The sacred edifice has from time to time undergone extensive
reparations.
As a port Chester was at one time most important, but through the
silting up of the Channel in the fifteenth century, it lost a
considerable amount of its shipping trade. In spite of the Channel being
deepened in 1824, its shipping prosperity cannot be said to have
advanced hand in hand with the progress of the city, though it possibly
may be greater than it was in the fifteenth century.
The great Chester Canal comes from Nantwich, passes through Chester, and
merges into the Ellesmere Canal, which winds up northwards to the river
Mersey. Thus the city is connected with Liverpool.
As the crow flies, the country traversed from London to Chester is most
interesting. The track passes through the counties of Middlesex,
Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire, Warwickshire, with its famous towns,
Stratford-on-Avon, the birthplace of Shakespeare, and Coventry, through
Staffordshire, famous for its beautiful old china and its Cathedral at
Lichfield, and finally into Cheshire, the county containing Chester and
Northwich.
Among the many eminent men born at Chester was Randolph Caldecott, in
1846. He is handed down to posterity as the famous illustrator of the
works of Washington Irving. But the achievement that gained him the
greatest _acclame_ was a series of coloured books for children. They
began in 1878 with "John Gilpin" and "The House that Jack Built," and
ended the year before his death, in 1886, with the "Elegy on Madame
Blaize" and "The Great Panjandrum Himself." In the crypt of St. Paul's,
London, his memory is perpetuated through the great artistic expression
of a brother artist, Alfred Gilbert, R. A.
Thus, in this brief sketch, an attempt has been made to give a
categorical history of one of England's most ancient cities from its
earliest occupation by the British Cornavii, and its subsequent events
down to the royal visit in 1869 by the then Prince of Wales, now our
King Edward VII., on which occasion he opened the new townhall. It would
require far greater space to record every feature of interest in
connection with Chester than can be allotted within the present
limitations. To the antiquarian Chester furnishes a most interesting and
absorbing study, and will in all likelihood continue to do so for many
years to come yet.
To those interested in horse-racing the fine race-course attracts
annually a great concourse to Chester.