The Heart of Chester Walking Tour

🔔 OYEZ! OYEZ! OYEZ!

In Chester Town Criers are taking over the city! 📣

This week, Chester welcomes 25 town criers from 8 nations for the World Town Crier Competition 🌍🔔

But this tradition is nothing new… Chester’s town criers have been proclaiming news here since 1554!

Before social media, radio or TV, this was Chester’s original way of spreading the word. 😄

And where better to do it than the High Cross — right in the heart of the city? ❤️

🎺 History. Tradition. A whole lot of volume!

ONE TOWER. 700 YEARS OF STORIES.

What if I told you Chester’s Water Tower wasn’t always surrounded by trees and city streets? 👀

Built around 1322 it was originally called the New Tower and stood in the River Dee, right beside Chester’s medieval port. 🌊

Chester paid mason John Helpstone £100 to build it — a seriously impressive sum in medieval Chester! 🪎

Then the Dee silted up…
⚔️ The Civil War brought cannon and siege warfare…
🎩 Later, Georgian visitors came to perambulate the medieval walls for pleasure…

And today, we can still step inside this extraordinary survivor during heritage week❤️

Chester really does have layers!

📍 Chester Water Tower
❤️ The Heart of Chester
📖 History • Stories • Walking Tours

✏️ The Art of Chester 🎨

Have you ever looked at Chester through an artist’s eyes?

Chester Urban Sketchers capture the city in a completely different way — historic buildings, hidden corners and everyday scenes, one sketch at a time.

I joined them to discover Chester from an artist’s perspective. ❤️

Which Chester landmark would you choose to sketch?

Hidden high above the city is one of Chester’s most fascinating secrets — a Victorian Camera Obscura that projects a live, panoramic view of Chester onto a viewing table inside the tower. 🔭✨

It’s a brilliant way to see our city from a completely different perspective!

🔑 AND TODAY — SUNDAY 13TH SEPTEMBER — THE TOWER IS OPEN FOR VIEWING!

If you’re in Chester today, why not climb the tower and discover this little piece of Chester’s hidden history? ❤️

🏰 Open today as part of Heritage Open Days

😺 Why is the Cheshire Cat always grinning? 😁

Ever wondered why Cheshire became famous for its grinning cats? 👀

The Cheshire Cat in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 🐇🫖 may be the most famous one — but the phrase “grinning like a Cheshire cat” was around long before Lewis Carroll wrote his book.

And with Cheshire once being famous for its dairy farms and Cheshire cheese 🐄🥛🧀, perhaps there was a very simple reason for all those happy smiles… 😉

But there’s an even more intriguing medieval connection… 🐺🏰

Come and discover the city’s history, and some of the stories and characters hiding in Chester! ❤️

👀 Look up in Chester… you never know what you might discover! 😏

This wonderfully flamboyant building at Chester Cross 🏛️ was designed by Chester architect Thomas Meakin Lockwood and built in 1888. 🏗️

It is a classic example of Chester’s Black-and-White / Vernacular Revival — the Victorian fashion for recreating the appearance of the city’s earlier timber-framed buildings. 🖤🤍

But Lockwood wasn’t simply copying the past. Victorian architects made their versions bigger, more elaborate and much more decorative than many of the originals. ✨

This particular building incorporates part of The Rows, with its shops and elevated walkway, and its extraordinary decoration includes carved figures, elaborate timberwork and the Grosvenor coat of arms. 👑

And here’s a lovely little Chester claim to fame… 🤩

This building was famous enough to appear on a Royal Mail postage stamp in 1975, during European Architectural Heritage Year. 📮🇬🇧

So yes, there’s serious architectural history here… 📚

but you really do need to look up. 😉👀

👀🔎 CHESTER’S HIDDEN BOUNDARIES 🏛️📜

Have you ever spotted these curious little boundary markers around Chester? 🧐

They’re easy to walk straight past… 🚶‍♀️💨
…but they tell us something fascinating about how the city was once divided into parishes. ⛪️🗺️

Look closely and you may find:
🔤 Initials
📅 Dates
🪨 Carved inscriptions
📍 Boundary markers tucked into walls and buildings

And some are hiding in the most unexpected places! 😲

So next time you’re exploring Chester…

👀 LOOK UP ⬆️
🔎 LOOK DOWN ⬇️
🧱 LOOK AT THE WALLS
…and keep your eyes peeled! 👁️✨

You might just discover a little piece of Chester’s hidden history hiding in plain sight.

📸 Spot one? TAKE A PHOTO!
👇 Post it and tag me — let’s see how many Chester boundary markers we can uncover! 🔍