Chester

The Rows in Chester are a unique feature of the shopping experience in the city centre dating back more than eight hundred years. Over the centuries they have evolved to become an essential part of any Chester visit. With two levels of shops on all of the main city centre thoroughfares there is a plethora of shopping opportunities as well as a fascinating piece of city history to explore.

Access

The upper gallery of the rows is accessed from steps that can be found at intervals along the street. Some of these are quite steep. Level access can be gained to all Row galleries mostly from the higher ground to the rear. Bridge Street Eastern and Eastgate Street southern rows can be accessed from the Grosvenor shopping centre. Eastgate Streets northern rows via Godstall Lane; a pedestrian passageway with shops and cafés running from St Werburgh's Street opposite the Cathedral. Bridge Streets western rows and Watergate Street south rows can be reached from a ramp running along Pierpoint Lane which can be found near the end of the pedestrianised area of the City centre. The Dewa Roman experience can also be found along this lane.. Watergate Street's northern rows can be reached from Crook Street.

Introduction

Rows are shop units with living accommodation above, usually gathered together in association with like tradesmen or trade guild members, and although other cities in England have rows none have the charm and fascination of those in Chester. Built along the four main city centre thoroughfares that follow the pattern of the original Roman forts street layout. Little is known of the origin of Chester's Rows but their peculiarity is that the living accommodation starts on the second floor with two levels of shops beneath with a public walkway on the first floor level.

The ground floor shops are accessed from street level, but running across the top of these street level shops is a walk way and set back from the street frontage are a second set of shop windows. Today some of the establishments maintain both upper and lower shop units, but on most sections of the rows different merchants can be found on lower and upper floors. Steps lead from street to first floor at regular intervals and the living accommodation above is supported by columns every 15 feet (4 metres) or so.

The upper premises on the rows to be found on Eastgate Street are so set back that in places some shops have large display units between the shop front and the street frontage. This is particularly evident on the rows on the northern side of the street where additional shops and cafés occupy the space between walkway and street frontage. This row has sometimes been called “Dark Row” and this section of Row is poorly served by natural light although the cafés on this level are open to the street.

Origins

The land behind Row buildings is at first floor level. It has been suggested that this is because the debris from demolished buildings from previous city centre occupation was more thoroughly cleared along the main streets. Here was the most valuable commercial real-estate in post Conquest Chester. Since much of the land within the walls at this time was in the hands of religious foundations and land for commercial development was as a consequence at a premium. The space to accommodate the burgeoning city economy was severely restricted and the Chester Rows were to be the solution.

One view is that buildings erected after the Roman occupation were wooden structures with posts dug into the Roman debris. These would have featured a shop with a hall behind and a courtyard to the rear. Consequently these buildings sitting on land higher than street level would have required a pathway to run along in front of them. This is explanation resolves the question of how this intriguing feature of Chester came about without a general town development plan. It would allow for the evolution of a system without disruption to everyday life.

They may have developed under the guidance of merchant guilds since most of the rows are often associated with singular trades. For a long period the Rows walkways were regarded as part of the private property through which they passed. There is no legal document indicating that the rows were regarded as a public right of way until the 17th century. In the 16th and 17th centuries the Rows, nominally under the control of the city corporation, were still the property of the individual merchants. These merchants who were responsible for the upkeep of the right of way, the railings and the steps.

Middle Ages

Edward 1st endeavour to subjugate the Northern Welsh had brought great wealth into the city. Chester was the hub from which materials, armament, soldiers, administrators and craftsmen were distributed amongst the growing castle building projects. The largest castle building enterprise in British history. During this prosperous period the Rows emerged gradually. The need for further space led to the excavation of the undercrofts in the rubble beneath the buildings with support for the pathway and building above and the addition living accommodation above the original structure. On the first floor was a shop fronting with the walkway that crossing the top of the undercroft with accommodation rising above it. Initially these undercrofts may not all have opened onto the street but as commerce grew along the street level most would have developed in this way. There is an example of this open row level gangway on the western side of Lower Bridge Street where the upper floors were never expanded over.

These under-crofts carried stallboards, sloping canopies under which merchants could set up stalls to sell their wears outside there under-croft storage on the street side. These stallboards were the beginning of encroachment onto the public highway. Over time they expanded their living accommodation over the galleries running along the roofs of the undercrofts and the stallboards, supporting them on columns that went down to the street. Encouraged by the city corporation who could raise rents on the land that such developments occupied. Eventually the stall areas became enclosed as shops. These stall boards can be seen today between the gallery rows and the street frontage. There was an increasing trend to build shops on top of the stallboards themselves so that the rows became increasingly dark and uninviting places to be. The rows are considered to have reached their fullest development in the middle of the 14th century.

