We are now descending Lower Bridge Street, which abounds, on either side, with those queer-looking tenements, not to be met with in such numbers and variety in any other city but Chester. Here is one with the date 1603, evidently the residence, in its earliest days, of some Cestrian magnate long since “returned to his dust.”
But see! yonder rattles a bus, with a party from the station, down to that first-class establishment, the Albion Hotel. This house has no superior in the city; for while of handsome external proportions, its interior arrangements have all been conceived with especial regard to the comfort and convenience of visitors. The Assembly Room is the largest in the city; the other rooms are light and lofty; in short, under the zealous superintendence of Mr. and Mrs. Chambers, none who once make acquaintance with the Albion will ever sigh for better or more comfortable quarters. Behind the Hotel are extensive pleasure-grounds, as well as a verdant and spacious Bowling-green, to which there is a carriage entrance from Park Street.
Only a step or two from the Albion, and on the same side, near the residence of Mr. Snape, the eminent dentist, is St. Olave’s Lane, so named from the Lilliputian church, dedicated to that saint, at its south-west corner. This Church dates back earlier than the Conquest. The advowson in the eleventh century was vested in the Botelers or Butlers; from whom it passed by gift of Richard Pincerna, in 1101, to the Abbey of St. Werburgh. St. Olave’s appears to have been always “in low water,” a starving rather than a living; for in 1393, on account of its poverty, the parish was temporarily united with St. Mary’s. Down to the seventeenth century, however, it eked out a precarious existence; but after the close of the civil war, the ordinary services of the church were discontinued for about a century; when they were again resumed, until the final extinction of St. Olave’s as a distinct parish, in 1841. In that year the Church was finally closed, and the parish united to that of St. Michael. The “powers that be” are fast allowing this ancient structure to develop into a ruin.
Opposite to St. Olave’s is Castle Street; beyond which, up a flight of steps, is a large tenement, of late years known as the Boarding-School Yard. This was in the seventeenth century the mansion-house of the Gamulls, a worthy Cheshire family; and here, on September 27, 1645, Sir Francis Gamull (Mayor of Chester in 1634) lodged and entertained Charles I. on his Majesty’s visit to Chester during the great Civil War. The house is now divided into tenements; but several of the rooms still retain evidence of their original splendour.
Still farther down, we have upon the left Duke Street, and on the right Shipgate Street, through which, in old time, the citizens used to pass by way of the Ship Gate, across the river, into Handbridge. It leads also to St. Mary’s Hill; on the summit of which, half-embowered in trees, we are introduced to the ancient Church of St. Mary.
St. Mary’s Church is in all probability of Norman foundation; and is in old writings termed indifferently St. Mary’s of the Castle, and St. Mary’s upon the Hill, to distinguish it from the handsome Church of the White Friars, which was also dedicated to that saint. Randle Gernons, fourth earl of Chester, presented the advowson to the Monastery of St. Werburgh; but shortly after the dissolution it was wrested from the dean and chapter by that rapacious spoiler of churches and religious houses, Sir R. Cotton, who afterwards sold it for 100l. to John Brereton of Wettenhall. In this family it continued for about a century, when it passed by purchase to the Wilbrahams of Dorfold. From them it came by marriage to the Hills of Hough, whose representative sold it to the father of the present Marquis of Westminster. Of no external beauty, with a tower of miserably stunted proportions (so built in 1715, in order that it might not overlook the Castle), St. Mary’s Church is nevertheless well deserving a visit from all lovers of true ecclesiastical order. Here is a Church which, when we first remember it, was a disgrace alike to the authorities and to the parish—choked up with galleries of hideous shape and size—disfigured with pews of unsightly construction,—the walls and ceilings buried in plaster, whitewash, and dust, and the monuments and windows all alike in a state of ruin and decay. Let us step into the Church, and survey the change which has been effected within a few short years. We are no sooner inside, than we are at once convinced that this is indeed the House of God, gradually, and, under the auspices of the present worthy rector, judiciously returning to its first estate, as a seemly temple, worthy of the Most High. Here is none of that venerable dust, that insidious mould, so painfully visible in other churches we might mention; but everything we see, from the floor to the ceiling, from the altar to the organ, is both correct in taste, scrupulously clean, and in most beautiful, Church-like order. The Church consists of a nave, with a clerestory of twelve lights, and a handsome panelled roof adorned with Christian monograms and devices,—two side aisles,—two chancel chapels, named respectively Troutbeck’s and St. Catherine’s,—and a spacious chancel, in which are some elaborately carved stalls and open seats. So rapidly as stolid prejudice will admit, this uniform style of seat will be adopted throughout the Church.
