container with a wooden lid that is easily removed. From here it trickles elegantly down a channel into a big pool, surrounded by radiating lines of block paving. The well has been restored by the Friends of Hampston’s Well, who also maintain it. It is on the south side of Station Road, where there is parking for around two to three cars. The What3Words location is: ///professes.outsmart.deflate.
A flight of steps leads down from the road level, at the top of which there is a bench, some very faded information posters in a noticeboard display, and two prone sandstone columns with plaques containing information about the well.
According to an entry on Facebook (but otherwise unverified) a dedication document for the well in 1975 stated that the sandstone columns are cores from the sinking of another well nearby. Here are the plaques:
There is some more information on the OldWirral.net website, with some photos of how it looked before restoration.
On 17th June 1860 the fabulous S.S Great Eastern left Liverpool and set sail on her maiden voyage for New York. She arrived there this day, 28th June. Her designer and architect was Isambard Kingdom Brunel whose pet name for the ship during construction was “Great Babe.”
There is a nice nod to Great Eastern on the Chester City Walls, where the length of the ship (692ft) was carved quite deeply into one of the coping stones at Kaleyard, near the pigeon coop, preceded by an engraved anchor. It is also the measurement between that point and the King Charles Tower, also known as the Phoenix Tower. You can see a photograph of it at the end of this post.
I have written previously about the Great Eastern and her relationship with the Mersey, and above is a splendid engraving from the 21st July 1860 Supplement of the Illustrated London News showing her June arrival in New York.
Great Eastern shortly before launch in 1858 by Robert Howlett. Source: Wikimedia
With a capacity for 4000 passengers, she left Liverpool on her maiden voyage with only 35 passengers and 8 company overseers, both of which were far exceeded by a crew of 418. She was equipped to run under sail or steam, via paddles or propeller, had four decks, and could carry 15,000 tons of coal. Sadly she was never given the opportunity to meet the long-distance goals of India, China and Australia intended for her by Brunel and her builders and investors and was never competitive on the busy cross-Atlantic passenger service to which she was initially confined.
The fortunes of Brunel’s astonishing S.S. Great Eastern swung between greatness and near-disaster like an enormous, record-breaking pendulum. She was all too often something of a gigantic white elephant, but she became an invaluable resource for laying cables across the Atlantic, and was always a great public attraction.
Painting by Charles James Lewis of the Atlantic Telegraph Expedition landing of the cable in Hearts Content Cable Station in Newfoundland, Canada, on July 27 1866, which he witnessed. Source: PK Porthcurno
After a traumatic roller-coaster of a career, the enormous ship was sold to be broken up in 1889, the work to take place on the Mersey.
Great Eastern, beached in advance of being broken up on the Mersey in late 1888, Wirral side. Source: Liverpool Echo
Throughout her history, Great Eastern was the subject of curiosity and fascination, and people lined up to buy souvenir pieces of the ship before the breaking work began on 1st January 1889. The photograph above shows her beached on the Mersey, ready to be broken up, and she continued to challenge even after the breaking work began. Not only was it a very sad episode for posterity but also, as it turned out, for the ship breaker. The company directors had estimated that it would take 200 men to break up the ship in a year, but she was so well built that it took nearly two years, requiring the costs of ongoing labour and additional machinery, including much more substantial wrecking balls, to finish the job. Substantial profits had been anticipated from her scrap value, but she was broken up at a considerable loss. Brunel had built her to last.
One of Robert Howlett’s famous photographs of Brunel with Great Eastern in 1857 prior to launch. Source: Wikimedia
Brunel had died in 1859 whilst the ship was still undergoing sea trials and had suffered an engineering accident during which five stokers died, and although the consensus is that the emotional stress of the ship’s construction and the difficulties of her launch undoubtedly contributed to his death, he was already suffering from a debilitating kidney disease.
It is perhaps thankful that he did not live to witness this drawn-out demise of his grandly imagined, fabulously realized and much-loved “Great Babe.”
Great Eastern was such a colossal, record-breaking chunk of maritime, industrial and national heritage that I find it more than slightly difficult to forgive the universe for allowing her to be broken up.
Infographic comparing ship sizes, in chronological order from left to right. Click to expand. Source: JF Ptak Science Books.
The length of Great Eastern carved into the City walls in the 19th century. Source: Geograph. By John Turner, CC BY-SA 2.0
The watercolour of Great Eastern, shows her beached on the Wirral side of the Mersey for repairs, although the painting is very sadly not on display. It was painted three years after the illustration at the top of the post, in 1863, by William Gawin Herdman (1805-1882).
Great Eastern watercolour showing the ship on the gridiron for repairs just off the Wirral on the Mersey in 1863. By W.G. Herdman (in the collection of the Williamson Art Gallery, not currently on display). Source: Williamson Art Gallery Collection at Birkenhead.
The Grade I listed collegiate church, established by Sir Hugh Calveley in the 14th century, is listed in the Simon Jenkins book “England’s Thousand Best Churches”, and has a very distinctive personality. I also wanted to find “The Chantry House,” having read about it in Clare Dudman’s recent article in the Chester Antiquary. It is a half-timbered Tudor period building, Grade II* listed, later the home of John Bradshaw of Stockport, born 1602, died 1659, described by Clare as “regicide and President of the first Council of the State of the British Commonwealth (1649-1651).”
St Boniface himself, whose birth name was Winfrith, was a late 6th-century to mid-7th century English Benedictine monk, becoming a missionary in Germany and Frisia under the authority of the pope. He became an archbishop under Gregory III before going on to introduce reforms to the Church of France.
The church is perched on the side of the small valley of the river Gowy. It sits within a neat roughly rectangular stone-built boundary wall, which is most impressive on its western side, enclosing a rambling churchyard, which flows gently downhill. The Gowy that runs at the base of the valley is a fast-moving stream at this point, which wends its way northwest before emptying into the Mersey.
As with many medieval churches in the area, there is speculation that an Anglo-Saxon building preceded St Bonficace, made of wood, on the same site; and there is evidence, in the form of fragments of decorative stonework, of a Norman church preceding the early 14th century building.
The earliest phase of the medieval St Boniface’s Church was in 1320, when the Normal church was rebuilt in the Decorated style, but a large part of the church was rebuilt in 1385-6 when Sir Hugh Calveley established the church as a chantry to ensure that the canons’ prayers would reduce his time in Purgatory. As a nobleman Sir Hugh was a knight and a warrior and, already in his 60s, he had survived not only warfare, but also the devastating famines and plagues of the 14th century.
The current Church of St Boniface was established as a collegiate church, the first one I have visited in this area. The name “college” derives from the Latin word collegium, and translates roughly as “appointed or chosen together.” In other words, it is an official community of some description, not confined as it usually is today to an educational establishment. A collegiate church sits somewhere between a parish church and a monastic establishment. Instead of a single parish priest overseeing the church and congregation, the college of canons was a Christian community, but unlike a monastery was not secluded, did not follow a specific set of rules of the sort followed by monastic communities and did not require a life-time vow of commitment to the collegiate church. Most importantly, the church was just as much a community resource as any parish church and the canons, ordained priests with specific additional roles, were involved in parish life. Collegiate churches tended to be rather better financed than the average parish church, at least when they were initially established, because they were usually founded by wealthy donors like royalty, bishops or the aristocracy, whilst others were attached to university colleges. Some of the collegiate churches were dissolved following the Reformation following Henry VIII’s appointment of himself as the head of the new Church of England.
St Boniface’s was one of a number of churches that were also established as collegiate chantries. Chantries were intended to safeguard the soul, an ongoing financial investment to ensure prayers for the souls of specific individuals for eternity, thereby reducing a soul’s time in Purgatory. The most prestigious chantries were established in monasteries, where monks ordained as priests could carry out mass on behalf of those who had set up chantries, but any individual could set up his or her own church for the purpose of chantry.
Although the overall appearance of the church is coherently gothic, a great many changes were made during its life. The main styles are earlier Decorated gothic and, dating to Sir Hugh de Calveley’s investment, later Perpendicular remodelling. The nave and aisles were remodelled in c.1490. In the 1700s upper galleries were added to the nave. The church was substantially modified during the Victorian period. The 18th century galleries were removed, restoration work included the Late Perpendicular Ridley Chapel, which was in ruinous condition and the chancel floor was tiled. None of the medieval stained glass survived in any part of the church, partly due to the nave windows being fitted with iron casements in 1840. A clerestory was added above the windows, adding more light. The oak-panelled ceiling dating to the 1950s. The present stained glass is either 19th/early 20th century or modern, although small fragments of surviving medieval glass have been incorporated where possible. xxx
Simplified plan of the Church of St Boniface
The exterior
The first impression of the church exterior, as you do a circuit, is that the north side of the church has a massive and costly expanse of regimented windows, which together with the clerestory fill the church with far more light than a medieval church would normally have experienced, even with stained glass in place.
Although both sides of the nave consist of eight bays, you will notice that the north and south sides are different from one another. The north side, with a much smaller concentration of graves in the churchyard, has a much bigger bank of windows than the south side, making a remarkable first impression. Above them is an unusual balustrade that is not echoed on the south side. On both sides of the church are battlements and many pinnacles (some of which have fallen and can be seen in the churchyard) and do look out for gargoyles and grotesques, because there are some good examples.
The main gateway through the boundary wall, leading up two steps towards the tower, is 18th century. The medieval west door into the tower, used today as the visitor entrance, would have been used only for ceremonial occasions. Apart from the buttresses that support it, the tower is incorporated into the body of the church itself. A small door is located on the north side was opened during baptisms, whilst the congregation would have entered via the elaborate Decorated style south porch in the churchyard, retaining its original medieval doors, effigy of St Boniface and its clear views over the valley.