Civil War

With the plague years of the middle ages the cities prosperity declined and the, until now evolving nature of the rows stopped. It wasn't until after the Civil War in the late 16^th century that further development took place. Some buildings were altered and some demolished and rebuilt by their wealthy owners. In some places larger buildings were built and in some places the rows became blocked in by their owners because they wished for greater privacy. This is particularly evident in Lower Bridge Street where small sections of row survive running between sections that have either been in filled or the original building replaced without conforming to the row principle.

The enclosure or the rows in lower bridge street was inspired by the actions of Sir Richard Grosvenor during the siege of Chester, in the Civil War. He petitioned to enclose the section of row running past his town house where he had moved his family in order to protect them within the city walls. As a leading Royalist his petition was granted. The house can be found at the top of Lower Bridge Street on the western side. Now the Falcon public house, evidence of what was once the row and the columns that supported the upstairs can be seen in the front. Once a break had been made others argued that the row level was useless as a public right of way.

The Georgians

During the Siege of Chester in 1645 a lot of the rows in Watergate Street and Eastgate Street were destroyed by bombardment. After the restoration in the 1660's Chester became a magnet for the wealthy and in the Georgian period Chester became a fashionable location to live and for social entertainment. At the same time as The Groves and The Walls were being developed as promenades many wealthy families built or remodelled town houses in the City Centre, often replacing or combining multiple buildings into one residence. In Lower Bridge Street, Bridge House and Park House replaced Medieval Rows buildings and nearer the cross Rows buildings were combined and re-fronted in brick, maintaining the Rows but in a new Classical style.

Booth's Mansion Watergate Street

In Booths mansion on Watergate Street two Medieval row buildings became one large town residence for George Booth of Dunham Massey, later 2nd Earl of Warrington. (George Booth was fined for encroaching upon the street having built this house façade angled to look slightly south east so that it could be more readily seen from The Cross)

The Victorians

In 19th century the adoption of the Gothic style in fashionable architecture and with it in Chester in particular the revival of half timbered building meant that much of the centre we see today is Victorian rather than Medieval. Most of this Victorian rebuilding respected the row concept, now seen as a desirable relic from a more romantic age. The exception being in Northgate Street where Shoemakers row was replaced by a street level row in 1909 designed by the architect John Douglas, who also designed the lodges in Grosvenor park, most of the estate buildings on the Grosvenor estate and the Eastgate Clock as well as many other buildings within Chester and beyond. Many of these Victorian additions carry interesting detail. Some have coats of arms and carved quotations whilst others carry wooden sculptures. Shoemakers row carries a lot of very fine detail and a number of sculptures, as does the row of revival buildings along the eastern side of St Werburgh's Street, also designed by John Douglas.

In the 1820's Browns Department store was built in Greek Revival style on the southern side of Eastgate Street. 1n the 1850's the store expanded. The architect Thomas M Penson, a leading advocate of the half timbered revival, adopted a Gothic styled sandstone façade for the new building. Reflecting the stonework of the Medieval under-croft over which it was built. The under-croft now forms part of The Crypt café beneath the shop. At the same he opened up the old row into a more light and airy first floor promenade with display units between the row and the street. Penson also designed the Grosvenor Hotel and other revival style buildings in Eastgate Street.

In 1859 a controversial Neo-Classical building by George Williams was built to house the headquarters of then Dixon and Wardell's Chester Bank. This building, opposite the Brown's development blocked off the northern Eastgate Row. The Row alteration being paid for by the gift of a strip of land for the widening of St Werburgh's Street.

Development in the lower part of Watergate Street led to the loss of parts of the rows on the northern side of the street but modern development on the southern side has respected the Row.

Today

The Rows in Chester today are a delightful place to eat, drink and shop. Within the square of Rows buildings fronted by Eastgate Street and Bridge Street and with Pepper Street to the south is The Mall or Grosvenor Shopping centre which as ad Edwardian Arcade at the Bridge Street end and more modern extension to the other two streets.

The main streets are pedestrianised Eastgate Street and Northgate Street all of the day, except for people needing access to city centre hotels and delivery vehicles. Bridge Street and Watergate Streets are closed to traffic from 8 am until 6pm.

They are home to a variety of eateries. Along Watergate Street at both street and row level there are number of bars, restaurants and cafés. The streets through the main part of the city centre are devoted to pedestrians and many of the cafés offer al fresco eating facilities. On the northern side of Eastgate Street you can sit on the row itself and watch passers by from the Rows Café.

For more pictures of Chester's rows go to the Chester Rows photograph gallery