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untitled ... Home Page Roman Relics ROMAN CHESTER Chester A Historical and Topographical Account of the City - By C. A. Windle Illustrated By Edmund H. New - ...
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Illustrated By Edmund H. New - Published London - Nethuen and Co. 1903 ( C.C.C Library )

LIKE many other sister cities in this land, Chester presents no certain evidence as to who were her first builders; appears, indeed, shrouded in the web of legend which older writers have woven around her early history. Webb, writing in 1621, says:

' The first name that I find this city to have been supposed to have borne was Neomagus; and this they derive from Magus, the son of Samothes, who was the first planter of inhabitants in this isle, after Noah's flood, which now containeth England, Scotland, and Wales; and of him was called Samothes, and this Samothes was son to Japhet, the third son of Noah; and of this Magus, who first built a city even in this place or near unto it, as it is supposed, the same was called Neomagtus. This conjecture I find observed out the learned knight, Sir Thomas Elliott, who saith directly, that Neomagus stood where Chester now standeth.'

Other ancient retailers of the marvellous have ascribed its original construction to the hands of giants -

'The founder of this city, as saith Polychronicon, Was Leon Gawer, a mighty strong giant.'

'the very name may serve to confute such plebeian antiquaries as would derive it from Lean Var, a giant, seeing Lean Var, in the British language, signifieth nothing else but the great legion.'

Here we begin to come nearer to the truth, so far as we now know it; for whatever may have been the actual origin of the city which today is called Chester, whoever they were who first occupied this site and made it their home, it is to the period when Rome was mistress of this island that we have to look if we are to discover the earliest verifiable facts respecting the city by the wizard stream of Dee. Its position is such as to make it the key to an important district, for occupying a commanding position, as it does, on the plain between the Dee and the Mersey, it lies between the two natural fastnesses of a defeated and flying enemy - the mountains of Wales, and the hills of the north-west and of Yorkshire. And so we find in later history that one of the two decisive conflicts which destroyed the British sphere of influence in the island was that fought at Chester, which cut off the Celts of Strathclyde from those of Wales and the south-west.

Here, then, on the cliff of red sandstone which overhangs the river - and at that time the waters which lapped its foot were those of a broad estuary the Romans constructed a fortress to watch over this portion of their dominions and to keep ward over the fierce natives who had found a hiding-place in the neighbouring hills. From the name of the river on which it was situated it was called Deva, and from its peculiarly military nature Castra Legionum, ' a name,' says the late Bishop Creighton,

'which it still retains par excellence. For though many places in England bear the marks of their origin as sites of Roman garrisons in the termination Chester or caster, the Camp on the Dee bears only the name of Chester, as though it were so clearly the chief station of the Roman army that no other could equal it in importance.'

According to their origin, ecclesiastical, military, or otherwise, towns may be arranged into groups, as Mr. Freeman has shown in his History of Exeter; and amongst his first group, that is, towns of Roman origin which have throughout all English history kept a certain position as heads of shires, heads of dioceses, or in some way places of importance, Chester must always occupy an honourable position. Although it would be going too far to claim for Chester the place of honour amongst the military centres of the Roman period, there can be no doubt that it occupied a very important position amongst them, and, as Mr. Haverfield has recently shown, was remarkable in that, unlike almost all Roman towns in this country and elsewhere, it was purely and entirely a military station. 'Deva,' he says,

'was from first to last a fortress, always garrisoned by troops, always devoid of organised civic life and municipal institutions, but differing from some other fortresses by the fact that its garrison consisted of legionary and not of auxiliary troops.'

The garrison towns of Roman Britain were originally constructed as independent fortresses, not that they were occupied solely and entirely by fighting men, for of course there would also have been the wives and children of the soldiers, camp - followers, and others, but that they were intended primarily for military purposes, like the Aldershot of our own day. But in many, indeed, in most cases, a non-military population soon grew up around this military nucleus; suburbs occupied by traders and others became attached to the town; in fact, a 'bazaar' was formed.