The south porch
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The interior
The tower and nave
Instead of standing beyond the nave, as with most churches, the tower is incorporated within the nave, with both aisles running along its sides (now blocked off for use as storage at the west, tower end). The base of the tower sits on sandstone bedrock and dates to Sir Hugh’s rebuild, with walls nearly 2m thick.
As well as the west and south entrances, there is also a small north door without a porch, but this was used only during baptisms, and was known as “the Devil’s Door.” During the ceremony it was left open to ensure that any evil spirits that escaped the child during baptism would exit the church. The frame of the doorway is original but the door itself dates to 1630.
View down the nave towards the chancel
The tower opens into the nave, which consists of a tall central section with views to the chancel at the east. The nave is flanked by two very elegant aisles. The aisle arcades are in Perpendicular style, replacing earlier aisles in the Decorated style, and are supported on particularly slender columns, giving an additional impression of space and height.
The remarkable bank of windows, particularly on the north side, provides the nave with much more light than it would normally have experienced, all in the style of the gothic Perpendicular. As all of the windows would have contained stained glass, there would have been much less light penetrating the interior than today, and the impact must have been spectacular. A 19th century clerestory is set above the windows, adding more light. The tall nave is topped with an oak-panelled ceiling dating to the 1950s. At the join between walls and ceiling there are angels holding painted shields representing local families who donated funds to ongoing care and modification of the church. The minimal amount of supporting wall between the windows has an impact on other aspects of the interior, as there is much less wall space than usual for memorial sculptures.
Immediately on your left as you enter the nave, underneath the window, is a statue commemorating Jane Johnson who died at the age of 24. It was found buried under a yew tree in 1882. The reason for this ignominious fate was apparently because the incumbent vicar in the 1760s found the large breasts too disturbing for an ecclesiastical context. On the far east end of the nave, in an aisle on the north side (left as you walk from the the tower towards the chancel) there is some fine medieval floor tiling under a communion table, with some grave stones laid into the floor. The tiles were found elsewhere in the church and moved here to preserve them.
Above the communion table is a short row of carved medieval stone sculptures, most of which represent excellent examples of grotesques, the remains of a former reredos. Grotesques are also set into the tops of the walls, particularly in the south aisle. On the opposite side of the nave, below the organ pipes, is a faint painted medieval altarpiece showing Christ rising from the tomb, flanked by important attendants, one of whom may represent St Boniface. Both the communion table and the organ pipes are located where chapels were once located at the east ends of each aisle.
The font dates to 1663, the medieval font apparently having been damaged during the Civil War. Behind the font in the south aisle are two lovely sets of painted wooden parclose panels showing images of saints, dating to c.1420-1450.
A brass chandelier dates to 1776.
The chancel
The 1921 Fred Crossley screen
Sir Hugh de Calveley with a calf shown on his suit of armour, his head resting on a sculpted calf and a third concealed in this photograph by his arms
The large chancel has been less radically modified than the nave. The walls were raised to a new height in 1520 but the rest of the chancel remains largely unchanged since the 1380s. It was originally divided from the nave by a rood screen, but the current screen, with its delicate carvings, was designed by Fred Crossley and dates from 1921. The size of the chancel was due to its role as a chantry. According to the St Boniface church’s online history leaflet, “The chancel in Sir Hugh’s collegiate church was designed to provide room for a chantry staff of eleven – a master, a submaster, five chaplains, two chanters, and two singers” in order to pray for the souls of the king, Sir Hugh and their ancestors and families. Sir Hugh died in 1394, unmarried.
The east window, apparently moved here from another church, was in the Decorated style, dating to the 14th century, its lovely tracery described by Pevsner/Hubbard as “uncommonly fanciful” and unique in Cheshire in terms of its flowering tracery. Much of the church’s medieval stained glass survived into the 19th century but the east window was blown out during a storm in the 1700s, and this window now has modern stained glass. Finds of glass beyond the east end show that it originally depicted the Jesse tree.
Sir Hugh himself is in pride of place in the centre of the chancel, with his 7ft long effigy sitting above a chest tomb, all in expensive alabaster, with many traces of paint still surviving on the chest tomb. It is surrounded by the original spiked railings. The three calves of Sir Hugh’s family shield are present on parts of his effigy, and a lion sits at his feet. The niches of the chest tomb would have contained weeping figures, now lost. The graffiti belongs mainly to the 17th century, carved by Civil War prisoners. Whether Sir Hugh is actually buried here is unknown.
Within the altar rails at the north side of the chancel is the colourfully elaborate effigy and tomb of Sir George Beeston, restored in 1937. He was a descendant of Sir Hugh de Calveley, and served in the Royal Navy as Admiral of the Fleet under four monarchs. Opposite it, also behind the altar rails on the south side (right) are the three seats of the sedilia, where the clergy sat during services, along with a small piscina, a basin for holy water, which drained into the churchyard, all attractively ogee-headed.
Unlike most churches, where an organ was slotted into an aisle of the nave, the 1895 organ at St Boniface was installed in the chancel on the southern side, facing into the south aisle.
The Ridley Chapel
The 1527 Ridley Chantry Chapel was built by Sir Raufe Egerton, a soldier rewarded for his loyalty by Henry VIII with a village near Bunbury. The endowment was much more modest than that of Sir Raufe’s ancestor Sir Hugh, employing two chantry priests employed to pray for his own soul, and those of his family. He built a house in which the priests resided, still standing today and discussed briefly below.
The chapel sits on the south side of the chancel, accessed through a substantial stone screen via a pair of very unusual carved doors, different on the chancel and chapel sides. The doors have a unique interlaced trellis topping and, on the chancel side, linenfold carving. On the chapel side the doors have and have the monograms of Sir Raufe and his wife Mary carved into the lower sections.
The screen dividing the chancel from the chapel has, on its interior face, some Renaissance paintwork, the earliest known in the region.
Until the Civil War, Sir Raufe’s marble chest-tomb stood, like Sir Hugh’s, in the centre of the chantry chapel. The chapel remained unfinished at his death and although some work continued, according to the detailed instructions left in his will, the dissolution of the college churches and chantries in 1548 led to the abandonment of the work, and it was in a highly ruinous condition by the mid 19th century, when restoration was undertaken.
After 1548
The church’s chantry college was dissolved during Reformation in 1548 and the church became Crown property before the tithes (the income of the church) were sold by Elizabeth I.
Beeston Castle
Although efforts were made to keep Cheshire out of the Civil War (1642-1659), with the Bunbury Agreement signed to this effect, the county was nevertheless dragged into the hostilities. Royalist forces had taken up position at Chester in 1642, using it as a base to provision themselves from the Dee, which was still a working port with river access via the Dee to the Irish Sea and Liverpool Bay. Shortly afterwards, Parliamentarians established themselves at Nantwich. Beeston sat right in the middle of the two opposing bases, and the parliamentarians installed a garrison at the castle in February 1643, under the control of Captain Thomas Steele, who oversaw repairs to make the castle defensible. St Boniface’s was used by Parliamentarians who were garrisoned at Bunbury to house Royalist prisoners who had been taken in the fighting at Beeston Castle and other local battlefields.
In the 1700s galleries were added to the nave, but these were removed in the 1860s during a period of Victorian alterations, which also removed the plaster covering the walls, the wall paintings and the traditional box pews. The tiling on the floor of the chancel dates to this time.
Electric light was not introduced until 1931. Sadly in 1940 a land-mine inflicted serious damage on the church, partly because the 1840s alterations to the windows had badly undermined the structural integrity of the church.
Today the nave has a feeling of timelessness that is very difficult to pin down. This may be due to the mass of light that the main windows and the clerestory produce, combined with the lofty ceiling on slender columns; the absence of traditional blocks of pews in favour of backed benches; and the minimal amount of memorial clutter on the walls, all providing the nave with a faint and attractively unusual hint of modernity. The chancel is much more traditional, but the centrepiece provided by Sir Hugh’s effigy and chest tomb, the painted tomb of Sir George Beeston and the addition of the Ridley Chapel are all truly compelling features. The amount of paintwork in the church is unusual, and although much of it was restored in the Victorian period, it gives an excellent idea of how much more colour would have been present in a pre-Commonwealth church. This venerable church, established to provide chantry services for Sir Hugh de Calveley, is distinctive in both look and feel, outside and in, and has a lot of very unusual features to offer the visitor.
The Chantry House
The village surrounding the church is very attractive, with multiple styles of building dispersed along the lines of several lanes, one of which dips down to the Gowy and climbs steadily beyond. Most of the village’s core dates back as far as the Tudor period, with fine historic buildings from other periods, all surrounded by an interrupted ring of more modern homes.
One of the interesting personalities in the village was Thomas Aldersey who in 1565 purchased the tithes (church income) from Elizabeth I. He was a contemporary of Sir Raufe Egerton, and as well as being a Member of Parliament, he was affiliated to the Company of Haberdashers, a powerful London Puritan guild, and appointed them as his trustees in 1590. This was significant because it gave the guild authority over the church, and their involvement lead to Bunbury becoming a centre for non-conformism and, in the 17th century, became the home of Cheshire’s first Methodist society. Even more interesting is that a census of 1640 showed that the parish housed some 112 illegal Catholics. Unsurprisingly, the two factions were often in conflict. This non-conformism lasted into the 19th century when there were two non-conformist chapels in Bunbury, the Wesleyan Trinity Chapel established in 1806, and a Primitive Methodist church on College Lane built in 1876.
