Onward we go, until an open space upon our left introduces us to the Market-Place of Chester’s famed city. The market for vegetables is held in this area, with no other covering save the “bright blue sky;” but the sale of fish is conducted in that airy looking building, which occupies, we will not say adorns, the lower end of the Market-Place.
But what is yon new-looking structure, overlooking the Marketplace? New, did you say? Why, it is not very far from a couple of hundred years since that building, the Exchange, first delighted the eyes of the old-fashioned citizens. True, the stone-work has been lately restored, and the bricks newly pointed; but practically this is the same Exchange which, in 1698, was completed at a cost of 1000l.,—Roger Whitley, the then Mayor, being a large contributor. The statue embellishing yonder niche on the south front is a graceful representation of Queen Anne, of glorious memory, in her coronation robes,—a work which must have emanated from no mean chisel. The superstructure of the Exchange stood originally upon four rows of stone columns, the ground floor being otherwise entirely open; but in 1756, just a hundred years ago, owing to some well-grounded fears for the safety of the structure, the lower tiers of shops, &c., were erected, as an extra support to the fabric; the greater portion of these are now occupied as police-offices, lock-ups, &c. On the higher story are the Assembly Room, the Pentice or Council Chamber, and the spacious Town Hall. The Assembly Room was a popular resort in the last generation, when corporation feasts, redolent of venison and primest turtle, were perpetually being discussed there; but it is many a long day since these savoury viands graced the aldermanic board. Oh, for the good old days! The winter Assemblies, too, wont to be held here, are now transferred to more congenial quarters at the Royal Hotel. The Town Hall, which is the Common Hall of the city, is a noble apartment, the walls ornamented with full-length portraits of numerous city notables, among whom figure Recorders Townsend, Leycester, Comberbach, and Williams; and Sirs Henry Bunbury, and John Egerton, members for the city, of eminence in their day. Here are held the Quarter Sessions for the city, official public meetings, and the Elections for the city representatives in parliament. Immediately beyond this room is the Pentice or Council Chamber, where the mayor and magistrates settle the accounts of the drunk and disorderly, and take preliminary depositions in cases of felony, &c. This room, in which the Mayor is also annually chosen by the Council, has on its walls full-length portraits of George III., several members of the Grosvenor family, and of William Cross, Esq., the first Reform Mayor of Chester. Yonder series of large panels, contain portraits of Owen Jones, Offley, and other famous benefactors to the poor of the city. In a room in Abbey Square, the City Records, extending from the reign of the first Edward to the present time, are wretchedly huddled together—we wish we could say preserved; but surely the day is not far distant when a custodian of these important documents shall be appointed by the Council,—one who shall not only understand, but also glorify his office; then will many a dark epoch in the city’s history be unravelled, and many a fact revealed which now lies hidden in the dust of obscurity.
Opposite to the Exchange is Saint Werburgh Street, down which we must straightway roam, having a glorious treat awaiting us, in our long-promised visit to Chester Cathedral.
But before we set foot within the sacred fane, let us proceed a little further, in order to examine yonder stately-looking pile, only just completed,—to wit, the New Music Hall. Perhaps no structure within the city has undergone greater or more numerous changes of character than the shell of the one we are now surveying. The first we hear of it is as the Chapel of St. Nicholas, built, it is supposed, early in the fourteenth century. About this time, we read that the monks of St. Werburgh (monks were greedy dogs!), wishing to have the whole Cathedral to themselves, transferred the parish Church of St. Oswald, then as now occupying the south transept of the Cathedral, to this Chapel of St. Nicholas, which latter had perhaps been built with that idea “looming in the future.” But the parishioners and corporation repudiated the change, and after much litigation recovered their old parish Church,—so the chapel of St. Nicholas was speedily deserted. After being “to let” for some fifty or sixty years, we next hear of it as the Common Hall of the city, removed here from Common-hall Street in 1545. In this service it remained, the arena of law, if not of justice (for the two do not always go hand in hand), until 1698, when the magisterial chair was removed to its present resting-place in the Exchange. The third phase in its existence was its conversion into the warehouse of a common carrier, and into a mart for the sale of wool; the name it then bore was the Wool Hall. Again was St. Nicholas the victim of transformation; for, at least as early as the year 1727, the walls, which once echoed forth the sounds of prayer and praise, were made to ring with the ribald jests of a common playhouse. Thirty years afterwards, there were two Theatres open at one time in Chester,—one here, and the other at the Tennis Court in Foregate Street; but about 1768, the latter establishment was closed up, and its “galaxy of talent” transferred to the Wool Hall. In 1777, the necessary patent from the crown was obtained for the licensing of the premises, and the Wool Hall forthwith developed into a Theatre Royal. We will not stay to run over the numerous “stars” which have from time to time graced this theatrical firmament; it is enough to know that this “light of other days has faded” away, and that, so far as this building is concerned, the Chester Theatre exists only as matter of history. In 1854–5, the Theatre was wholly obliterated, and the building in great part taken down; but the massive buttresses and sidelight arches of the original ecclesiastical structure were suffered to remain, and are yet plainly visible upon the north and south sides of the building. And now comes the last scene of the drama,—the scene we are now contemplating. On the ruins of the fallen Theatre, and on the foundation walls of the ancient Chapel of St. Nicholas, modern enterprise has raised a pile more in unison with its first estate, and far more worthy its close proximity to the Cathedral,—the New Music Hall. The Hall has been erected from the designs of Mr. James Harrison, architect, whose other important works about the city we have already noticed. Its peculiar position, beset with heavy private buildings on three of its sides, prevented much attention being paid to the exterior; but the east front, being comparatively free, has afforded Mr. Harrison an opportunity for displaying his professional skill. Seen from the other end of St. Werburgh’s Place, the handsome Tudor windows and porch of this front have a rich and truly picturesque effect; our artist, however, has chosen a nearer view, in order to give strength and definition to his sketch. In addition to a refreshment room, ladies’ waiting and retiring rooms, and other offices, the interior presents to us a large and noble hall, 108 feet long, 40 feet wide, and 50 feet high, capable, with its two handsome galleries, of accommodating an audience of 1400 people. Its spacious orchestra, adorned with an organ of superior excellence, by Jackson, has ample room for 250 performers. The neatly panelled roof, resting upon shafted cross-beams tastefully ornamented, gives to the Chester Music Hall a richness and elegance wholly unapproached by any similar room in the city. The Hall is, in every respect, a credit alike to the architect and to the city; and it is not too much to add that Mr. J. D. Williams, the builder and decorator of the structure, has done his part of the work faithfully and well. One man only was killed during the progress of the works, by an accidental fall from the ceiling of the Hall. It was opened Nov. 26, 1855, with a grand concert, at which Clara Novello and others officiated.
