The Stranger's Handbook to Chester and Its Environs / Containing a short sketch of its history and antiquities, a descriptive walk round the walls, and a visit to the cathedral, castle, and Eaton Hall.

by Thomas Hughes

Returning to the north walk, we pass thence, under a richly ornamented arch, into another apartment on the right hand, now and for three centuries past occupied as the Grammar School of the Cathedral. Few portions of the conventual buildings are so little known to visitors as the one we are now entering,—few will so amply repay their inspection as will this, the ancient Refectory of this once famous Monastery. Time was,

And a gay time it was then, O!

when this noble apartment, the Frater House of the Abbey, re-echoed with the sounds of feast and revelry,—when the monks of St. Werburgh, and their privileged friends, discussed, in joyous mood, the good things of this life, dished up to them from the kitchens and buttery of the Abbey. Fancy how the tables groaned with the savoury venison and other titbits from the granges of the abbot,—with the products of their favourite kaleyards and fisheries,—and their wines and liquors brought from beyond sea,—and say, if you think these degenerate times can show aught to equal those palmy days! After all, though

Many have told of the monks of old,
What a saintly race they were;
Yet ’tis most true that a merrier crew
Could scarce be found elsewhere.
For they sang and laughed,
And the rich wine quaffed,
And lived on the daintiest fare.

And the Abbot meek, with his form so sleek,
Was the heartiest of them all,
And would take his place, with a smiling face,
When the Refectory bell would call;
And they sang and laughed,
And the rich wine quaffed,
Till they shook the olden hall!

Say what you will of the austerities supposed to belong to the monastic life, those recluses of old lived a life as jolly, as careless, and as free, as the gayest of us in this 19th century! Yonder, at the head of that staircased recess in the south wall, is the ancient Oratory, from which one of the ‘knights of the cowl’ daily ‘said grace,’ and pronounced a classic oration, while his brethren were at meals in the spacious hall beneath him. Oh, what a sight for carnal eyes like his to dwell and gloat upon! But we must not soliloquise. The Fratry, or Refectory, in the days we are describing, was of nobler dimensions even than now; for it then extended some twenty or thirty feet farther westward, and was doubtless shorn of its fair proportions at the time the present road was constructed from the Abbey Square. This room, which is 98 feet long and 34 feet high, has a range of six pointed windows on the one side, and four on the other, and had once an eastern lancet-shaped window of considerable beauty. Of the window of the present day we forbear to speak; simply let us hope that the hour is at hand, when so hideous an abortion of all that is “chaste and beautiful in art” shall vanish from the scene, and be replaced by a window worthy of the apartment it was meant to adorn! The steps leading up to the Oratory communicated originally with the Dormitory of the Abbey, which prior to the present century occupied the higher range of the eastern cloister, but has now entirely disappeared.

At the Reformation, when King Henry VIII. transformed the Abbey into a Cathedral, he founded here, in the thirty-sixth year of his reign, a Grammar School for twenty-four boys, and endowed it with a Head Master, and numerous privileges, some of which it was our lot, twenty years ago, personally to share. The history of the School, and of the many Cheshire worthies educated within its walls, would furnish matter for a distinct treatise, and it is not improbable that such may one day appear from our humble pen. For the present, then, we will retire from this scene of our boyhood’s delight, and ascending the range of steps near the entrance door, emerge from the “bosom of our spiritual mother” at a point very close to the head of Abbey Street.

CHAPTER IX.

Abbey Square, Deanery, and Palace.—The Abbey Gates.—Chester Markets, and Abbot’s Fair.—Northgate, and old City Gaol.—St. John’s Hospital and Blue School.—Newtown, and Christ Church.—Railway Tunnel.—St. Thomas’ Chapel.—Training College.

The smell of sanctity yet fresh upon us, let us now continue, as best we may, our peregrinations northward.

Yonder, at the lower end of this Street, we catch a glimpse of the Walls; and, turning ourselves about, take a rapid look at Abbey Square (the only Square old Chester can boast!) with its Deanery and Bishop’s Palace,—the former occupying the site of the ancient Chapel of St. Thomas, nay, resting indeed on the foundations of that sacred edifice. The latter is a gloomy-looking pile of red sandstone, erected by Bishop Keene in 1753; but within it have resided as goodly a fellowship of mitred heads as ever graced the episcopal bench. Markham, Porteus, Cleaver, Law, Blomfield, Sumner, and last not least, Graham, our present amiable diocesan, have each in turn found here their house and home.