WATERGATE STREET
In the fifteenth century Watergate Street was a very busy thoroughfare, being the main street leading to the port. The Rows on both sides of Watergate Street have preserved their ancient character remarkably well. This feature, together with a number of fine old houses, gives the street it's atmosphere.
Not far from the Cross, on the south side, is God's Providence House, erected in 1652. On a beam under the uppermost window is an inscription, "God's Providence is mine inheritance," carved, according to tradition, in gratitude for deliverance from the plague which depopulated the city. This house was the only one in the street which escaped. The façade was faithfully reconstructed in 1862, when the oak beam bearing the inscription was straightened out and replaced in its present position.
There is a fine example of a fourteenth-century Crypt at No. 11 beneath.
Leche House, four doors below God's Providence House, the town house of the Leches of Mollington, was erected about
1610 by John Leche. The founder of the family was John Leche, surgeon or leech to Edward III. The Leches originally
came into the Cheshire estate by marriage with one of the daughters and co.-heiresses of William de Cawarden, about
the time of Henry IV.
The house contains some interesting specimens of carving, a fine banqueting hall with gallery, an ancient squint-hole,
and an old fireplace and chimney, twenty feet high by ten feet wide, containing a priest-hole, or hiding-place.
The Court Yard, the Lady's Bower, the oak-paneled room, and quaint passages, are full of interest. The splendidly
preserved plaster decorations incorporating the Royal arms are probably the finest in the city.
Lower down on the same side, Bishop Lloyd's House is an example of the decoration in vogue in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. Its exterior is elaborately carved with the figures of various animals, the bear and ragged
staff, a dolphin embowed, an elephant and castle, a lion, and some nondescript creatures. In the lower series of
panels is a representation of scenes from sacred history.
In panel 5 is Bishop Lloyd's shield with the three legs of Man surmounted by a mitre. George Lloyd was Bishop of
Sodor and Man, 1599, Bishop of Chester, 1604-1615; and one of his brothers, David, was Mayor of Chester, 1593-4.
The Bishop's eldest daughter was married to two husbands, whose names are connected with the early colonization
of America. Her first husband, Thomas Yale, was the grandfather of Governor Elihu Yale, from whom Yale University
received its name. Her second husband, Theophilus Eaton, a native of Stony Stratford, went in 1637 to Boston, in
America, and founded in 1639 the settlement of New Haven, of which he was Governor until his death in 1658
The interior of the house is well worth seeing. The two main rooms preserve their original oak panelling, and the
visitor will get an excellent impression of what an early seventeenth-century dwelling-house was like. The admission
fee of 4d., which goes to the funds of the Chester Council of Social Welfare, entitles one to an illustrated leaflet
giving a full description of the building.
Close by this house there was found, during some excavations in 1890, the base of a Roman column, which has been
preserved in situ.
Just beyond, at the top of the outside pillars of the Row, are some grotesquely carved wooden brackets supporting
the beams above.On the opposite side of the street is Holy Trinity Church , a handsome edifice, replacing a church
of great antiquity, and interesting for an effigy, damaged by careless treatment in former years, of a mail-clad
knight, Sir John de Whitmore, one of the Black Prince's comrades, who died in 1374. Here also are buried Matthew
Henry, the celebrated commentator on the Bible, and Thomas Parnell, the poet.
At the end of Nicholas Street is an ancient hostelry, the Yacht Inn. It was at this house, then a famous place
of resort, that Dean Swift stayed on his journey to Ireland in 1722.Mention should be made of the fine timbered
house below, known as Stanley Palace. On the front is carved the date of its erection, 1591. It was the city mansion
of the Stanleys of Alderley.
In 1931 Lord Derby granted the Corporation a 999 years' lease at a peppercorn rent. Work of restoration was completed
in 1935, when a new wing was added in the old style at the end nearest to Watergate Street.
