25 – Chester and Chester Cathedral: 22 September 2024

The signs claim that Chester is the most visited city in the whole of the United Kingdom.  Based on my visit to Chester, this claim may even be true.

So far as I could see, the property developers have not yet been given a licence to knock down all of the old buildings and replace them with modern eyesores – at least in the central city area where the ancient city of Chester was established by the Romans. Some of the original Chester City walls still stand.

 
Despite its age and its relatively well preserved buildings, the ancient churches which dot the streets of Chester are clearly falling on hard times.  Saint Peter Church on Eastgate is an ancient and beautiful building in the heart of the bustling Chester city shopping and commercial district.  Wiki claims this about Saint Peter Church.

The church stands on the site of part of the Roman Praetorium, and some of its fabric dates from that time. A church is said to have been built on this site by Ethelfleda in 907. The present church dates from the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, with modifications in the following three centuries. Formerly, the tower had a spire, which was removed and rebuilt in the 16th century, taken down in the 17th century, then rebuilt and finally removed having been much injured by lightning" in around 1780. In 1849–50, the church was repaired by James Harrison, and in 1886 it was restored by John Douglas, which included the addition of a pyramidal spire.

 Although Saint Peter is a gorgeous building, it seemed to me when I visited it that it probably survives as a “working” church only because part of the main body of the church – the part where worshippers once sat and knelt down when they attended services – has been turned into a coffee shop.  Here is the coffee shop inside Saint Peter Church, Chester; it is indeed a very pleasant coffee shop, but surely it once must have been an extraordinarily vibrant place of worship.  I hope it can once again become a vibrant place of worship.

 

 Chester Cathedral is far more imposing and impressive than Saint Peter Church in Eastgate Street, yet it too seems to have fallen onto hard economic times.  As with Saint Peter Church, I hope Chester Cathedral finds a way to maintain its commitment to the sacred while still surviving economically. 

Chester Cathedral is a collection of many buildings which must have taken many decades to build.  They are all physically joined together to form the one building called Chester Cathedral, but within the complex there is a bewildering array of divisions and different areas. 

This is part of the outside of Chester Cathedral.  It is impossible to take a photo of the whole of the outside of the Cathedral building because it is so big.

Although Chester Cathedral does not charge an admission fee, there is pressure to make a donation.  My donation in Euros was gratefully accepted even though the currency in Britain is the Pound.   

Once in, I began to wander through the maze of Cathedral sections.  I think, but I am not certain, that this photo is of the main Cathedral Nave where the congregation sits while divine services are conducted.  The nave is massive in area and in a cold English winter, attending a service here would require the worshipper to either be immune to the cold or be wrapped up in especially warm clothing.  I suspect most worshippers simply shiver uncontrollably through services in winter.

 

Here is yet another of the internal sections of Chester Cathedral.  I have no idea of its official name, but like most of the Cathedral, it is certainly imposing.

 

  For me, the outstanding feature of the Cathedral was an inner courtyard garden.  The garden is dominated by a giant statue of a merman and a mermaid engaged in an intimate kiss.  In its completely chaste way, the statue of the fish people is quite erotic.

I finished my tour of the Cathedral feeling exhausted mentally and physically.  The Cathedral was surely built on such a massive scale to impress worshippers with the awesome power of God as represented by the government of England.  I was impressed by the immensity of the Cathedral, but I was not sure that constructing an immense building was the best way to bring people closer to God.  Perhaps if some of the money spent on building the Cathedral had been spent on improving the life conditions of the parishioners, they might have been more easily persuaded about the loving kindness and power of God.  I admit I might be completely wrong about that.

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Once I had run out of energy, I had a light lunch and coffee in the Cathedral cafeteria.  Once I had finished lunch, I visited the Cathedral Gift Shop.  The Gift Shop had a large selection of items that I could buy if I had the money and the desire to do so.  The Gift Shop did actually sell Bibles, but they were placed so that I could have easily not seen they were there at all.