Chester has two cathedrals, and a remarkable ecclesiastical history. The city walls, round which the river sweeps in broad, bold curves, are chiefly of the Edwardian period. From one of the towers, which is now much what it was during the Civil Wars, Charles I. watched the defeat of his army on Rowton Heath. Chester was shortly afterwards surrendered, and thus was finally lost the cause of the king in the north-west. Following the walls to the opposite side of the city, we find that pleasant pictures are made by two of the Dee bridges—the modern Suspension Bridge for foot-passengers, erected where the river is of great breadth, and the old Dee Bridge, just under the walls, with a huge flour-mill beside it, and a little colony of salmon-fishers on the other side, not far away. Passing the Roodee, a great level space by the river, on which the races are held and other popular festivities take place, we arrive at the great iron arch of the Grosvenor Bridge, which is as noticeable on account of its design as because of the breadth of its single span.
Photo: Frith & Co., Reigate.
CHESTER CATHEDRAL, FROM THE SOUTH-WEST.
For eight miles henceforward the river flows through an artificial channel, made for purposes of navigation, and with the consequence of reclaiming some five thousand acres of land. The swing railway bridge, opened by Mrs. Gladstone in 1889, the first cylinder being placed in position by Mr. Gladstone two years earlier, is the next object of interest. Not far away is Hawarden Park, “not exceeded in beauty by any demesne in the world,” says Dean Howson. After these eight miles of artificial waterway have been traversed, the Dee suddenly broadens out into a wonderful estuary, which, according to the state of the tide, separates England from Wales by wide stretches of water, or by still wider stretches of sand. We pass the Castle of Flint on our way downwards, with one huge round tower dipping its base into the Dee. The town which it once defended is known in these days for its chemical works; but it has seen stirring times. It was here that Richard II. was held prisoner, within “the rude ribs of that ancient castle,” as Shakespeare says, and here, also, it was that Bolingbroke became King of England. The Castle of Mostyn, not far from where the shore of the river becomes the coast of the sea, was also mixed up in these transactions. Nearly midway between these two fragments of mediævalism are Basingwerk Abbey and the Fountain of Holywell, which is even to this day credited with the working of miracles.
SWING BRIDGE OVER THE DEE NEAR HAWARDEN (p. [239]).
The estuary of the Dee has its Lindisfarne; for, as an old writer on Hillbree Island, with the square tower of its church rising above a wooded knoll, has remarked, “It is an island but twice a day, embraced by Neptune only at the full tydes, and twice a day shakes hands with great Britain.” The sands stretch away in almost illimitable expanse, the Wirral Promontory making a distant, faint, and irregular boundary between the Dee and the Mersey. Kingsley’s account of one of Copley Fielding’s sketches of the Dee estuary says almost all that is possible in the way of description:—“A wild waste of tidal sands, with here and there a line of stake-nets fluttering in the wind—a gray shroud of rain sweeping up from the westward, through which low red cliffs glowed dimly in the rays of the setting sun—a train of horses and cattle splashing slowly through shallow, desolate pools and creeks, their wet red and black hides glittering in one long line of level light.” It was the simple, dreary grandeur of the picture, combined with the relation of a tragic story, which inspired one of the most pathetic ballads in the language—that long, piercing wail, “The Sands of Dee”:—