Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 2: Great Britain and Ireland, Part 2 — John Shaqi
Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 2: Great Britain and Ireland, Part 2
General
Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 2: Great Britain and Ireland, Part 2
Great Britain -- Description and travel; Ireland -- Description and travel
The most utterly indescribable feature of Chester is the Rows, which
every traveler has attempted to describe. At the height of several feet
above some of the oldest streets, a walk runs through the front of the
houses, which project over it. Back of the walk there are shops; on the
outer side is a space of two or three yards, where the shopmen place
their tables, and stands, and show-cases; overhead, just high enough for
persons to stand erect, a ceiling. At frequent intervals little narrow
passages go winding in among the houses, which all along are closely
conjoined, and seem to have no access or exit, except through the shops,
or into these narrow passages, where you can touch each side with your
elbows, and the top with your hand. We penetrated into one or two of
them, and they smelt anciently and disagreeably.
At one of the doors stood a pale-looking, but cheerful and good-natured
woman, who told us that she had come to that house when first married,
21 years before, and had lived there ever since; and that she felt as if
she had been buried through the best years of her life. She allowed us
to peep into her kitchen and parlor--small, dingy, dismal, but yet not
wholly destitute of a home look. She said she had seen two or three
coffins in a day, during cholera times, carried out of that narrow
passage into which her door opened. These avenues put me in mind of
those which run through ant-hills, or those which a mole makes
underground. This fashion of Rows does not appear to be going out; and,
for aught I can see, it may last hundreds of years longer. When a house
becomes so old as to be untenantable, it is rebuilt, and the new one is
fashioned like the old, so far as regards the walk running through its
front. Many of the shops are very good, and even elegant, and these Rows
are the favorite places of business in Chester. Indeed, they have many
advantages, the passengers being sheltered from the rain, and there
being within the shops that dimmer light by which tradesmen like to
exhibit their wares.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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