The monuments within the Church are of considerable interest. One there is, in the north aisle, profuse in heraldic display, to the imperishable memory of the four Randal Holmes, local antiquaries and heralds of considerable note, whose united Cheshire collections fill more than 250 MS. volumes in the British Museum. The third Randal was the author of that extraordinary and scarce heraldic work,—the “Academy of Armory” published in 1688. An elegant modern brass, and two altar-tombs of curious workmanship, adorn St. Catherine’s Chapel, at the end of this aisle. One of the latter remembers Thomas Gamull, Recorder of Chester in 1613, son of Edmund Gamull, aforetime Mayor of Chester, and father of the celebrated royalist Sir Francis Gamull, who suffered sequestration of his estates during the Usurpation. The recumbent figures of the Recorder and his wife Alice appear upon the tomb; and at the feet of the lady kneels their infant son, afterwards the loyal Sir Francis Gamull. Their three infant daughters, holding skulls in their hands, and two elaborate shields of arms, ornament the side of the tomb. A similar tomb near bears the half-recumbent effigy of Philip Oldfield of Bradwall, dressed in the costume of the period, with a long gown and ruff, and a roll in his left hand. The figures of his four sons, each bearing a shield of arms, support the slab on which he leans, and between them a painted skeleton, in a similar attitude to the effigy, appears on the side of the tomb. Two daughters kneel at his head, and these also bear shields, in token of their marriage. Both these monuments are deserving the attention of the curious.
One of the north windows, by the side of these relics, is filled with stained glass. The east window also of this aisle, attracting the eye of the visitor the moment he enters, has just been adorned with an obituary memorial of intense national interest. Erected by public subscription, this window commemorates the glorious deeds of the gallant 23rd Regiment (Royal Welsh Fusileers) at the battles of Alma, Inkermann, and Sebastopol in 1854–5. The 23rd is a regiment highly esteemed by the Cestrians, nay, almost regarded by them as their own; and most of those brave spirits, officers and men, who nobly fell “with their faces to the foe” on those hard-won fields, had but a few months before regularly attended divine service at St. Mary’s Church. The subject represented in the window is Aaron and Hur holding up the hands of Moses, while the patriarch blesses the warring hosts of Israel; for as we read, in Exodus xvii. ver. 11, 12, “Moses’ hands were heavy, and Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other; for it came to pass, that when Moses held up his hands Israel prevailed, and when his hands fell down, Amalek prevailed.” It is a pretty and appropriate subject for such a memorial as this, implying the Christian Soldier’s dependence upon the God of Battles!
The chancel, and Troutbeck chapel in the south aisle, also contain some tasteful and appropriate painted windows, ancient and modern; and on the south wall of the latter were discovered, a few years ago, some curious remains of ancient mural painting, representing the Crucifixion and Resurrection in curious juxtaposition with the figures of a King, a Bishop, and the red and white roses of York and Lancaster. The many beautiful monuments once embellishing the Troutbeck aisle were destroyed by the falling in of the roof in 1660. In bidding adieu to the church of St. Mary the Virgin, we may confidently assert that “ne vile fano” is the motto of Mr. Massie, the present rector, [77] for a neater and better ordered church we have not yet met with in our tour through the city.