John Bradshaw by George Perfect Harding. Source: Wikipedia
At the foot of the dip alongside the Gowy is The Chantry House, built by the same Raufe Egerton responsible for the Ridley Chapel, as a home for his chantry priests. It is a domestic half-timbered property dated by Historic England to roughly 1527, some 200 years after Sir Hugh Calveley had been sufficiently terrified by the prospect of Purgatory to finance a new incarnation of the church. Like many other buildings in Bunbury, The Chantry House has a rich history of its own and in 1594 was donated by Thomas Aldersey to the school’s master (the school has since been demolished). It was here that John Bradshaw is thought to have lodged as a child to attend the neighbouring school, growing up to become a jurist, judge, lawyer and politician. As a Chief Justice in Chester and North Wales, he presided over a number of witch trials. In 1649, he was made Lord President of the parliamentary commission that was established to put Charles I on trial, signed the death warrant on January 29th 1649, and subsequently held senior positions in the Commonwealth. Although he was buried in Westminster Abbey with his wife, on the reinstatement of the monarchy under Charles II they were both later disinterred, put on show, and then posthumously executed by beheading.
The Chantry House
As Clare Dudman’s article highlighted, the centuries-old line of sight between the house and the church was under threat recently, when a proposal was submitted for a new building development in the meadow that lies between Chantry House (and the River Gowy), and the slope up to the church. The planning permission was recently refused in favour of retaining the open meadow. Here’s an excerpt from the Decision Notice (Application No. 25/3509/PIP) refusing planning permission:
The river Gowy
The proposed development is located within the Open Countryside and does not meet
any of the exceptions noted for development within Open Countryside. Furthermore, the
proposal would not integrate into the rural surrounding context and would erode the
existing distinction between the settlement boundaries and the wider open countryside
which contributes to the character of Bunbury. Furthermore, the development would
impact on the important local views and vistas and would have a conspicuous
urbanising effect that would fail to respect the intrinsic rural character of the wider
landscape, which would be harmful to the verdant rural character, appearance and
qualities of Bunbury contrary to Policies PG6.
Common sense, good taste and support for the retention of rural elements within the village prevailed in the end. A footpath through the field gives good views of both The Chantry House and the church.
There are no details of opening times for St Boniface either on the website or at the church, but it was open on both visits, and appears to have an open door policy. It is worth checking the website to ensure that you don’t accidentally arrive when a service or a church event is being held. For those using satnav, the church is on Bowe’s Gate Road and the What3Words address is ///dollar.papers.currently. There is no official car park but there is plenty of on-street parking in the immediate vicinity of the east end of the church.
If you are more organized than I was, you can download a PDF of the history of the church from the St Boniface website before you visit here. I recommend doing so because there are no pamphlets to pick up or purchase at the church to learn about its history, although on a cupboard top on the right-hand side, just before you enter the nave, you can open a copy of the book England’s Thousand Best Churches by Simon Jenkins to see the one-page summary, and next to it there is a framed sheet of A4 with a potted history of the church. Other sources are listed below.
The Chantry House is a private residence and not open to the public.
If you go for a wander around the village, do take care to stand well back for the traffic, because there are no footpaths on most of the lanes, and delivery vehicles and through-traffic tend to travel at some speed, in spite of the narrow and bendy roads.
Sources:
Books and papers
Cook, G.H. 1959. English Collegiate Churches. Phoenix House Ltd
Aerial photograph of the half of the Chester amphitheatre that is visible. The rest lies beneath derelict buildings and car-parking. Image source: Environment Agency via Wikipedia
Partly as a result of the Gladiators of Britain exhibition last year and the Chester Amphitheatre – An 8000 year Story exhibition this year (closes 12 July 2026), both at Chester’s Grosvenor Museum, there has been a lot of recent interest about the development of the Chester amphitheatre. The Gladiators project focused attention on the Roman period but the current exhibition looks at 8000 years of how the chunk of land on which the amphitheatre sits was used from early prehistory onwards. Of these various periods of use, one of the most interesting is the discovery of a section of an Iron Age settlement and field management, representing a number of phases of the Middle and Late Iron Age. These phases were found, together with earlier prehistoric material, during the last of three seasons of excavation that took place between 2004 and 2006, included in volume 1 of the amphitheatre publication produced by Tony Wilmott and Dan Garner in 2018 (see Sources at end). xxx
The challenges of locating the Iron Age in West Cheshire
Artist’s impression of Maiden Castle on the mid-Cheshire Sandstone Ridge. Produced by the Habitats and Hillforts Project 2008-2012. Image source: Sandstone Ridge Trust
The Iron Age in West Cheshire was first recognized at hill-top sites known as hillforts in Britain, characterized by banks and ditches surrounding an internal space, but it has been amply demonstrated in other parts of the country that lowland settlements, some enclosed with a bank and ditch, formed the settlement focus of farming livelihoods. It has always been difficult to identify such lowland sites in the West Cheshire area, for reasons discussed below, although the presence of six hillforts on the mid-Cheshire Sandstone Ridge strongly implied that there must be corresponding lowland sites on the land to east and west.
Hillforts on the mid-Cheshire Sandstone Ridge. Image source: Garner 2012, p.4.
In 1982, in response to this absence of known lowland sites in the fields around the hillforts on the Sandstone Ridge, James Schoenwetter used proxy botanical data from nearby waterlogged contexts to search for evidence for agricultural activity contemporary with the hillforts. He found evidence that strongly suggested that lowland agricultural settlements must have been present in the vicinity of Peckforton Mere, near the Sandstone Ridge. However it was was not until 2001 that the nearest settlement to the mid-Cheshire sandstone ridge was found at Bruen Stapleford near Tarvin, during the laying of a Transco gas pipeline. Since then a small number of sites have been surveyed and/or excavated across West Cheshire and the Wirral, with other possible sites awaiting survey and excavation. The Iron Age levels at the Chester Amphitheatre, were revealed in 2006.
Quite apart from the urban and suburban sprawl of Chester and the Wirral on what was once rural land, finding the lowland sites in West Cheshire has been complicated by the composition of the soil in the Cheshire Basin, the nature of the archaeology itself, and the reduction of funding for research archaeology over the last few decades.
Aerial photography has been of great value for identifying sites in some parts of the country, but the moisture-retaining boulder clays deposited across the Cheshire lowlands by the last glaciation mean that the outlines of structures and enclosures, which show up in other areas as crop-marks, cannot always be seen in this region. It is only during periods of drought that crop marks are likely to put in an appearance.
VCP rim-sherd found in one of the roundhouse (Building 1) gullies at the amphitheatre, on display at the Grosvenor Museum
Field-walking (the survey of ploughed fields on foot, collecting all artefacts found) also faces serious challenges. The boulder clays of the Cheshire Plain boulder are acidic, meaning that organic materials (plants, bone and antler, foodstuff, textiles, leather etc) and metals have often disintegrated in the past and are only very rarely found today. Field-walking tends to rely on pottery and stone artefacts, and although both often survive in local conditions, by the time of the Iron Age smaller stone tools were no longer in use, with only larger stone items like querns and pounders (grain and pigment grinding objects) and anvils (for metalwork) remaining in use. It is also a problem that the Iron Age in the West Cheshire region is largely aceramic. Pottery often present at other Iron Age sites in Britain, is usually absent in this immediate area, with only a particular type known as Very Coarse Pottery (VCP), used for producing and transporting salt from the East Cheshire brine springs, consistently found in the region.
Composite image of two maps showing the distribution of Iron Age sites in northwest England and northeast Wales. Sourced from Ritchie 2018 and Nevell 2025 (click to enlarge)
Because of these challenges, individual objects found in the area are most often found by metal detectorists who report their findings to the Portable Antiquities Scheme. The last time I checked there were 43 findspots dating to the Iron Age in West Cheshire, although not all can be dated with precision.
Most of the Iron Age lowland sites discovered have been the result of developer-led watching briefs and funding for excavation and publication. This simply means that instead of excavation being guided by archaeological research projects and survey activities, sites are usually found when, for example, new buildings are erected, cables or pipelines are laid down and new quarries are opened. Archaeologists are assigned to maintain watching briefs on such projects, funded by the developer in question, in case archaeological features are identified. Watching briefs have been responsible, for example, for the Late Prehistoric discoveries at Bruen Stapleford near Tarvin (where a gas pipeline was due to be laid), Saighton Camp at Huntington (in advance of a new housing estate), and Puddington Lane sites 129 and 154 at Burton on the Wirral (where sections of an offshore power cable were being laid). A 2026 article in British Archaeology (the publication of the Council for British Archaeology) by Sarah Wolferstan states that nearly 98% of UK archaeology is now developer-funded.
Large scale evironmental and heritage conservation projects are few and far between, but in this region included the Heather and Hillforts project that first oversaw the exploration, survey and excavation of both the uplands in northeast Wales in the early 2000s, and in a later phase the mid-Cheshire Ridge between 2008 and 2011, with the archaeological work overseen by Dan Garner, resulting in two main publications made available in 2012 and 2016.
Chester Amphitheatre under excavation in 2004. Source: Wilmott and Garner 2018, fig 26, p.24 (Kindle edition)
The Chester Amphitheatre Project was a special project. Unlike the above examples, the Chester Amphitheatre was the focus of a very welcome three-year project that was initiated for research purposes. In 2000 it was deemed that the deteriorating state of the amphitheatre needed to be addressed, and English Heritage issued a call for tenders to produce a conservation plan together with costings. Discussions between English Heritage, Chester City Council and a number of specialists resulted in the Chester Amphitheatre Project in 2003. Excavations took place between 2004 and 2006, led by Tony Wilmott and Dan Garner and funded by English Heritage and Chester City Council. xxx
Settlement features in the West Cheshire Iron Age
The structures that make up Late Prehistoric settlement sites in Britain, enclosed and unenclosed, are usually round-houses and four-posted (or “four-poster”) buildings. In West Cheshire none have produced evidence of enclosures (banks and/or ditches) surrounding the settlements, but none of the sites has been fully excavated meaning that whether or not any of them were enclosed is currently unresolved. The remains of field systems, sealed beneath early Roman levels, are of great interest, providing clues to the agricultural activity that formed the basis of Late Prehistoric livelihoods.
