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.Hughes, Thomas
History
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.
Hughes, Thomas
Chester (England) -- Guidebooks
For the present, then, we will move on along Frodsham Street, anciently
called Cowlane, pausing midway to reflect that in the Quakers’
Meeting-house, at the corner of Union Walk, Friend William Penn, the
founder of Pennsylvania, held forth to his admirers, King James II. being
on one occasion an attentive hearer. Continuing on our course a short
distance, we emerge from Cowlane into a wide but irregular street, named
indifferently FOREST or FOREGATE STREET, the latter, from its standing
immediately before the gate,—the EASTGATE, close by, being always
esteemed _the porta principalis_ of the city. Foregate Street forms a
part of the old Watling Street of the Romans; so that it existed as a
road almost as early as the crucifixion of Our Lord! Fifty years ago
this was as curious a street as any within the city; but the ancient
piazzas which once ran continuously along it, are now becoming mere
specks in the landscape, and “like angels’ visits, few and far between.”
Not far from where we are standing, near the corner of St. John’s Street,
are two superior travellers’ inns, the HOPPOLE, and the BLOSSOMS, the
latter a house of the highest standing and respectability, admirably
adapted for the accommodation of visitors, and for all those who would
enjoy the comfort of a home combined with the advantages of a first-class
HOTEL. At the rear of the Blossoms, in St. John Street, is the POST
OFFICE, a neat stuccoed building, erected in 1842, at the sole expense of
William Palin, Esq., the present post-master. Prior to this, the
business of the Post-Office was conducted in a dark and dreary building,
situate up a court, still known as the Old Post-Office Yard. It was to
Rowland Hill, and his wonder-working penny stamp, that the citizens owed
this satisfactory change from darkness unto light.
[Picture: Foregate Street, and Blossoms’ Hotel]
Yonder white stone building at the head of St. John Street is the
well-known banking establishment of Messrs. Williams & Co., usually
denominated the Old Bank. And, here, crossing the street at an altitude
of some thirty feet, is the EASTGATE, a noble arch, with a postern on
either side, erected in 1769, on the site of a Gateway, dating back to
the days of the Third Edward, by Robert, first Marquis of Westminster,
whose arms, with those of the city, ornament the keystone of the centre
arch.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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