The sacred edifice has from time to time undergone extensive reparations.
As a port Chester was at one time most important, but through the silting up of the Channel in the fifteenth century, it lost a considerable amount of its shipping trade. In spite of the Channel being deepened in 1824, its shipping prosperity cannot be said to have advanced hand in hand with the progress of the city, though it possibly may be greater than it was in the fifteenth century.
The great Chester Canal comes from Nantwich, passes through Chester, and merges into the Ellesmere Canal, which winds up northwards to the river Mersey. Thus the city is connected with Liverpool.
As the crow flies, the country traversed from London to Chester is most interesting. The track passes through the counties of Middlesex, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire, Warwickshire, with its famous towns, Stratford-on-Avon, the birthplace of Shakespeare, and Coventry, through Staffordshire, famous for its beautiful old china and its Cathedral at Lichfield, and finally into Cheshire, the county containing Chester and Northwich.
Among the many eminent men born at Chester was Randolph Caldecott, in 1846. He is handed down to posterity as the famous illustrator of the works of Washington Irving. But the achievement that gained him the greatest acclame was a series of coloured books for children. They began in 1878 with "John Gilpin" and "The House that Jack Built," and ended the year before his death, in 1886, with the "Elegy on Madame Blaize" and "The Great Panjandrum Himself." In the crypt of St. Paul's, London, his memory is perpetuated through the great artistic expression of a brother artist, Alfred Gilbert, R. A.
Thus, in this brief sketch, an attempt has been made to give a categorical history of one of England's most ancient cities from its earliest occupation by the British Cornavii, and its subsequent events down to the royal visit in 1869 by the then Prince of Wales, now our King Edward VII., on which occasion he opened the new townhall. It would require far greater space to record every feature of interest in connection with Chester than can be allotted within the present limitations. To the antiquarian Chester furnishes a most interesting and absorbing study, and will in all likelihood continue to do so for many years to come yet.
To those interested in horse-racing the fine race-course attracts annually a great concourse to Chester.
Roucestre.
("Doomsday Book.")