A few steps further will bring us to the South or BRIDGE GATE, the last of the four principal Gates of the city. It is a bold and imposing structure, erected, in 1782, at the expense of the corporation, in place of the old and ponderous gateway which previously occupied its site. The old Gate is quoted in deeds as far back as the twelfth century, and appears to have been granted by the Norman Earl Randle and his Countess to one Poyns, their servant, for some meritorious but unrecorded service. From his successors it passed, through Philip le Clerc, to the families of Raby, Norris, and Troutbeck, until the honour of “custodian of the Bridge Gate” became vested at length in the Earls of Shrewsbury, who, in the seventeenth century, sold their rights to the Corporation. Crossing over the Bridge Gate, we have now a better view of the DEE MILLS, a massive pile of buildings, resting on the south-west end of the Old Bridge. The Dee Mills existed on this very spot shortly after the Norman Conquest, and were for centuries a source of immense revenue to their owners, the Earls. Edward the Black Prince, as Earl of Chester, granted them for life to Sir Howel-y-Fwyal, constable of Criccaeth Castle, for his gallant conduct at the Battle of Poictiers; since which time they have passed through successive owners to the Wrench family, who are the present possessors. The Mills have been thrice destroyed by fire. The DEE BRIDGE is of great antiquity, having been erected in 1280 by the citizens, under a peremptory order to that effect from King Edward I. Previous to that date there had been a _wooden bridge_ here, originating with that amazonian “edifier” of Chester, the Mercian Princess Ethelfleda; but that passage was continually subject to interruptions, both from the violence of the tides, and the restless zeal of the Welshmen,—hence the erection of the present Bridge. It consists at present of seven arches of irregular size, but is said to have originally boasted of two or three more, now built up. It was widened in 1826, by the addition of a projecting footpath, seven feet wide, which has somewhat destroyed its antiquated appearance from this point of view. The CAUSEWAY, or weir, on this side the Bridge, is recorded to have been first built by Hugh Lupus, the Conqueror’s nephew, probably about the time of the foundation of the Dee Mills. It stemmed the tide of the Dee, and of all opposition, until the period of the Commonwealth, when we find an order of parliament commanding the destruction of both Causeway and Mills; but the puritanical order appears to have been derisively set at nought; at all events, it was never carried out. An American author, writing upon this topic, facetiously remarks:—“The _dam_ was built, I don’t know when. The Puritans, they say, tried to destroy it—for its _bad name_, perhaps—but could not, because, like a duck, it kept under a high flood of water, until the Cavaliers, making a rush to save it, spiked their guns.”