The Rows.
Very curious are these old arcades, which are as interesting to the antiquarian as they are convenient for a quiet lounge to ladies and others engaged in shopping. They occupy the greatest part of both sides of Eastgate-street, and the upper parts of both sides of Watergate-street and Bridge-street. Those in Northgate-street are more irregular, only one side, commonly called Shoemakers’-row, being used as a regular thoroughfare. Their appearance, both interior and exterior, is extremely singular. They form a gallery, occupying the front floor of each house, parallel with the streets below, and are approached by flights of steps, placed at convenient distances, in addition to those by which they are entered and quitted at each end. The passenger walks over the shops on a level with the street, and under the first floor of the dwelling-houses; and thus two lines of shops are erected in one front. The rows are kept in excellent repair, and form the chief promenade of the citizens. To strangers they cannot fail to prove an object of curiosity. The shops in the rows are generally considered the best situations for retail traders; but those on the southern side of Eastgate-street and the eastern side of Bridge-street have a decided preference. Shops let here at high rents, and are in never-failing request; and there are no parts of the city which have undergone such rapid or extensive improvements.
In the sixteenth century the rows appear not to have exceeded 6 feet in height and 10 in width, with clumsy wooden rails towards the street, and large oaken pillars, supporting transverse beams and brackets, on which rested the houses over head, formed of wood and plaster, so far overhanging the street, that in some places the upper floors of opposite houses nearly met. Nearly the whole of the buildings of this description are now taken down; and in rebuilding care has been taken to raise and widen the rows, and to place iron railings towards the street in place of the wooden posts formerly used. The shops in the rows present a very different appearance to that of about sixty years ago; then, as Hemingway says, “the fronts were all open to the row in two or three compartments, according to their size; and at night were closed by large hanging shutters fixed on hinges, and fastened in the daytime by hooks to the ceiling of the row.” At present these rows are “capable of supplying all the real demands of convenience and the artificial calls of luxury, mental and corporeal, presenting a cluster of drapers, clothiers, jewellers, booksellers, &c., as respectable as the kingdom can produce.” [50] The origin and cause of the rows has furnished matter for much curious investigation; and many conflicting conjectures have been propounded respecting them. The subject is involved in much obscurity; and, in the absence of any positive data, we are not able to take higher ground than the probabilities of the case. It has been alleged that they were originally used as places of defence, from whence to annoy and repulse the assaults of the enemy, who might gain entrance into the streets beneath by surprising the gates, during those remote ages when Chester was subject to the sudden incursions of the Welsh. But against this opinion it may be urged, that in no one of their attacks upon this city did the Welsh ever force their way within the gates or walls; so that these latter, being proved by experience to be a sufficient bulwark against our foes, there existed no necessity for the erection of any further defences. There is irrefragable evidence that the form of the city is Roman, and that the walls were the work of that people; and the same reasons which justify these conclusions are not less cogent for presuming that the construction of the streets are Roman also. Pennant appears to have arrived at this conclusion:—he says, “These rows appear to me to have been the same with the ancient vestibules, and to have been a form of building preserved from the time that the city was possessed by the Romans. They were built before the doors, midway between the streets and the houses, and were the places where dependants waited for the coming out of their patrons, and under which they might walk away the tedious minutes of expectation. Plautus, in the 3rd act of his Mostella, describes both their station and use. The shops beneath the rows were the Cryptæ and Apothecæ, magazines for the various necessaries of the owners of the houses.”
Ormerod says that some of these crypts exhibit specimens of vaulting equal to the cloisters of our Cathedral.
Camden, in describing Chester, says, “The houses are very fair built, and along the chief streets are galleries or walking places they call rows, having shops on both sides, through which a man may walk dry from one end to the other.” And Shukeley, in his ‘Itinerary,’ in 1724, says, “The rows or piazzas are singular through the whole town, giving shelter to foot people. I fancied it a remain of the Roman porticoes.”
In the oldest histories, descriptive of the city in some form or other, the elevated rows and the shops beneath are recognized.
Tacitus, “in describing the process by which Roman manners diffused themselves throughout Britain, and gradually completed the subjugation of the country, speaks of the natives of Britain as acquiring a taste for the two leading features in Roman civilization, ‘Porticus and Balnea,’—the portico, in which they were delighted to stroll and sun themselves; and the baths, which were their national luxury. He mentions these, and we cannot but be struck by the coincidence with things with which we are all familiar—the rows of our ancient city, and the Hypocaust, which is still shown as the Roman bath. We are hereby led to infer, that the mode of construction which gives the character to our city, originated in Roman habits.” [51]