Chester's Roman fortress may have been meant to be a provincial capital
Around 75 AD a Roman legion built a fort on the River Dee called Deva Victrix. It was a fifth larger than the fortresses at York and Caerleon, which has led some to suggest it, not London, was meant to become a provincial capital. Chester's main streets still follow the Roman plan.
Chester sits on the Dee right beside the Welsh border, and in 2021 its built-up area held 92,760 people. The Romans named Deva either after the river goddess or straight from the British name for the river. The site produced Britain's largest known military amphitheatre, seating 8,000 to 10,000, and the Minerva Shrine, the only rock-cut Roman shrine still in place in the country. Eastgate, Northgate, Watergate and Bridge Street run along lines laid out by the legion.
After the army left around 410, the settlement carried on, probably with veterans' families sheltering behind the old defences. The Welsh knew it as the fort of the legion, the root of the modern Welsh name Caer. In 616 Æthelfrith of Northumbria defeated a Welsh army there, and in 689 King Æthelred of Mercia founded the minster that became the city's first cathedral. Alfred's daughter Æthelflæd fortified the town, and around 907 its defenders drove off a Viking siege. In 973 King Edgar was said to have been rowed up the Dee by tributary kings.
Chester was among the last English cities to fall to the Normans, and William the Conqueror had a castle built to control it and the border. It won the right to choose its own sheriffs in 1506 and became a city in 1541. For centuries it was commonly called Westchester, the name Daniel Defoe used in Moll Flanders. In the Civil War it backed Charles I.
Its walls are among the best preserved in Britain, almost complete apart from a stretch of about 100 metres. Many of the famous black-and-white buildings, though, are Victorian revivals, often designed by John Douglas for the Grosvenor family, the Dukes of Westminster, and recognisable by his twisted chimneys. Postwar sprawl and a 1964 bypass alarmed residents, and a 1968 report led to a conservation area in 1969. In 2002 Chester became Britain's first Fairtrade City.
Source: Chester