Reconstructed Iron Age roundhouse on private land at the site of an excavation on the west side of the river Dee at Poulton, south of Chester. Source: Cootes et al 2020 (see Sources at end of post)
Roundhouses in the area are defined by circular gullies or ditches, sometimes single and sometimes double (concentric). The largest roundhouse in this area reach was Bruen Stapleford’s Structure 3, with a diameter of c.19m but smaller examples are more usual, with the smallest clustering around 7.5-8m, with the amphitheatre roundhouse measuring c.8.4m diameter. Gullies can either be complete, leaving a gap for one or more entrances, or interrupted. Outer gullies are often interpreted as drains or eavesdrips to collect rainwater run-off from the roof. The inner gully is often a foundation trench for posts or stakes, which will have performed the job of anchors for the walls, which may have been made of wattle-and-daub (long slender branches woven together and then coated with clay or equivalent), planks, or an alternative construction material that has so far not been observed, such as turf. Alternatively, the outer gully may hold the walling material, whilst the inner gully may hold weight-bearing posts to support the roof timbers. The interior may have additional features, such as hearths or shallow pits. The activities that took place in roundhouses are still not well understood in spite of including “house” in their names. Whilst some may well have provided accommodation for group/family members (depending on how family and social units were defined and organized), others are likely to have have been used for a number of other activities related to farming, craft and/or community activities.
Moel y Gaer Rhosesmor hillfort, phase 2, showing both roundhouses and four-posters. Image source: Graeme Guilbert 2018, Internet Archaeology Journal
Four-posted buildings are even more elusive in the West Cheshire and Wirral areas, but happily two phases of one four-poster was found at the amphitheatre, and another was as at the Chester Business Park excavation in Huntington, another lowland site. They are also represented at the upland Beeston Castle hillfort. A particularly good example outside the immediate area is Moel y Gaer Rhosesmor hillfort (phase 2) in Flintshire. these structures are often described as “possible granaries,” but this is only one possible interpretation of their role within a given site or region. They are usually quite small, and either square or rectangular around 3.5 x 3.5m or 3.0 x 3.5m on average, and although they may well have stored cereal grain, particularly where there is sufficient evidence to suggest this purpose, they could also have stored other goods such as animal hides, wool and textiles, salt, and preserved foods, and some may not have been used for storage at all. For example, Janice Kinory suggests that one possible interpretation of for four postholes is that some of them could have been hanging frames, rather than buildings, used for maturing slaughtered and/or cuts of butchered livestock. Adrian Chadwick raises the possibility that some of them could have been excarnation (exposed funeral) platforms. As with roundhouses, they may have had multiple roles and it is only by excavation of the organic and inorganic remains associated with them that the uses of these buildings will continue to be clarified and refined. fdf
The Iron Age beneath the Chester Amphitheatre
Because Late Bronze Age and Iron Age lowland sites are elusive, it is always exciting when a new one is discovered. The Chester amphitheatre is one of Chester’s best known landmarks, and the 2004-2006 excavations (Wilmott and Garner 2018) were expected to provide information primarily about the Roman and post-Roman uses of the site, so the 2006 discovery of Iron Age activity underlying the Roman amphitheatre, a short distance from the river Dee, provided a very welcome insight into the Chester area and environs prior to the arrival of the Roman legions. Most significantly, the Iron Age finds included not only structural evidence and a small number of artefacts, but also two distinct phases of field system, providing information about the development of field-management methodologies in the region. The source of the amphitheatre’s Iron Age data used in this post is in Part 2, Before The Amphitheatre, in the 2018 publication by Tony Wilmott and Dan Garner (see “Sources” at the end of the post). Some of the images shown on this post have also been taken from the Kindle version of the same publication. See image captions for details of all image sources.
Mesolithic stone tools and cores from the amphitheatre site, Phase 1a on display at the Grosvenor Museum’s “Chester Amphitheatre – An 8000 Year Story” exhibition, found during the Wilmott and Garner 2018 excavation
The amphitheatre site had been surveyed and excavated several times previously, beginning in the early 1930s, discussed in detail by Wilmott and Garner 2018, but this was the first of the amphitheatre excavations to produce evidence of Iron Age occupation underlying the Roman levels.
The amphitheatre site has been divided into a number of periods, phases and sub-phases, of which Period 1 represents all the prehistoric phases, of which phase 1a consists of ephemeral data from the Mesolithic to the Early Bronze Age (not included here, but extensively described and illustrated in Wilmott and Garner 2018, providing an important contribution to the understanding of earlier prehistoric presence in the area); phases 1b and 1c, which date to the Middle Iron Age and include structural elements and evidence of ard cultivation respectively; and phase 2, which produced evidence of Late Iron Age cord-rig cultivation. Later periods, not listed here, describe the history of the Roman amphitheatre.
The phases of Period 1 (Prehistory):
Amphitheatre Period 1 (Prehistory) phases, with radiocarbon dates indication that periods 1b – 2 covered the period c.400BC to the pre-amphitheatre Roman period.
Phase 1b (Middle Iron Age, 400-200 Cal.BC)
Part of the roundhouse under excavation. Source: Grosvenor Museum’s “Chester Amphitheatre – 8000 Years of Stories” exhibition, from the Wilmott and Garner 2018 excavation
Phase 1b includes the only Iron Age settlement features found during the excavation, consisting of a single roundhouse (Building 1) and a four-posted building that was built in three phases (Building 2).
Building 1, was defined by two concentric gullies that made up part of a curvilinear structure that would have been about 8.4m in diameter if it had been complete. The inner gully was probably a construction trench for the walls of the house. A rim-sherd of VCP was found in one of the gullies. A shallow pit was found towards the centre of the building measuring c.1m x 0.75m and 0.07m, its function unspecified. Plant remains were collected and sampled, containing very few cereal remains, representing hulled barley and a glume base of spelt wheat. Buttercup, sheep’s sorrel, and vetches and other wild species. may have been used as floor covering, animal fodder or bedding.
The Chester Amphitheatre Iron Age, part of Buildings 1 and Building 2. Image source: Wilmott and Garner 2018, fig.33 p.44 (Kindle version)
Building 2 comprised three postholes representing two sides of what the excavators interpreted as a four-posted building, erected in two phases as shown on the illustration above. It is only the second example of a lowland site with four-poster identified in the West Cheshire area (the other is at the Chester Business Park site). In Phase i of Building 2 the structure measured 3.5×3.5m. The postholes suggest that at least two of the posts were around 0.4m diameter and most of them had stone packing material to support the posts. Plant remains were found in all three of the main postholes, including remains of spelt wheat, a small amount of emmer wheat, and low amounts of barley. There were also abundant weed seeds, plenty of small grass seeds, a sloe stone and charcoal containing oak and lesser amounts of alder and hazel. Charcoal in Building 2 postholes, which is also found spread elsewhere on the site, suggests Building 2 appears to have been destroyed by fire in phase i, either deliberately (which has been proposed at, for example, the Iron Age roundhouse at Prestatyn) or accidentally. In Phase ii the four-posted building had shifted position, suggesting that phase ii was a replacement building, its footprint overlapping with the older structure. It also had three postholes, but is thought to have been rectangular, measuring c.3.5 x 4m. Postholes from phase ii (again with processing waste dominating over actual grains) contained spelt wheat, emmer wheat, grasses and charcoal dominated again by oak with smaller quantities of alder and hazel. In this phase the post packing material was so disturbed that it is suggested that the building was deliberately dismantled by the removal of the posts, something seen at other sites in Britain possibly including Prestatyn, where it was thought that the roundhouse was probably deliberately dismantled (before being set on fire).
Phase iii of Building 2 is far less easy to understand. It consists of a sub-circular cut that truncated posthole 3. It appeared to be lined with red clay, and although showed no signs of burning, a later fill was charcoal-rich, suggesting a hearth. The plant remains were dominated by the by-products of spelt wheat processing. Features that could not be connected to the structure included a pair of stake-holes and a single posthole, with another stake-hole nearby.
All the Building 1 and Building 2 levels were sealed under Period 1’s, Phase 1c, the ard-marked soil. xxx
Period 1, phase 1c (Middle Iron Age)
Amphitheatre cultivation and ard marks Phase 1c. Image source: Wilmott and Garner 2018, fig.34 p.46 (Kindle version)
Phase 1c, the lower level of cultivation at the site, represents patches of Middle Iron Age cultivation, with marks in the ground thought to have been made by an ard. An ard is a predecessor of the plough, also known as a scratch-plough, a simple tool, usually pulled by livestock, that carves a shallow line into the soil rather than turning and lifting it like the later and more sophisticated plough. The marks are associated with a number of different patches of cultivated land within the amphitheatre that post-date the Phase 1b round-house and 4-poster, and are not associated with known structures.
Period 1, phase 2 (Late Iron Age)
Cultivation soils and cord-rig earthworks of Period 1, Phase 2, with features of the Roman Phase 3. Image source: Wilmott and Garner 2018, fig.36, p.48 (Kindle version)
Phase 2 consists of an upper level of cultivation soils showing a distinctive cord-rig arrangement of parallel low banks and shallow furrows, providing raised rows for planting, and ditches for drainage, over an area at the north of the site some 15 x 6m in area. An east-west alignment of 11 ridges was recorded, c.0.64m apart. These undulating earthworks “are a dramatic archaeological discovery, and represent the evidence for arable cultivation immediately prior to the construction of the first amphitheatre, in the last phases of the pre-Roman period” (Wilmott and Garner 2018, p.47).