Thus gradually the town became of importance for other than military reasons, obtained a constitution - a charter as we should now call it - secured the right of self-government, and became a colonia or municipium. Such was the case at York, which, though it was the seat of the third of the British legions, did become a town with a regular municipal constitution. There is no trace of anything of this kind having ever happened at Chester. Suburbs it had, for they have been traced along the Boughton road outside the east gate of the city; but Chester never grew into a town. A purely military station it was at its origin, and a purely military station it remained. There is no evidence even that it advanced to that kind of intermediate position occupied by towns which never arrived at full municipal honours. Such towns appear as the possessors of a certain body of Roman traders (cives Romani consistentes in - ), a kind of quasi-civic element, not rising to the dignity of a constitution.

Chester presents no evidence of trade, though no doubt it must have been in some way connected with the lead-mines in Flint, and perhaps some of the pigs of that metal may have found their way into the city. Indeed, it seems likely that a pig of lead, with the name of Vespasian imprinted on it, which was found on the Roodeye, then the floor of the estuary, may have been dropped from some ship which was being unloaded of its cargo by the Chester quay. If this be so, the lead may have been brought there purely for the purposes of the garrison, or perhaps more probably in payment of taxes; at any rate, there is no evidence of the existence of any traders, or at least of any organised trading body.

Deva most nearly resembles that other great military centre, which guarded the southern parts of Wales, Caerleon-on-Usk , the Isca Silurum of the Roman period. This again was never a colonia; indeed, Mr. Haverfleld considers that it was so purely military in its nature, that he is unwilling to allow that the bishop who was at the Council of Aries, and has always been supposed to have had his see at Caerleon, was really connected with that spot, preferring to assign Lincoln as the place of his episcopal chair. The fortresses which guarded the Roman Wall, that great work of military engineering, have much in common with Chester. They also were purely military in their conception, and remained purely military to the end. These, however, were garrisoned by auxiliary troops and not by legions, and in this respect, as will be seen shortly, they differed from the city on the Dee. Deva, then, was a somewhat unusual kind of town, of a class un-common not merely in Britain, but in other parts of the vast Roman Empire. 'If,' says Mr. Haverfield, from whose writings is to be learnt much that is now known about Roman Chester, 'if we carry the comparison across the Channel we shall find very few parallels to Chester.

On the continent the legionary fortresses nearly always became colonice they resemble York, not Chester or Caerleon, and this is significant of Roman Britain. The province was one which, above all others, was purely a military province. It was in reality a military frontier, with little share in the civil life of the empire. Chester and Caerleon are characteristic features of a distant borderland.' It has just been pointed out that Deva was garrisoned by legionaries, and not by auxiliary forces. A legion was composed of from four to six thousand men. These were mostly Roman citizens; they were better paid, they fulfilled a longer term of service, and they had a larger bounty on retiring. They were almost wholly infantry. The auxiliaries, on the contrary, in regiments five hundred to a thousand strong, were either infantry or cavalry, and were mainly recruited from provincials who did not enjoy the Roman franchise. Of this latter class of soldier there were few or none at Chester, so far as the existent records allow us to judge.

It seems probable that it was occupied as a fortress about the latter end of the reign of Claudius , A.D. 50-5 4, and was no doubt in existence when Suetotuus commenced his campaign against Anglesea - that is, in A.D. 61. Some ten or fifteen years later we find it occupied by the Legio II., Adiutrix. After that legion left the island, its place at Deva was taken by the Legio XX., Valeria Victrix, the latter words being its sub-title or second name; for many of the legions possessed a second name, just as some of our regiments are known as 'The Black Watch,' or 'The Connaught Rangers,' as well as by their official or numerical title.

It is possible that both the second and twentieth legions may have occupied Deva together for a time; at any rate, it is clear that the latter was in garrison there down to the third century. From the coins which have been discovered it seems possible that Deva was a place of Roman occupation in the fourth century. It is not, however, mentioned in the Notitia, the British part of which, according to Mommsen, was compiled about A.D. 296 or 300, nor is any reference made therein to the twentieth legion. In fact, there is not much to be learnt about Deva from outside sources, for its name is only known to occur once in a foreign inscription, and that is at Worms, and reads: '( In honorem ) domu(s) divinae, Marti Loucetio Sacrum, Amandus Velugni f. Devas.' In the sixth century the place lay waste, and its later history will be dealt with in another chapter.

