Thomas Hughes

The Stranger's Handbook to Chester and Its Environs Thomas Hughes

"Rare old city of Chester!" writes Albert Smith in his "Struggles and Adventures of Christopher Tadpole,"-"Rare old city of Chester! Even in these days of rocket-like travelling, a man might fly all over Great Britain and Ireland, with an extra 'day ticket' for Berwick-upon-Tweed, before he saw anything half so fine as the mouldering old walls and towers of that venerable city, or looked upon anything half so fair as the prospect of vale and mountain, wooded headland, and spire-pointed plain, that surrounds it." Well said, friend Albert;-echoed, too, far and wide, by the thousands of visitors who are annually led to seek entertainment within its Walls!Situate on the northern banks of the River Dee, the deified stream of the Ancient Britons, -built upon, or, as we ought rather to say, built into the solid rock, for the principal streets within the Walls are almost wholly excavations of several feet in depth-the city of Chester stands forth before the world certainly the most curious city in the British Isles, second to none of its fellows in martial strength or historic importance, and as a faithful and enduring relic of the past, "peerless and alone!"