CHESTER-LE-STREET, a town in the Chester-le-Street parliamentary division of Durham, England, near the river Wear, 6 m. N. of the city of Durham on the North-Eastern railway. Pop. (1901) 11,753. The parish church of St Mary and St Cuthbert is an interesting building, formerly collegiate, with a tower 156 ft. high, and a remarkable series of monumental tombs of the Lumley family, collected here from Durham cathedral and various ruined monasteries, and in some cases remade. About 1 m. along the river is Lumley Castle, the seat of the earl of Scarborough, and about 2 m. north lies Lambton Castle, the residence of the earl of Durham, built in 1797 on the site of the old House of Harraton. Collieries and iron-works employ the industrial population. Chester-le-Street is a place of considerable antiquity. It lies on a branch of the Roman north road, on which it was a station, but the name is not known. Under the name of Cunecastre it was made the seat of a bishop in 882, and continued to be the head of the diocese till the Danish invasion of 995. During that time the church was the repository of the shrine of St Cuthbert, which was then removed to Durham.
CHESTERTON, GILBERT KEITH (1874- ), English journalist and author, who came of a family of estate-agents, was born in London on the 29th of May 1874. He was educated at St Paul’s school, which he left in 1891 with the idea of studying art. But his natural bent was literary, and he devoted himself mainly to cultivating that means of expression, both in prose and verse; he did occasional reviewing, and had some experience in a publisher’s office. In 1900, having already produced a volume of clever poems, The Wild Knight, he definitely took to journalism as a career, and became a regular contributor of signed articles to the Liberal journals, the Speaker and Daily News. He established himself from the first as a writer with a distinct personality, combative to a swashbuckling degree, unconventional and dogmatic; and the republication of much of his work in a series of volumes (e.g. Twelve Types, Heretics, Orthodoxy), characterized by much acuteness of criticism, a pungent style, and the capacity of laying down the law with unflagging impetuosity and humour, enhanced his reputation. His powers as a writer are best shown in his studies of Browning (in the “English Men of Letters” series) and of Dickens; but these were only rather more ambitious essays among a medley of characteristic utterances, ranging from fiction (including The Napoleon of Notting-hill) to fugitive verse, and from artistic criticism to discussions of ethics and religion. The interest excited by his work and views was indicated and analysed in an anonymous volume (G.K. Chesterton: a Criticism) published in 1908.
CHESTERTON, an urban district in the Chesterton parliamentary division of Cambridgeshire, England, 1½ m. N. from Cambridge station, on the north bank of the Cam. Pop. (1901) 9591. The church of St Andrew is Decorated and Perpendicular, retaining ancient woodwork and remains of fresco painting. Along the river are several boat-houses erected by the Cambridge University Boat Club. Boat-building and tile manufacture are local industries.
CHESTNUT (nux Castanea), the common name given to two sorts of trees and their fruit, (1) the so-called “horse-chestnut,” and (2) the sweet or “Spanish” chestnut.
(1) The common horse-chestnut, Aesculus Hippocastanum (Ger. Rosskastanie; Fr. marronnier d’Inde), has been stated to be a native of Tibet, and to have been brought thence to England in 1550; it is now, however, thought to be indigenous in the mountains of northern Greece, where it occurs wild at 3000 to 4000 ft. above sea-level. Matthiolus, who attributes the origin of the name of the tree to the use of the nuts by the inhabitants of Constantinople for the relief of short-windedness and cough in horses, remarks that no ancient writer appears to have made mention of the horse-chestnut. Clusius (Rariorum plantarum hist. i. p. 8, 1601) describes it as a vegetable curiosity, of which in 1588 he had left in Vienna a living specimen, but of which he had not yet seen either the flowers or recent fruit. The dry fruit, he says, had frequently been brought from Constantinople into Europe.
The tree grows rapidly; it flourishes best in a sandy, somewhat moist loam, and attains a height of 50 to 60 or more ft., assuming a pyramidal outline. Its boughs are strong and spreading. The buds, conspicuous for their size, are protected by a coat of a glutinous substance, which is impervious to water; in spring this melts, and the bud-scales are then cast off. The leaves are composed of seven radiating leaflets (long-wedge-shaped); when young they are downy and drooping. From the early date of its leafing year by year, a horse-chestnut in the Tuileries is known as the “Marronnier du 20 mars.” The flowers of the horse-chestnut, which are white dashed with red and yellow, appear in May, and sometimes, but quite exceptionally, again in autumn; they form a handsome erect panicle, but comparatively few of them afford mature fruit. The fruit is ripe in or shortly before the first week in October, when it falls to the ground, and the three-valved thorny capsule divides, disclosing the brown and at first beautifully glossy seeds, the so-called nuts, having a resemblance to sweet chestnuts, and commonly three or else two in number. For propagation of the tree, the seeds may be sown either when fresh, or, if preserved in sand or earth, in spring. Drying by exposure to the air for a month has been found to prevent their germination. Rooks are wont to remove the nuts from the tree just before they fall, and to disperse them in various directions. The tree is rarely planted in mixed plantations where profit is an object; it interferes with its neighbours and occupies too much room. It is generally introduced near mansion-houses for ornament and shade, and the celebrated avenues at Richmond and Bushey Park in England are objects of great beauty at the time of flowering.