So far as we are now concerned, we may close the account of Deva by the description which Giraldus Cambrensis gives of it some six centuries later than the last mentioned date, a description which contains no doubt some elements of truth, embellished in the Geraldine manner.

'It is,' he says, 'a genuine city of the Legions, surrounded by walls of brick (or tiles)' - muris coctilibus circumdata - ' in which many remains of its pristine grandeur are still apparent, namely, immense palaces, a gigantic tower, beautiful baths, remains of temples, and sites of theatres, almost entirely enclosed by excellent walls, in part remain-ing; also, both within and without the circumference of the walls, subterranean constructions, watercourses, vaults with passages. You may also see furnaces (hypocausts, stuphas) constructed with wonderful art, the narrow sides of which exhale heat by concealed spiracles.'

Of these marvels, genuine or imaginary, few remain to this day; yet there are abundant relics of the time when Chester was an outpost of the greatest empire the world has seen, and these must now briefly be reviewed. Naturally one turns, in the first place, to the walls, with the view of ascertaining how far they belong to the period with which we are now concerned. Without dealing here in any complete fashion with the vexed question of the history of the walls, a matter to be subsequently touched upon, it may here be said that the line of the north wall is quite clearly that of the Roman fortification; in fact, when it became necessary in recent years to repair it, the discovery was made that the interior of the lower part was full of inscribed and sculptured stones, the greater part of which had been taken from the cemetery attached to Deva.

On the stones thus discovered depends much of the information which it has been possible to accumulate respecting the history of the Roman city. They have been carefully examined and catalogued by Mr. Haverfield, who, in the preface to his excellent Catalogue of the Roman Inscribed and Sculptured Stones in the Grosvenor Museum, Chester, published by the Chester and North Wales Archaeological and Historic Society, gives an account of this portion of the wall and the objects found there, which may here be reproduced. The inscriptions and sculptured stones were ranged with considerable regularity inside the lower courses of the wall. These courses were finely faced with massive blocks of evident Roman masonry; the stones in the interior were exclusively of Roman character, and the whole structure of these lower courses may be taken to be Roman. Their precise date is harder to determine.

The inscriptions found in them belong principally, as it seems, to the first century and to the earlier half of the second. A few may be as early as A.D. 50-60; those of the Legio II., Adiutrix, may be dated A.D. 70-85; one, on the contrary, cannot be earlier than about A.D. 150. It would, therefore, seem probable that the wall which contained these stones was erected in the latter part of the second century or in the commencement of the third century. Some building was executed at the latter period, probably between A.D. 198 and 209, in the Roman fort at Carnarvon, and it is possible that the north wall of the fortress at Chester was then built or rebuilt. The east wall, from the Phoenix Tower to Newgate, was apparently built or rebuilt at the same time and in the same manner; but the excavations made in it at various dates have revealed no inscrip-tions and very few sculptured stones. We may suppose that a cemetery lay ready to hand outside the North Gate and was used, while no such supply was accessible to the builders of the east wall. Whether the building accompanied an enlargement of the fortress is less certain than is generally asserted. The employment of tombstones as a packing for the interior of the wall is certainly a matter calculated to cause considerable astonishment. There would have been nothing remarkable in the fact of later occupants of the city so utilising the relics of dead Roman soldiers. But that Romans themselves should use Roman tombstones can scarcely fail to evoke astonishment.

The Roman law, Mr. Haverfield, when dealing with this question, points out, certainly forbade private individuals to disturb graves, but the Roman Government seems to have been free from, or to have over-ridden, the prohibition. When Trajan built his Forum at Rome, early in the second century A.D. the soil which was cleared to make a level space for it was deposited on the top of the tombs along the Via Salaria, and visitors to Rome may now see the great circular monument of Paetus and Polla in the process of being unearthed from Trajan's burial of it. A quite different example may be quoted from the Roman Wall in England on the frontiers of the empire. At the fort of Aesica (Great Chesters) Roman tomb-stones were found to form flooring slabs in a Roman edifice, and though the dates of the tombstones and of the edifice are uncertain, it is not improbable that both belong to the second or the opening of the third century. In later times instances abound freely.

