History of Chester - Georgian and Victorian Eras

Georgian and Victorian Eras

The port declined seriously from 1762 onwards. By 1840 it could no longer effectively compete with Liverpool as a port, although significant shipbuilding and ropemaking continued at Chester. It was once thought that Chester's maritime trade was brought to an end by the silting of the River Dee, although recent research has shown this was not the case. It was the use of larger ocean-going ships that led to the diversion of the trade to the relatively young town of Liverpool and other locations on the River Mersey, which had long been rivals to Chester, such as Runcorn.

In the Georgian era, Chester became again a centre of affluence, a town with elegant terraces where the landed aristocracy lived. This trend continued into the Industrial Revolution, when the city was populated with the upper classes in fleeing to a safe distance from the industrial sprawls of Manchester and Liverpool.

Edmund Halley (of comet fame) was the deputy controller of Chester Castle for a short time and on May 10, 1697 recorded a fall of one inch hailstones in the area. William Molyneux was in exile here from Ireland in 1691 and was working on his book Dioptrics published in London the following year.

The Industrial Revolution brought the Chester Canal (now part of the Shropshire Union Canal) to the city (which was dubbed 'England's first unsuccessful canal', after its failure to bring heavy industry to Chester) as well as railways and two large central stations, only one of which remains. The building of the route to Holyhead involved one particularly notable tragedy, when a cast iron bridge over the river Dee just by the Roodee race course, collapsed. The Dee bridge disaster sent shock waves through the whole nation because there were many other bridges of similar design on the growing national rail network. Robert Stephenson was the engineer to the new line, and he came in for heavy criticism at the inquest held locally. The design was faulty, and many other bridges had to be demolished or replaced. In an attempt to strengthen the brittle cast iron girders of the bridge, Stephenson added tough wrought iron straps along the length of the spans, but, far from improving the structure, added little or no extra strength. A Royal Commission was set up to investigate the problem, and they confirmed the conclusions of the Railway Inspectorate that the design was wrong.

A leadworks was established by the canal in 1799; its shot tower, which was used for making lead shot for the Napoleonic Wars, is the oldest remaining shot tower in the UK.

The Ruskinian Venetian Gothic Town Hall was ceremoniously opened by Prince of Wales in 1869; its design, following a public competition held to replace the Exchange building, which had stood at the centre of Northgate Street until it burnt down in 1862, was by William Henry Lynn (1829–1915) an Irish architect with a practice in Belfast. Along with the Cathedral Church of Christ & the Blessed Virgin Mary, it still dominates the city skyline with its clock tower with only three faces, with the Wales-facing side remaining blank. The reason for this was popularly reported to be simply because "Chester won't give the Welsh the time of day". However, this did not stop the town hosting Wales's National Eisteddfod in 1866.

The Eastgate clock was also built at this time, and is a central feature as it crosses Eastgate street, and is part of the city walls. The clock is very popular with tourists, and this has given it the grand title of the second most photographed clock in the UK (perhaps even the World) after Big Ben.