The Chester Amphitheatre cord-rig is the first to have been recorded south of Northumberland. To the southwest another type of earthwork consists of a pair of circular depressions, the function of which remains unknown. Burnt vegetation, including possible turves, may be indicative of land clearance and digging the burnt material back into the soil to be cultivated. sdfds
The Iron Age livelihood at the Amphitheatre
The occupants of the settlement located themselves very close to the river Dee, with access to both water and an excellent route for communication and travel. One roundhouse, two phases of a four-poster and two phases of field management data do not necessarily represent a full settlement and farming system. Because the excavation was limited to the amphitheatre itself, It is possible that beyond these boundaries, either destroyed by later roads and buildings or lying beneath them, a more extensive community settlement could have existed.
Photograph of the excavation showing a section of Iron Age cord-rig field system ( photograph from the “Chester Amphitheatre – an 8000 year story” exhibition, from the Wilmott and Garner 2018 excavation)
Field systems, many of them enclosed, were an increasingly familiar aspect of Late Prehistoric landscape management throughout Britain. The presence of a clear chronological sequence of field management approaches is particularly helpful, suggesting improved efficiencies and the desire or the need to apply new techniques to improve output, marked by the replacement of Middle Iron Age ard-marks by Late Iron Age cord-rig earthworks. Burnt plant rhizomes and possibly turves in phase 2 may have been turned into the ground to help fertilize the field, and heat-cracked stone that found on cultivation levels, mentioned below, may also have been part of general refuse spread on fields as fertilizer.
The plant remains at the site include cereal grains and chaff (the inedible parts of the plant), and together with the field-working marks indicate that this was agricultural land. The best represented of the cereal remains was spelt wheat, which became increasingly popular over emmer wheat during the course of the Iron Age, perhaps due to its greater tolerance of poor, marginal soils, cold and damp conditions, its ability to do well without large amounts of fertilizer and its resistance to pests and diseases. Other types represented are emmer wheat and hulled 6-row barley in smaller amounts, as well as indeterminate remains. As well as grains, the chaff produced during processing could be used for, amongst other things, animal fodder and fuel. There is also evidence of quantities of brassiceae, (the mustard and cabbage family). Weeds suggest a broadly grassland environment, some of which may have been used for roofing, flooring and animal fodder as well as other uses. Wood found at the site, invaluable for buildings, fencing, fuel, tools, weapons, handles, containers and a variety of other objects and furnishings, mainly includes oak, alder/hazel and willow.
Red sandstone saddle quern piece. Image source: Wilmott and Garner 2018, fig.42, p.63 (Kindle version)
A broken red sandstone fragment of Middle Iron Age saddle quern is a nice find (shown above), also relating to agricultural activities. It was found in a post-hole in phase 1b, with its grinding surface worn to a characteristic shallow dish-shape. Similar fragments have been found at other sites in the region, with a whole example found at Beeston Castle hillfort. Querns were traditionally used for grinding cereal grain and seeds, but could also be employed for working pigments into powder. As suggested below for the VCP, it is possible that fragments of tools and equipment were inserted into structural features as tokens of some sort. A quern fragment from the Chester Business Park site was found, for example, in what has been interpreted as a former Iron Age well.
The farming year: a reconstruction based on evidence from settlements at Iron Age Danebury (Hampshire) and region. Source: Cunliffe 2005, p.419, fig.16.5. Click to enlarge.
Even though domesticated animal remains have not been found at the amphitheatre from prehistoric phases (although they are plentiful in the Roman phases), they would have been necessary to provide fertilizer for the crops, and evidence at other sites in the region have usually been seen as indicative of a mixed cultivation and livestock herding strategy. At Poulton near Rossett (30km south of Chester) for example, where preservation has been much better than any other Late Prehistoric sites in the area, the trifecta of cattle, sheep/goat and pig is indicated by the animal bones, which could have been employed not only for meat and fertilizer and, in the case for cattle and sheep/goat for dairy products, but also for hides for tanning and sheep’s wool for textiles. Sheep and goat are very difficult to distinguish archaeologically, but both would have been viable. A dog burial at Poulton suggests that at least that particular animal had value in everyday life.
Chester Amphitheatre VCP sherd. A particularly nice piece with a decorated rim. No complete VCP vessel has been found in Britain, but sufficient sherds have been found to show that it has a relatively narrow base and a flaring rim. Displayed at the “Chester Amphitheatre – An 8000 Year Story” exhibition
Pottery was generally not found in West Cheshire and Wirral sites from the Iron Age, although it is found in Late Bronze Age levels, and has been found north of the Mersey. The exception to this is Cheshire Stony VCP, Very Coarse Pottery, which is found in varying quantities in the area. A particularly nice single piece of VCP rim sherd, with “pie-crust” decoration and 71 body sherds, were found at the amphitheatre, with the rim sherd shown above found in the gully of Building 1. VCP was used in the region for transporting salt, and may be indicative that the people at the amphitheatre settlement were importing salt from the salt brine springs in the Middlewich area. In her 2012 study of VCP Janice Kinory, building on the work of Elaine Morris, suggests that sometimes both single and more numerous sherds deposited in post-holes or gullies could have had a symbolic function, indicating the importance of salt itself, the value of social connections with salt producers, or the importance of the pottery itself to families and/or communities. The piece of VCP with “pie crust” decoration along the rim is similar to an example found at Poulton in Structure 2.
Corroded spearhead. On display at the “Chester Amphitheatre. An 8000 Year Story” exhibition at the Grosvenor Museum
The single, highly corroded iron spearhead is sadly the only metalwork to be found in Period 1, and there is no evidence to suggest that any metalworking took place. It was originally leaf-shaped, an elegant design that was common in the early Roman period as well, but this spear-head was found securely stratified in phase 1c in the lower of the two cultivation levels.
Fired clay, which is often found at Iron Age sites, was found in small quantities, of two locally available clay types, but its purpose at the amphitheatre is unknown.
Heat-shattered stone is a feature common on the local sites, and the amphitheatre produced 56kg of it from prehistoric levels, mainly local sandstone. Some dates from a Phase 1a (early prehistory) pit, but the main concentrations were in the cultivation areas during phases 1c and 2. At other sites in the area it is generally found within settlement structure features, but that may well be a reflection of the fact that only at Saighton Camp at Huntington has an excavation of a contemporary field system taken place in the West Cheshire area. The function of heat-shattered (or cracked / affected) stone has been much debated, with a number of plausible suggestions, including use for heating up or boiling water for various activities including tenderizing meat and cooking. Their presence on cultivated levels may suggest that, as with fields in other regions, they could have been spread on fields along with other refuse as fertilizer. xxx
Final Comments
Excavations exploring the amphitheatre environs in the Grosvenor Park are ongoing. Image Source: CAER blog 2019
As with most excavated sites dating to Late Prehistory in the West Cheshire and Wirral areas, the amphitheatre has added more invaluable data to the slowly accumulating knowledge regarding the period in this region.
Although most archaeological and historical evidence in Chester is from Roman and medieval periods, the presence of Iron Age predecessors in the city suggesting that this may have been a farming locale before the arrival of the Romans, is an exciting find. The site was used both during the Middle and Late Iron Age periods, a period of up to 400 years, during which field management techniques improved.
There is always the possibility that as parts of Chester’s built environment are replaced with new planning developments, such as the upcoming Northgate 2 housing project, other Iron Age remains will be found beneath Roman levels. The ongoing excavations in Grosvenor Park, to the east of the amphitheatre may eventually reach the lower levels contemporary with the amphitheatre finds. With more excavated sites within the region there is also the hope that it will be possible to assemble sufficient data to characterize the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age periods in West Cheshire and the Wirral, and to differentiate more fully between this and other regions in the Northwest and further afield.
Sources
Books and papers
Blockley, Kevin 1989. Prestatyn 1984-5. An Iron Age Farmstead and Romano-British Industrial Settlement in North Wales. BAR British Series 210.
Brück, Joanna 2008. Chapter 11. The Architecture of Routine Life. In Joshua Pollard (ed.) Prehistoric Britain. Blackwell Publishing, p.248-267
Cunliffe, Barry 2005 (4th edition). Iron Age Communities in Britain. Routledge
Fowler, P.J. 1981, 1983 (2nd edition). The Farming of Prehistoric Britain. Cambridge University Press
Garner, D. (and contributors) 2012. Hillforts of the Cheshire Sandstone Ridge. Habitats and Hillforts Landscape Partnership Scheme. Cheshire West and Chester Council. https://www.sandstoneridge.org.uk/lib/file-234636.pdf
Garner, Dan 2024. Chester Business Park 2003: A summary of the excavation of a late prehistoric and Roman rural site. Journal of Chester Archaeological Society 94, p.63
Johnston, Robert 2008. Chapter 12. Later Prehistoric Landscapes and Inhabitation. In Joshua Pollard (ed.) Prehistoric Britain. Blackwell Publishing, p.268-287
Kinory, Janice 2012. Salt Production, Distribution and Use in the British Iron Age. BAR British Series 559.
Morris, Elaine L. 1983. Salt and ceramic exchange in Western Britain during the first Millennium B.C. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/437245/1/Morris.pdf
Nevell, Mike 1994. Late prehistory pottery types from the Mersey Basin. In Peter Carrington (ed.) From Flints to Flower Pots. Current Research in the Dee-Mersey Region. Chester City Council, p.33-42.