The towns of Gaul which fortified themselves in the third and fourth centuries largely used their cemeteries as quarries; and at Worms tombstones were used even to ballast a fourth-century roadway. It has accordingly been proposed to date our Chester wall to the fourth century; but it is better work than would be expected at so late a period in Britain, and the hypothesis is not at all necessary. A large number of the inscribed stones so strangely and unexpectedly recovered, together with other objects belonging to the period of the Roman domination, are to be seen in the Grosvenor Museum, where as at Newcastle-on-Tyne, York, and some other places, the student of the early history of this country will find much to throw light upon a part of the subject, concerning which more is to be learnt from the monuments, altars, and other relics which time has spared to us, than from the pages of contemporary writers. In all, at Chester there are about one hundred and thirty tombstones, presenting a great variety of design, but noteworthy for the most part on account of their great size and their ambitious nature. These characteristics are probably due to the fact that they were erected in memory of legionaries, the wealthier class of military men, for in the cases of auxiliaries the stones are fewer in number and smaller in size.

The tombstones discovered in Chester fall into several categories. Simplest of all are the rectangular slabs with a moulded border or a triangular gable top, which were set tip in the earth with the ashes of the dead person whom they commemorated at their foot. This class of monument was especially affected by the soldiers of the Second Adiutrix. This legion, with the First of the same name, was enrolled somewhere about the year 69 A.D. from amongst the men of the fleets which formed the Mediterranean squadron of the Roman Empire. These fleets were not manned by Roman citizens, but by provincials, many of whom came from Pannonia, Dalmatia, and Thrace. These provincials, however, on enrolment became citizens, and as such were provided with a legal birthplace and tribe, such as all other Roman citizens had. But this birthplace was not necessarily or even probably the spot at which the future soldier saw the light. So that when we find a soldier described upon his tombstone as having been born at Aprus, a Roman colonia in Thrace, it does not necessarily mean that he was born there, but that, on becoming a Roman citizen, he was enrolled a member of that town.

On the monuments just named, as well as upon those of a more ambitious character which have yet to be mentioned, are to be found, first, the letters D.M., i.e. Dis Manibus, equivalent to our ' Sacred to the Memory of , ' and then the name of the soldier, his tribe and birthplace - legal or actual - the years of his life and of his military service, and the name of the person who was responsible for the erection of the monument. Of the more ambitious forms of monument, some bear figures of the deceased person in relief.

A good example of this kind of tombstone is that shown at the commencement of this chapter (No. 38 in Museum). The inscription reads, ' D.M Caecilius Avitus Emer(ita) Aug(ustos), optis leg. XX. V(aleriae) V(ictricis) st(i)p(endiorum) XV. Vix(it) an(nos) xxxiiii. H(eres) f(aciendum) c(uravit) '-' To the memory of Caecilius Avitus of Emerita Augusta, 'optio' of the Twentieth Legion, Valeria Victrix, who served 15 years and died at 34. His heir had this erected.' The optio was an officer lower than the centurion, and Emerita was a Roman colonia in Lusitania, now Merida in Spain. Another example of this class is the tombstone of a centurion of the Twentieth Legion (No. 37 in Grosvenor Museum). On this monument are full length figures of the centurion (on the dexter side) and his wife (sinister). He carries a staff in his right hand, and a roll or some similar object in his left. His wife grasps a cup in her right hand, and holds up her dress with her left. The inscription is as follows: 'D.M - M. Aur(elius) Nepos > leg. xx. V(aleriae) V(ictricis). Coniux pientissima f(aciendum) c(uravit) vixit annis 1'; or, 'To the memory of Marcus Aurelius Nepos, centurion (the sign like a V lying on its side is the centurial sign ) in the Twentieth Legion, Valeria Victrix: erected by his dutiful wife. He lived 50 years.' It should be noted that on the left side of this stone there is a further inscription, 'sub ascia d(edicatum),' with a representation above it of two mason's tools, one of which is probably the ascia, a sort of combined axe and hammer. The inscription, which means, 'dedicated whilst still under the hammer,' may be taken to mean, what actually was the case with respect to this stone, since there is no inscription for the wife, that it was dedicated before it was quite finished. Mr. Haverfield states that this formula was much used in southern Gaul, but rarely elsewhere, and that this is its only appearance in Britain. Another type is that on which a triumphant horseman is shown riding over his prostrate barbarian foe.