And now for our long-deferred visit to the venerable Cathedral. Turning aside from the Music Hall, we pass a small gate, and are at once in close communion with the south-west side of this massive structure. We can see from this point, distinctly enough, the ancient cruciform character of the edifice, that fittest symbolical form of a Christian Church; the east end forming the choir and Lady Chapel,—the south transept the Parish Church of St. Oswald,—the north transept almost unappropriated,—and the west end the nave, into which latter we are now passing through a rich and handsome Tudor porch. And here let us observe that, as our knowledge of architectural detail is unhappily small, we must rely for our descriptions on the “dogmatic teaching” of other and abler heads. But first a word or two on the foundation and history of this fine old Cathedral.
Tradition avers that under the imperial dominion of pagan Rome, a temple, dedicated to Apollo, occupied the spot now consecrated to the Triune God; and that this temple had itself supplanted a still older fane of the superstitious Druids. However this may be, it is an historical fact, amply corroborated, that Wulpherus, King of the Mercians, who flourished about A.D. 660, and Ermenilde, his queen, perceiving the attachment of their daughter, St. Werburgh, to a religious life, built an Abbey at Chester, for her and such other pious ladies who should, in like manner, prefer a conventual life. To St. Peter and St. Paul this Saxon Abbey was dedicated. St. Werburgh, being prioress or patron of three Abbeys—Chester, Trentham, and Hanbury—died and was buried in the latter edifice; but owing to the threatened incursions of the Danes, her sacred relics were thence removed, two hundred years afterwards, to Chester, for greater security, and lodged in the Abbey her royal father had founded in her honour. About 907, Ethelfleda, Countess of Mercia, erected on the same site a nobler Abbey, dedicated to her whose shrine then rested there—the immaculate St. Werburgh. Thus matters remained for nearly two centuries, when Earl Hugh Lupus, nephew and favourite of the Conqueror, having lived a life of debauchery and excess, compounded for his sins by the erection of an edifice larger and more splendid than the last, founding there a Monastery of St. Bennet’s order, under the superintendence of Anselm, then abbot of Bec, in Normandy, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. A day or two before his death, Earl Hugh was shorn a monk of the Abbey his own remorseful bounty had founded. Immense possessions accrued to the Abbey, both from Hugh Lupus, the founder, and from his successors in the earldom. Early in the reign of Edward I., and in the abbacy of Simon de Albo Monasterio (Whitchurch), the rebuilding of the Abbey was commenced. It continued slowly to progress, under succeeding abbots, for about two hundred years, and until Abbot Simon Ripley virtually completed, in 1492, the erection of the Cathedral as we see it in the present day. Only fifty years afterwards, the foul blast of destruction fell like an avalanche upon the monastic institutions of Britain—Chester among the number. Bluff King Hal, that shameless polygamist, in a fit of pretended religious zeal, dissolved all these fraternities, and, pocketing the spoil, dealt out their lands to his creatures with right royal munificence. True, he left us the shell, in his new foundation of a Cathedral and Chapter; but he gulped up the kernel in the shape of the manorial possessions of the Abbey. John Bird was the first peculiar Bishop of Chester; and Thomas Clarke transposed himself from the last Romanist Abbot to the first Protestant Dean of Chester.
Entering the Cathedral by the South Porch, we find ourselves in the Nave, and close to a lofty chamber now used as the Consistory Court. Here are tried, before the chancellor of the diocese, the validity or otherwise of disputed wills, actions for slander, and other causes falling within the province of ecclesiastical law. Beyond, and to the left of this Court, near the baptismal font, is the great West Entrance of the Cathedral, built during the energetic rule of the Abbot Simon Ripley. It was the design of Ripley to erect two massive towers at this end of the Cathedral, and the foundations of these towers are still existing there; but owing to an unexpected “fall in the funds,” or to some other cause, the original intention was never carried out.