Wilmott, Tony and Dan Garner 2018. The Roman Amphitheatre of Chester. Volume 1, The Prehistoric and Roman Archaeology. Oxbow [available on Kindle, although not all of the tables of data are fully legible – page numbers cited in the text refer to the Kindle version]
Wolferstan, Sarah 2026. Oral and performance storytelling for archaeological engagement and research. British Archaeology, July – August 2026, p.51
After a successful expedition in to Chester, which included an excellent coffee break with 3-D artist Julian Baum (Take27), I went to see the Grosvenor Museum’s Chester Amphitheatre – An 8000 year story exhibition, running until 12th July, in which one of Julian’s reconstruction images is included. Julian has also been working on the Our City, Our Story: Deva Victrix project under the auspices of the University of Chester, run by Dr Caroline Pudney (Senior Lecturer in Archaeology), which explores how Virtual Reality (VR) and the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) can contribute to an interactive experience of the amphitheatre. This project was showcased in Chester on Saturday 23rd May. I mention Julian Baum’s work not merely to give him a shameless (although well-deserved) plug, but because the work he contributed to last year’s Gladiators of Britain, the current ChesterAmphitheatreexhibition and the upcoming Our City, Our Story VR and AI project are examples of how the trend from static and video reconstruction towards more interactive experiences can complement traditional approaches to provide richer visitor experiences, discussed further below.
The “Chester Amphitheatre” exhibition
The ChesterAmphitheatre exhibition is a stand-alone exhibition, complete in its own right, but for those who attended Gladiators of Britain (about which I posted, with a description of the amphitheatre on the blog here), the continuity of themes between the two exhibitions works very nicely, although as the name of the current exhibition indicates, this is not just about the Roman period. This multi-period approach to the amphitheatre is the exhibition’s major strength, providing an excellent sense of how the same chunk of land has been used from the post-glacial period until the present day. Apologies for the poor photographs. I accidentally left my camera at home and they were taken with my elderly iPhone. As anyone who follows the blog will know, I am rubbish with the thing!
The exhibition space, in Gallery 1 on the ground floor, is well thought out and very elegantly laid out, with a combination of interpretation boards on the walls, artefacts displayed in well-lit cabinets and clear labelling to identify individual objects. It begins with details of the excavations, from which an understanding of the site was obtained, and then follows a chronological path, beginning with the Mesolithic (meaning Middle Stone Age, the period that starts in the post-glacial period).
The site was first explored in the early 1930s by Professor Robert Newstead, curator of the Grosvenor Museum at the time, and Dr J.P. Droop. Although it had been assumed, on the basis of other legionary sites in England, that an amphitheatre had existed at Deva, its location was unknown, and it was not until a new road was laid out in 1929 that Roman remains were found and the amphitheatre was identified. The road would have sliced across the top half of the amphitheatre, but following the discovery of Roman remains was thankfully re-routed to run around it instead of across it, allowing the site to be preserved and enabling further excavations to take place. The most recent of those was the excavation project established by English Heritage and the former Chester City Council, lead by Tony Wilmott and Dan Garner between 2004 and 2006, published in 2018. These excavations resulted in a re-evaluation of the Roman amphitheatre and its phases, and provided invaluable information about both its pre-Roman and post-Roman periods.
It is one of the interesting aspects of work into the later prehistory of West Cheshire, that wherever an archaeologist happens to poke a trowel, at both hillfort and lowland sites, earlier prehistoric material is likely to be found. The type of material often found is epitomized by the finds at the amphitheatre. The Mesolithic was characterized by very small stone tools called microliths, and a selection of these were found on the amphitheatre site, together with waste products from the manufacturing process, showing that the tools had been made on the spot. Neolithic and/or Early Bronze Age tools, again made of stone, are also represented and these too are found all over the Cheshire area.
One of the most exciting discoveries of the excavation was the previously unsuspected presence an Iron Age settlement, made up of round houses and rectangular buildings, as well as portions of a cord-rig field system, very like medieval ridge-and-furrow. Two photographs show details of one of the foundation features of one of the round-houses and a section of cord-rig as they were found during the excavation. There is a particularly nice sherd of specialist pottery on display, known as VCP (Very Coarse Pottery), that was used for producing and transporting salt. A highly corroded spear tip was also discovered, one of the few pieces of Iron Age metalwork to survive in the area due to the highly acidic soil. Both are shown to the left. xx
Photograph of the excavation showing a section of Iron Age field system
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Chester Amphitheatre exhibition
The Roman amphitheatre is inevitably the main focus of the exhibition, which is unsurprising given its scale and duration. Now understood to consist of two main phases, having been expanded in its second phase, it was in use from c.AD 74/75. It is estimated that the second phase of the amphitheatre could have accommodated up to between 7500-8000 spectators and it is to this phase that two of the larger objects in the exhibition belong: the tethering stone to which wild animals would have been tied, and a coping stone (rounded stone topping for a wall) that contains the inscription “SERANO LOCUS,” roughly meaning “Serano’s Place,” possibly an attempt to lay claim to a particular seat that sat behind the low wall. The many other Roman artefacts on display include ornaments, gaming pieces, pottery (samian ware, grey ware, orange ware etc) and other items made of metals and glass.
Capstone engraved SERANO LOCUS
Saxo-Norman artefacts
A display of Saxon-Norman objects demonstrates that there may be some degree of continued use of the amphitheatre’s space after the Roman abandonment of the site, albeit for a completely different purpose.
The excavations have also helped to clarify some of the medieval structures associated with the Romanesque St John the Baptist’s Church (at one point Chester’s cathedral) and how its churchyard encroached on the original amphitheatre during the Middle Ages. The other side of the churchyard’s footprint, extending into the Grosvenor Park, is currently under excavation by West Cheshire Museums and the University of Chester.
Medieval jug
xx Post-medieval finds demonstrate how, as the amphitheatre was gradually lost due to stone robbing for other buildings, the accumulation of debris and ongoing building works as Chester continued to expand beyond the walls, the former amphitheatre site continued to be occupied, and broken objects continued to be abandoned, as they are today. A particularly nice find was a pit dug in Tudor times, containing a fascinating array of broken, discarded items. Civil War finds included lead gun shot and the remains of gunpowder holders. There is even a fabulous packet for a loaf of bread with a pre-decimalization price printed on it, with bright, happy colours, a splendidly cheery tiger and the strapline “The Swinging New Bread.” Very 60s! See below.
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).
The Chester amphitheatre’s tethering stone
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Brilliant bread packet, pre-decimalization (which was implemented in 1971)
The amphitheatre through the ages, an excellent illustration by India Hackett covering an entire wall of the exhibition, demonstrating how different periods are captured in the vertical stratigraphy of the site, including a Civil War canon, the tethering stone on the Roman level, flanked by gladiators, and the Iron Age roundhouse and fields being ploughed beneath.
The Chester Amphitheatre exhibition at the Grosvenor Museum runs until 12th July 2026. Access to the exhibition is free of charge. For the Grosvenor Museum’s opening times, see their website for information here: https://grosvenormuseum.westcheshiremuseums.co.uk/
The University of Chester’sVirtual Reality approach to the same amphitheatre site during the Roman period (Our City, Our Story: Deva Victrix in VR), was showcased for the first time on Saturday 23rd May, 11am – 4pm in Exchange Square (Northgate St). Julian Baum and other key members of the project team, were all on hand to provide insights into how visitors of the very near future will be able to interact directly with virtual Romans in a reconstruction of their original setting. Feedback is seen as part of the project design and when people filled in the feedback forms, was very welcome.
Image from the “Our City, Our Story: Deva Victrix in VR” project.
Accuracy has been of great importance to the project. The VR model of the amphitheatre itself, for example, is derived directly from the data unearthed in the excavations that are the subject of the museum’s exhibition and was developed by Julian in conjunction with Tony Wilmott, one of the site’s excavation directors. The animated Roman residents of Deva Victrix, developed by VR company Imito, help to bring the amphitheatre to life, allowing visitors to participate and interact with Roman soldiers and other characters.
Although the museum exhibition and the VR project are separate entities, run by the museum and the university respectively, the two approaches, traditional and virtual, have the potential to work in tandem and to complement each other very well. The current museum exhibition presents the physical and tactile raw data (artefacts and architectural components) and uses interpretation boards to create an empirical understanding of how data is translated into knowledge about the amphitheatre. Nothing can replace artefacts as evocative components of the past, but the information derived from them can be handled in a number of different ways. Although running as a separate project, the VR approach demonstrates the potential for a more interactive and immersive exposure to a vision of the past that allows a relationship with history to be formed, however briefly. The combination of artefacts and displays of the information they impart, supported by immersive experiences, may provide a glimpse of the future of how history could be communicated and how people may begin to explore their past in a variety of different ways.
Julian Baum’s reconstruction of the fortress at Chester and the outer buildings in the mid 3rd Century.
After writing a 4-part series on the 1829 Cheshire Lunatic Asylum (its original 19th century name), which introduced me for the first time to medical history, I became interested in how hospitals other than mental institutions developed in the United Kingdom. This post, offering a brief snapshot of how nursing staff built a sense of professional identity from the 19th century onwards, with particular reference to Chester, followed a visit to the Riverside Museum in Chester with its collection of nursing objects, including a cabinet full of hospital badges.
A brief background to hospital care in Chester
Eye Doctor Stamp from Wroxeter, now in the the Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery. SHYMS A/2008/00133
Medicine in one form or another has always been present. Doctors were in England in the Roman period. A nice example of a Roman emblem of medical authority is an eye doctor’s stamp from the Roman town of Wroxeter near Shrewsbury, now in Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery. Roman doctors and surgeons often treated their patients in the public baths, which were major community gathering places and health facilities but most legionary fortresses would also be equipped with a valetudinarium, a place for those needing help with valetudo (health), an early predecessor of the hospital. In a British legionary fortress this building was usually located opposite the city baths for convenience, but although the Chester (Deva) city baths are known to have been located on the east side of Bridge Street, sadly the valetudinarium has not been definitively located. Tim Strickland suggested, albeit tentatively, that it might be the building found in the 1982 excavations to the east of the barracks, on the west side of Northgate Street, a little way north of today’s Town Hall. This is given support by some fascinating evidence for the presence of medical expertise in that area in the form of two altars dedicated by doctors to suitable deities. Documented as RIB 461 and RIB 3151 they were both inscribed in Greek, implying that the doctors were themselves Greek, and were found on the west side of Northgate Street. Both are now in the Grosvenor Museum, Chester. David Mason offers the alternative suggestion that the traces of primary timber buildings opposite the baths could feasibly be the valetudinarium, but the remains were too meagre for any function to be determined.