This class of monument, met with in other English collections, originated in Greece, and is to be found at Athens on monuments as early as the fifth century B.C. The Sepulchral Banquet Relief is of still earlier origin, and has been met with in Assyria, Greece, Etruria, and in certain parts of the Roman Empire. 'It is common in the military forts of the Rhine frontier; and, as there was close connexion between the British and Rhenish military arrangements, it may well have reached Deva from the Rhine.

Its original significance may have been a representation of ancestor worship, but its use the Roman Empire seems to have been mostly quite conventional(Haverfield). Prof. P. Gardiner points out, in the Journal of Hellenic Studies, that the earliest types of this form of monument are to be found on certain early Attic and Laconian tombstones, on which the dead person is represented as seated in state holding a cup and pomegranate to receive the worship of his descendants. The wine cup is to remind them to pour out libations to him, whilst the pomegranate is the special food of the dead. In this class of monument the dead person is represented as reclining on a couch by the side of which is a small three-legged table.

A good example will be found in No. 66 in the Museum, on which the deceased is represented on a couch, holding a cup in his right hand and a roll in his left. He reclines on his left arm, and by him is his wife or child: below is a three-legged table. The inscription, which seems to be imperfect at its conclusion, runs: 'D.M.- C(a)ecilius Donatus, Bessus natione militavit annos xxvi. vixit annos xxxx ... or, 'To the memory of Caecilius Donatus, by birth a Bessian, who served 26 years, and lived 40 years.'

Finally, there are the panels covered with mythical scenes or incidents from daily life: 'Actaeon changing into a stag and assailed by his own hounds; Hercules killing the sea-monster and rescuing Hesione, who had been fettered to a rock as its victim; a Siren; a Cupid; and so forth. We have no direct proof that these panels ever formed parts of sepulchral erections. But the fact that they were all found in the North Wall is significant; and it is well known that both in Italy and in the Provinces such scenes were carved on tombs; instances occur, for example, in Germany. Why they were selected for the purpose we do not know, but the custom is here again far older than the Romans. Both the Greeks and, in imitation of them, the Etruscans, employed such scenes in decorating their graves. The artistic skill displayed on these panels, as on all the sculptured tombs of Chester, is very slight, and the execution frequently provokes a smile. The things are indeed the products of soldiers in a remote and frontier fortress. But it is noteworthy that in this remote spot the Roman fashions of sepulchral monuments find full exemplification. And it is hardly less noteworthy that no single stone shows any trace of native influence, of the Late Celtic style, or of any British peculiarity. In this the monuments of Deva resemble those of Britain in general.

The altars found in and about Chester are comparatively few in number, and bear dedications to the genius of a century, or are dedicated to gods worshipped by all soldiers. Of the first kind, that figured in the text (No. 2 in the Museum) is an example. The inscription reads 'Genio Sancto centurie Aelius Claudian(us) optio v(otum) s(olvit) - Aelius Claudianus, optio, pays his vow to the Genius of his Century.' The sacrificial knife and axe are to be seen at the side in the illustration. No. 3 in the Museum is another example; on its dexter side is carved the sacrificial dish, and on its sinister the sacrificial jug, whilst the back is ornamented with a zig-zag pattern. It is inscribed 'Genio' (i.e. centuriae), 'To the Genius of the Century.' No. 5, which was found in 1693 at the corner of Newgate Street, has on one side a Genius with a cornucopia, or horn of plenty, and a dish, and on the other a vase with acanthus leaves. On its back is a festoon, and it bears the inscription 'Pro sal(ute) domin(oru)m n(ostrorum) invic(t)issi-morum Aug(ustorum) Genio loci, Flavius Longu(s) trib(unus) mil(itum) leg xx v (aleriae) v (ictricis et) Longinus fi[1(ius)] eiusdomo Samosata, v(otum) s(olvunt)'; or, 'For the safety of our lords the invincible Emperors, dedicated to the Genius of the Spot by Flavius Longus, Military Tribune in the Twentieth Legion, Valeria Victrix, and by his son Longinus, (both) from Samosata.'

