Out and about in Chester (13,14/8)

These couple days have been spent catching up with ourselves (except for this blog), and sorting out technical issues with phones and cameras as well as keeping up with the running program. 

Different building styles in St John's

 In this part of the world you do not have to go far to catch up with history. We popped into the St John the Baptist church near the Roman amphitheatre, and found that although the building was originally Norman, it was probably built on the site of a Roman temple because of its proximity to that amphitheatre. There was supposed to have been a church on this site since 689, but it has had a number of phases of rebuilding. They haven't had much luck with towers. In 1468, the central tower collapsed, then in 1572 the northwest tower partially collapsed and in 1574 there was an even bigger collapse when this tower came down and brought the western bays of the nave with it. (It sounds like they had the medieval version of Microsoft looking after the building process!) After the Dissolution, most of the eastern end of the church was destroyed and the evidence of this can still be seen (can't blame that on the Microsoft approach as it was deliberate this time), but in 1559 the western end was repaired so that they could use it as a parish church. The church has been through several refurbishments since then as can be seen in the different styles, and then in 1881 the tower fell again while it was being restored (you'd think there was a message there somewhere). This time they learnt, and it now doesn't have a tower but a separate belfry. For those interested, it still has its Norman barrel columns internally and the rounded arches still exist but the exterior is mainly a Victorian refurbishment.

Sign to the toilets - very fishy

The Grosvenor museum, which we went in to since we were walking past, has a lot of interesting Roman material, but also a gallery on the Battle of Chester fought around 616 between the Saxons, Britons and Welsh which the Saxons won. A mass grave was found recently which was thought to contain victims of the battle, but as the bodies seem to have been laid out carefully it is suspected that they were Saxons rather than fleeing Britons. Some of these skeletons displayed horrific sword injuries to the skull showing that the victims would have been killed outright.

The Guild Church with nave on one side of the pillars
and a coffee shop on the other

The Guild church which we poked our noses into was quite unusual in that it was essentially square with two naves. One had the alter at one end, and the other was set up as a small cafe and meeting area. It was suggested that this could have been the way it was set u for quite some time.