Tim Strickland’s reconstruction of the Princess Street Excavations, showing the possible hospital building in the background. Source: Strickland 1982
In the later medieval period, badges and medals were adopted in secular, military and ecclesiastical contexts to identify status, beliefs and achievements. Pilgrims to the St Werburgh shrine, in St Werburgh’s Benedictine Abbey, what is now Chester Cathedral, purchased pilgrim badges not only as souvenirs of their journey, but to identify themselves as actively committed to acts of Christian faith,or in gratitude for prayers being answered. Pilgrimages could be undertaken for a variety of reasons, but a major draw was the possibility of a saint interceding in response to prayers for curing illness or disability. Accumulated badges were attached to clothing and bags. These were of course emblems purchased by the pilgrim. They were not awarded by others to pilgrims in recognition of their devotion, but they communicated a powerful sense of affiliation and achievement.
St Werburgh’s Abbey pilgrim badge. British Museum 1836,0610.73
Chester’s very first infirmary was probably that of the medieval St Werburgh’s Benedictine Abbey, founded in 1092. As with most abbey complexes, the infirmary was a separate building that provided elderly and infirm monks with a more relaxed regime and better food than enjoyed by the rest of the monastic community, but was not necessarily concerned with the most of the market town’s community beyond the monastic walls. The location of the infirmary, which was usually a separate building and often set as one side of a second cloister (square of monastic buildings) is not known, although Alan Thacker suggests it might have been to the east of the surviving cloister.
By contrast, the 12th century St Giles leper colony was dedicated to the care of anyone with the terrible Hansen’s Disease, better known as leprosy, caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae. Like most leper colonies, it was outside the town, located about a mile away from Chester in Boughton. As was traditional with leper hospitals, it was located at a fork in the road, an optimal location for lepers to beg for alms heading into and out of Chester via the Eastgate. It later became more of an almshouse, until it was knocked down at the start of the Civil War in 1643. The remains of the hospital’s cemetery is still visible as a patch of raised grass just beyond the fork where Tarvin Road and Christleton Road split.
Artist’s impression of Birkenhead Priory as it may have looked in the 14th century by E.W. Cox c.1896.
Just outside the city walls, the charitable St John The Baptist Infirmary (known locally as Little St John’s to distinguish it from the Church of St John the Baptist) was established in around 1190 to take care of the elderly and infirm within the town, specializing in the care of the impoverished. Like most hospitals it was equipped with a church and a cemetery. Thirteen beds were reserved for the city’s impoverished, but could take in other patients when capacity permitted. There were always problems with the financial management of the hospital, which R. Stewart-Brown puts down to the policy of renting out the hospital’s properties in return for fixed sums, which could not be adjusted when costs rose. Matters reached a head in February 1315-15 when a public inquiry was held and it was decided to give responsibility to Birkenhead Priory, but this was apparently fairly short-lived. The hospital was demolished in 1644.
In 1510 a charitable bequest from former sheriff Roger Smith founded six almshouses in Commonhall Street, Smith’s former house, together with a chapel. Suffering financial difficulties, it was converted into the Fraternity and Hospital of St Ursula the Virgin. Although it was dissolved in the mid 1500s the almshouse buildings survived until 1871.
1761 Building Royal Infirmary
The Chester Infirmary opened in the mid-1700s after a bequest was left to found a county infirmary specifically to build a hospital for those unable to afford medical care. After an initial period at the Blue Coat School at Northgate, a site was purchased on City Walls Road, and the building was designed by William Yoxall, with its own chapel on the first floor.
In 1766 Dr John Haygarth accepted a position at the Infirmary as a physician, working there until he retired in 1796. His investigative work lead him to become particularly interested in the spread of infections diseases in the poorer parts of the city, establishing a Smallpox Society in 1778. He promoted the control of disease in the community by establishing routines of cleanliness, ventilation and inoculation. The creation of isolation wards in 1783, in response mainly to typhus outbreaks, was an innovation at the Infirmary that was soon adopted by other hospitals. Over the coming years many changes were made to the Infirmary. The Chester Infirmary represented a considerable advance on medieval standards of care, both benefitting from and contributing to medical research and the understanding of infectious diseases.
At the Chester Infirmary, the sisters Frances and Emily Wilbraham and their friend and colleague Emily Ayckbowm demonstrated how women in the late 1800s might be highly active not merely in the care of patients, but in the management of hospitals and the handling of epidemics, building on the work of Florence Nightingale. Colonel Richard Wilbraham, brother of the sisters, had served in Crimea and was a friend of Nightingale’s.
The three major outbreaks of cholera in 1832, 1849 and 1865 stretched the hospital’s resources to the limit and they refused to take cholera patients, requiring isolation hospitals to be set up on vacant land, which were taken down once the worst was over. This was a period when Chester still lacked piped water and insanitary conditions, although being tackled by the authorities, were very common. At the onset of the 1865-66 outbreak of cholera, Frances was instrumental in setting up an isolation hospital in a semi-derelict farm building where the Grosvenor Park is now located, helping to, prepare it for patients, nursing the patients when they arrived, and managing workhouse inmates who were assigned to the infirmary. Frances published a book about her experiences in 1877, “Streets and Lanes of a City,” under the pen-name Amy Dutton. The windows in the chapel built on the first floor of the Royal Infirmary were installed in memory of the Frances and Emily.
Infirmary Chapel Windows. Source: Photograph of first floor landing poster display in the Wheeler Building, University of Chester
The building was expanded and modernized and in 1914 a major refurbishment was accompanied by a new wing with with six additional wards. After being opened by King George V and Queen Mary, it was renamed the Chester Royal Infirmary. In 1948 the hospital was absorbed into the National Health Service. In 1994 it eventually closed, its functions having been taken over by what is now the mammoth Countess of Chester Hospital. The original 1761 building was Grade 2 listed in 1972, and in 1998 was converted for residential use, but the rest was demolished. The building still stands and appears to be in very good condition.
The 1829 Building, built as Cheshire’s first lunatic asylum and now part of the Countess of Chester Hospital
The Countess of Chester Hospital was, until 1968, a mental health hospital. It had been established as the county lunatic asylum in 1829, a progressive institution which, particularly under Thomas Nadauld Brushfield, attempted not merely to confine patients but to understand and treat mental illness. I have written a considerable amount about the lunatic asylum in the 19th century on this blog here. In 1968 it became a general hospital and in 1977 began to expand to become the central general hospital for the region.
The relationship between hospital, lunatic asylum and workhouse (most of which had their own medical wings for inmates) was complicated, but there was increasing recognition that medicine and patient care needed to be both professionalized and standardized. This is first visible in the increasing care invested in new hospital buildings. The architecture of both the Infirmary of 1761 and the Cheshire Lunatic Asylum of 1829 demonstrate the civic pride that lay behind these institutions. The buildings were not merely functional-looking cornflake-box buildings, but imaginative statements of philanthropic commitment, self-confidence and investment in society, as well as representing more than a little self-congratulation. Not all of the nation’s medical institutions were able to put well-meant ideals into practice, but on the whole the Chester medical establishments seem to have had the best of intentions and to have attracted good professional people to head up their medical enterprises.
In the late 19th century the Chester Infirmary began to award a silver medal each year to the best nurse at the Infirmary, recognizing that rewarding high standards was an important part of encouraging improvements in the profession as a whole. In honour of its pioneering physician Dr John Haygarth, it was named the Haygarth Medal, at left. The tradition of awarding badges and medals had a long pedigree in the military and the use of the same idea to recognize achievements and promotions was one of the most important tools used to demonstrate the professionalization of nursing. xxx
The professionalization of nursing and associated symbols of achievement
Original letter written by Florence Nightingale at Baklava to a soldier’s family, preserved at the Riverside Museum, Chester
The best know of the pioneering nurses is Florence Nightingale (1820-1910). She had introduced many important new initiatives, such as providing fresh air, clean conditions, warmth, quiet and a good diet. She recognized that nursing was regarded as little more than domestic service that attracted those without either skills or education, many of whom were very unsuitable. On her return to England, after the war ended in 1856, Nightingale established a school for nurses, funded with public contributions. It opened in 1860, provided year-long training, and was highly selective about the intake of trainees. Interestingly, Nightingale was not in favour of establishing national uniformity in the professional standardization of nursing. Instead, she believed that a letter of recommendation from her training school was sufficient recommendation.
It was another professional nurse, Ethel Gordon Fenwick (1857-1947), a matron of St Bartholomew’s hospital in London, who became one of the principal activists for the standardization of professional training and the introduction of qualifications. Because nursing was the almost exclusive activity of women, the work to professionalize nursing was most often undertaken by female activists in an era long before women had won the right to vote for the first time in 1918. Ethel Gordon Fenwick campaigned for the registration of nurses as a way of establishing universally accepted standards in nursing associated with acknowledged skills and integrity. In 1887 she established the British Nurses Association to campaign for registration, and issued both certificates and badges to nurses who were deemed to have met the Association’s high standards. This was eventually followed in c.1910 by the National Union of Trained Nurses, which again issued certificates and badges. Its badge, in the shape of a star, had the legend , with the legend translated as “per ardua ad astra,” a Latin phrase meaning “through adversity to the stars.”