Another interesting altar is No. 8, which bears upon it an inscription to those strange deities, the Mother Goddesses: 'Deab(us) Matrib(us) v(otum) m(erito),' 'Erected to the Mother Goddesses.' It is doubtful whether these personages were German or perhaps originally Celtic deities, but they were much worshipped on the Rhine, in Roman Britain, and elsewhere. Mr. Haverfleld points out that the Roman troops in our island were largely recruited in Germany, and that they probably brought the cult over with them.

Attention may be called to one more example, No. 10, which bears a Greek inscription, which, being translated, reads: 'To the Gods that are strong to save, I, Hermogenes, a Physician, set this altar.' Samosata is on the banks of the Euphrates, the Mother Goddesses come from the shores of the Rhine, and the physician is a Greek. These three altars give one a vivid impression of the cosmopolitan composition of the population of so remote an outpost of the empire as was Deva.

A further series of objects are the centurial stones, that is, slabs bearing inscriptions commemorating the execution of certain pieces of work, such as road making and wall building, by bodies of soldiers, the name of the centurion standing for the century responsible for the work. No. 16 in the Museum is an example of such a stone, with the inscription, 'Coh(ortis) i> Ocrati Maximi. LMP'; or, The century of Ocratius Maximus, in the first cohort (of the legion) built this piece of wall.' Mr. Haverfield thinks that the letters LMP stand for the initials of the soldier who cut the stone, and that it probably originally stood in the east wall, between which and Newgate Street it seems to have been found in
1748.

Further relics of the Legio xx. are to be seen in the anteflxes for decorating the eaves or pediments of tiled roofs, which show the boar, the badge of the legion in question:

No. 200, shown in the annexed figure, is an example of this class of object. No. 196, a pig of lead found in 1838 about one & quarter miles east of the East Gate, when the railway between Chester and Crewe was under construction, is a good example of the intermediate stage in the utilisation of this metal. Like other pigs found here and elsewhere it bears an inscription, 'IMP. VESP. V. T. IMP. III. COS,' on the top, with the word 'DECEANGI' on the side. The inscription means: 'This pig was cast while Vespasian was Consul for the fifth time and Titus for the third time (A.D.74): lead from the mines of the Deceangi.' An example of the finished product can be examined in the shape of a piece of leaden pipe which once formed part of the water service of Deva (No. 199), and was found in 1899 on the north side of Eastgate Street. It is four inches in diameter, and has the inscription which follows on a raised panel fortyeight inches in length: 'Imp(eratore) Vesp(asiano) viiii T(ito) imp(eratore) vii co(n)s(ulibus), Cn(aeo) Julio Agricola leg(ato) Aug(usti) pr(o) pr(aetore'; or, '(This lead pipe was made) when Vespasian and Titus were consuls for the ninth and seventh times respectively, and when Cn. Julius Agricola was Governor of Britain.' 'The date is the first half of the year 79. Agricola is the famous Agricola who was Governor of Britain, A.D. 78-85, and whose life was written by his son-in-law Tacitus. Any person familiar with other museums of Roman objects, such as those at Colchester, York, or Newcastle, can scarcely fail to be struck with the paucity of examples of pottery, and of the small domestic objects which belong to a more settled and comfortable life than that of a soldier on outpost duty, contained in the Chester collection.

The absence of such objects is due to the fact that, to use Mr. Haverfield's words, 'ordinary, comfortable middle-class life was absent,' the city was purely military, from first to last a fortress. Owing to the fact that the area of Deva has been built over and occupied for centuries by generations of other races than its Roman originators, it is impossible to construct any ground plan of the Roman city, or even to say where the west and south walls lay. The line of the north wall can be fairly clearly made out, for it corresponds almost absolutely with that of the mediaeval rampart. As for the east wall, that stood a few feet further out than the existing structure.

In the basement of Messrs. Dickson's seed warehouse in St. John's Street a portion of the Roman wall has been preserved as a memorial. This shows the face and set off of the outer aspect, and this face is seventeen feet from the face of the existing wall, which may be looked upon as wholly mediaeval. The fragment of wall in question is only a part of that which was discovered; for, as a matter of fact, it was exposed in the entire length of the excavations made for the purpose of erecting the buildings. It was not possible to retain this portion of the wall, but the proprietors were good enough to save this fragment, in order that those interested in the subject might see what the old wall actually looked like.