College of Nursing Badge. Source: Peter’s Nursing Collectibles
Although a pioneer in her own right, Ethel Gordon Fenwick was not alone, and other institutional bodies were set up to push forward registration and standards, often in competition with one another. These different bodies were eventually superseded in 1919 when the Nurses Registration Act was passed and the College of Nursing was established, and the registration of nurses began on 30th September 1921, entitling nurses to refer to themselves as State Registered Nurses (SRNs). Ethel Gordon Fenwick signed the register in that year, becoming the first SRN. This new institution continued the tradition of issuing a badge, which had the initials CN surrounded by the motto “The College of Nursing founded MCMXVI,” accompanied by the emblematic flora of the four nations. It was updated a number of times, notably in 1946 when it was provided with the motto Tradimus Lampada, “We pass on the torch,” a reference to Florence Nightingale and her pioneering work to establish standards in patient care.
Nurses’ badges, which began to be awarded after the middle of the 19th century displayed affiliation to a value system, an ideology, a profession and an institution, whilst at the same time providing a sense of personal achievement and pride. They were also, much like military and ecclesiastical training awards, part of the process of ensuring that nurses adopted not only practical methodologies and procedures, but also particular patterns of behaviour and responsibilities. The messages incorporated into these badges were not only recognized by other health professionals but also provided reassurance to patients and their families. For women, always the minority in professional life up until the mid 20th century, it was an important indication of their increasingly important roles and skills in a medical environment.
Nurse’s uniform on display at the Riverside Museum, Chester
Although by the later 19th century badges of honour and office were already popular, they acquired a new momentum as different segments of society began to recognize the importance of conforming to agreed professional standards at work. Nurses’ uniforms and badges were developed side by side with growing professional standards and the recognition that nurses, delivering hands-on care, required training, examination, and qualifications to ensure that the ever changing medical advances were incorporated into the daily routines of the hospital wards. The development of recognized formal standards and the uniforms and badges that indicated them, gave nursing a new sense of its own professional integrity, and value to society. Nursing badges were adopted by both the state, to recognize national awards, and by individual hospitals to recognize the achievements of their own nurses who had been trained according to that establishment’s own standards and specializations. This introduced some competition between hospitals, as some establishments became more prestigious than others, and issuing badges was a way of attracting nurses who wished to share in that prestige.
Chester Royal Infirmary Training School, combining the Maltese Cross with the wheat sheaf of Chester. Source: Peter’s Nursing Collectibles
State badges were eventually standardized. In 1919 the Nurses Registration Act introduced a single badge for all nurses who qualified, and continued to be a valuable part of a nurse’s uniform for over 70 years. Individual hospital badges continued to be far more eclectic and there are hundreds of styles and shapes of individual hospital badges. There was often a “pinning of the badge” ceremony to mark the transition of a nurse when she had finished her training or passed certain examinations, associating the badge with a sense of ceremony and occasion.
Themes represented on British badges were very varied. Some early examples were based on the Maltese Cross emblem of the Knights of St John. Others had Christian imagery to reflect the nurture, care and charitable character of nursing. Some had heraldic themes. Lamps, referencing Florence Nightingale, were popular. The Rod of Aesculapius is a recurring emblem.
My mother’s Oxford Eye Hospital badge, in the shape of an eye with the emblem in the eye’s pupil, together with her fob watch
Specialist institutions might have imagery showing the nature of the specialization; images of mother-and-child were popular with midwifery, for example. Some simply displayed initials of the institution. Many included a motto around the edge or on the cross-bar. My mother became an ophthalmic nurse at the Oxford Eye Hospital after leaving school, and I still have her nurse’s badge, shown here, in the shape of a human eye with the image of a lamp symbolizing Florence Nightingale at its centre, in the pupil of the eye. The motto that sits along the base of the badge reads “To give light to them that sit in darkness.”
Chester District School of Nursing. Source: Peter’s Nursing Collectibles
In Chester hospitals, the wheat sheaves first associated with the 5th Earl of Chester from the 12th century were popular, such as that from the Chester School of District Nursing shown left and the Chester Royal Infirmary Training School above.
In the 20th century the principal manufacturer of nurses’ badges was Thomas Fattorini, in Birmingham. It is estimated that around 400 different UK nurses badge designs were produced in the 1970s and 80s alone. State badges ceased to be issued in 1983 when statutory bodies were reorganized under a central council. The tradition of issuing hospital badges also began to go into decline when the shift was made from hospital-based training to nursing colleges. Nurses’ badges are now, however, very popular with collectors so although they are now more matters of heritage than ongoing relevance, their survival seems secure. xxx
The reverse side of a Thomas Fattorini Badge made for Oxford Eye Hospital
School of Nursing and Midwifery, Chester. Source: Peter’s Nursing Collectibles.
In conclusion, the professionalization of nursing and the recognition of nurses’ achievements was aided by the deployment of uniforms and badges that indicated the role of the women who wore them, and later men too. These uniforms and badges reflected social reform in which the growing recognition of the role of women outside the home and beyond the menial were increasingly recognized. The badges visibly demonstrated qualifications and abilities to their patients, their colleagues, their managing institutions and to society as a whole, creating a framework of recognition and respect. Perhaps just as importantly it provided the nurses who earned them with a sense of status and self-worth. The badge was not something that a nurse simply wore, but an emblem of honour and achievement indicating a personal commitment and attitude to a vocation involving both practical and book learning in which she not merely participated but in which she had been tested and at which she had excelled.
Photograph of the Chester Royal Infirmary in 1968, together with The Nursing Mirror Pocket Encyclopaedia and Diary. Riverside Museum, Chester.
I have referred to nurses throughout this short piece as female, as most nursers were, for most of nursing history. In mental health institutions male attendants were an absolute necessity for their physical strength rather than their medical skills, working alongside female nurses, but from the mid-19th century, and particularly during the two World Wars, men were serving as medics in first aid and nursing capacities in the military, as part of the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC), often at the front lines. Legal recognition for male nurses in Britain occurred in 1919 with the introduction of the Nurse Registration Act; the first male State Registered Nurses (SRNs) were registered in 1922. The first male SRN was George Dunn of Liverpool who had trained in the RAMC.
The Riverside Museum
Nurses’ badges at the Riverside Museum, Wheeler Building, Chester
The Riverside Museum in Chester contains a rich assortment of items that relate to medicine, nursing, midwifery and related health services. In one display cabinet there are numerous nursing badges. They all come from Chester, the Wirral and elsewhere in the region, and they are all different shapes, sizes and colours with different motifs. Based on the model of military uniforms and medals, the nurses’ uniforms and state-awarded badges were intended to identify nurses as fully trained and qualified health professionals. Other badges additionally identified specific hospitals and specializations. The emblems, badges and uniforms formed a symbolic representation of skill, status and role within the healthcare community.
Riverside Museum
What is clear from the Riverside Museum is that as well as badges and uniforms, nurses had a plethora of written material to support them – pamphlets, handbooks, mini encyclopaedias and, later, textbooks. As well as used as training materials, they continued to be valuable for reference on the job, and new volumes helped to keep nurses up to date with the latest techniques and practices. These demonstrate not merely the standard that the nurses reached, but also the commitment to ongoing improvement.
If you have not heard of the Riverside Museum, it is probably because of its opening times. The museum is run by volunteers and its opening times are confined to once a month during term time, and on certain days during the Chester Heritage Festival and the Festival of Ideas. You can find their opening times for 2026 here.
School of Nursing and Midwifery. University College Chester. Source: Peter’s Nursing Collectibles.
Do note that the opening times usually coincide with a free lecture series organized by the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Society Historical Society, also listed on the link above. These lectures are excellent, and it is well worth planning to combine a visit to the museum with attendance of a lecture. The Museum also accepts group bookings for six or more people by arrangement. The museum is located in the Wheeler Building, which was the former County Hall, the Cheshire County Council headquarters building. It sits on the northern bank of the Dee between the 14th century Old Chester Bridge and the 1832 Grosvenor bridge, overlooking the river. A map is available at the bottom of the Wheeler Building’s web page here.
Chester Royal Infirmary prize medals, both engraved to Nurse M. Dallimore in 1940. Source: Peter’s Nursing Collectibles
Sources:
Books and Papers
Barrow, J.S., J.D. Herson, A.H. Lawes, P.J. Riden, M.V. J. Seaborne 2005. Local government and public services: Medical services. In A.T. Thacker and C.P. Lewis (eds.) A History of the County of Chester: Volume 5 Part 2, the City of Chester: Culture, Buildings, Institutions. British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/ches/vol5/pt2/pp49-58
In April there are bluebells, celandines and wood anemones, and to keep the scrub down there are small herds of black sheep (Soay and Hebridean crosses) roaming the banks and ditches. On my visit this August, just a few days ago, the long-term drought had left everything incredibly parched, and the plateau grass had died off. Some of the young trees and shrubs were in fruit with red hawthorn berries, blackberries and dark purple alder berries. There had obviously been rosebay willowherb recently in flower, with its fluffy seeds catching the sun, and some gigantic thistles had recently gone over. Otherwise, it was the bracken that was winning the fight against the drought, in spite of a fine herd of attractive black sheep.
If you are looking for a great place for a short walk that focuses on a splendidly impressive and nationally important site, this should not be missed. The walk can be extended via other footpaths, or can be combined with a visit to Oswestry itself, which is a very attractive market town. You can download the Visit Oswestry’s Heritage Trail here.
There are plenty of well thought out information signs along the course of the west entrance as well as on the footpath around the top, providing details about the archaeology and history of the site.
Based in Churton 
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