The great mass of Roman masonry lying near the Grand Stand, and above the Roodeye, which was almost certainly the Roman Quay, must not be neglected in the consideration of the remains of Deva. A part of the masonry here has been thoroughly exposed and railed off by the Corporation, so that it can be adequately inspected. Of the other important remains of Deva still in situ, mention must now he made.

In the first place, there are the remains of a bath in Bridge Street, where are to he seen a tank supplied by a spring and a hypocaust.. The hypocaust was a chamber under the floor of a room of course, a ground floor room - into which hot-air and smoke were admitted from a neighbouring furnace, by which means the room above was warmed. The floor in such cases was composed of concrete supported on pillars, sometimes of stone, sometimes built up of heaps of tiles. Such objects are to be seen in the remains of Roman cities and villas in different parts of the kingdom.

In Chester the pillars of a hypocaust - not, of course, in situ - are to be seen in the public garden near the Water Tower. In the particular instance with which we are now concerned, there are in the Bridge Street hypocaust twenty-eight pillars still standing, each of which is two and a half feet in height, and one foot square at the top and bottom. On the opposite side of the same street, and somewhat nearer to the Cross, there are some important remains in the back of a house called 'The Grotto.' These consist of a low wall, on the top of which are the bases of some pillars, showing that here there was some kind of colonnade. When this discovery was made, it was also found that on the opposite side of the pillars to that on which the visitor stands there was a water trough or gutter. This, unfortunately, cannot now be seen, as it is covered by the wall of the room which has been built upon it.

In Watergate Street, behind a butcher's shop (Crew's), is the base of a Roman pillar in situ, which gives us the level of the street at this point in Roman times. Again, in Northgate Street, on the west side, and under a shop known as Vernon's Toy Bazaar, there are the bases of some very large pillars, obviously from their size the pillars of some very important building. The shaft of one of these, lying on its side, is to be seen projecting into the basement. The remainder of the pillar, probably with further portions of the building, no doubt lies concealed under the adjacent house. If we accept the statement that St. Peter's Church occupied the position of the Praetorium, it will be seen that the building with whose remains we are now concerned was very close to that spot, and may very probably have been one of the important public edifices of Deva. In any case, we may safely regard the mediaeval centre of the city , where the High Cross stood and the Pentice over looked the four streets , where St. Peter's Church still stands, as having been the centre also of Deva..

We may also believe that the four main streets of modern Chester occupy practically the position of the four main thoroughfares of the Roman city. In fact, Foregate Street, Eastgate Street, and Watergate Street are all parts of that great road which traversed London, and thence ran to Chester, which in Saxon times came to be called the Watling Street. This was one of the most important of all the great roads which the military genius of the Roman conquerors constructed in this country. Leading, as it did, from the ports in the south-east corner of the island, through London, to the great city of Viroconium, now the petty village of Wroxeter, beneath the shadow of the Wrekin, it worked its way to Chester, and there connected with the roads leading into the wild districts of Wales. At Viroconium a second road, now also called the Watling Street, passed through Shropshire, by the Stettons which owe their name to their proximity to this Via, and Herefordshire, as far as Caerleon-on-Usk. By means of these two streets Deva was connected with its sister fortress on the southern limit of the marches of Wales. It was also connected by the main street with London and with other important stations and cities which lay in the course of this great and important military highway. It is certain that the Roman city was of far smaller dimensions than the present area enclosed by the walls, but Deva may have been enlarged more than once.

Amongst the relics of the Roman occupation there is one outside the walls which calls for some notice, and that is the statue of Minerva which is carved on the rock in Edgar's Field , beside the cavity known as Edgar's Cave. The figure, as may be seen from the drawing, is now almost obliterated, but it is believed to represent the goddess in question, her right arm supported by a spear. On the same side is an altar, History and over her left shoulder is the owl, her symbol.. There was in Roman times a ford across the Dee at Chester this point, and the road from it led past this rock. It is possible that there may here have been a shrine where travellers prayed or made offerings either before or after encountering the dangers of the passage.