Chester online

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[edit] General Stuff

Chester Wiki isn't the only website about Chester and things Cestrian, and while its not often possible to add your own content to the other sites, many of them contain useful information and reviews. Many of them will also provide alternative perspectives on Chester to what you might find on this Wiki. Some are very well populated and frequently updated, others are not as useful, and the information on them may be out of date. If you discover broken links, why not log in and fix them! And if you run one of the sites listed below - why not add a reciprocal link back to this site!

There are a lot of "commercial" sites relating to Chester. Some of these purport to offer unbiased advice, some just sell advertising, most of them have no links to any other Chester sites, especially the "Homegrown," local sites like this one and the superb Virtual Stroll.

Talking about 'local', how about a Stroll Around the Walls?! In terms of usefulness (and lack of bias), the top sites probably are:

  • 'Chester: a Virtual Stroll Around the Walls' - an absolutely brilliant site about Chester and a sterling almost single-handed effort. Well deserving of funding ('cos this is the sort of thing that attracts tourists, business etc). As well as much else - and in the spirit of this page - the site offers a comprehensive list of Chester links
  • Newtown ... is the beating heart of Chester and Newtown Saints is the community centre of Newtown! An interesting and (sometimes) edgy, big local community website for all ages - it is coded, written and maintained by a locally born resident, and has been running for over four years.

Shropshire Arms * Chester Renaissance - we have been in touch (but we still can't find a link to us)

  • Chester@Large - the Forum has a "sticky" list of restaurant websites as well as reviews of many pubs and eateries.
  • yell.com have a map with a stunning "Bird's Eye" view.
  • Uncyclopedia has a Chester page
  • City Council Site - better than most local authorities

Here are some others, some current and well informed, some little more than a front page, a few ads and an empty Forum.

If you pay for a TV licence, you might be a little dismayed to learn that unlike most counties Cheshire does not have its own page on the BBC, so stories about Cheshire are scattered through the pages on Staffordshire, Manchester and Merseyside. There is an on-line petition which you can sign if you feel strongly about the county not existing as far as the BBC is concerned. Alternatively, you could rely on the excellent local newspapers and radio stations listed on the Media page.

Also useful are:

[edit] Mapping Tools

These are the map related sites we could find for Chester:

  • For pollution floods etc just put in your postcode...
  • Rights of way in Cheshire (and some quite useful map tools).
  • A really impressive map tool can be found here. In the highest resolution the most modern map is quite stunning.
  • This site is for canal folk but has excellent and up to date land maps.
  • Some more old maps
  • A draggable UK map centred on Chester - click on the map for the "Geograph" pictures collection
  • The local history group at Upton have created an impressive map
  • yell.com have a map showing hole-in-the-wall machines, dentists and other essentials - but check out the "Bird's Eye" view.
  • The Chester Evening Leader has clever "news maps" which show what is happening where in the current week.
  • want to know if you will be underwater if sea levels rise - try this rising sea level map
  • Visible satellites that can be seen from the UK
  • Chester Renaissance mapping tool
  • The Magic mapping tool from UK gov.
  • A new project to map medieval Chester
  • A series of photo's of Chester taken from the air.

[edit] Forums and Boards

Discussion forums (where you can add content) can be found at:

  • Chester@Large forum - now a general forum for Chester, very much alive and kicking
  • Chester: A Virtual Stroll Around the Walls - their discussion forum has, sadly, now been forced to shut down due to spammers posting ads for Viagra etc..
  • Chester Tourist's discussion forum - this used to be a bit of a quiet board but now seems quite busy
  • Chesterwiki's Forum The discussion forum on this site - back from the dead! - but about as much action as Overleigh Cemy
  • Chester Forums If something could be done about the spam, it has the potential to be a good forum (and it "times out" often)
  • Chester Forum this one is sort of connected to "Chester Portal" and seems to be run by the City Council - it has an annoying habit of never issuing or forgetting new user id's and it is a bit quiet.
  • Student Forum about Chester.
  • icNorthwest (the people who publish the Chronicle) have a food forum here
  • The Evening Leader has a "have your say" page
  • The Chronicle forum
  • Hoole Connect has a forum (although the link now takes you to a commercial site)

[edit] Chester Bloggers

Live in Chester? Got a Blog? - ADD IT HERE!!

[edit] History and Walls (see Chester and The Chester Timeline)

One of the best must be the award-winning 'Chester: a Virtual Stroll Around the Walls', by Steve Howe. This is an excellent guide to the city and features a wealth of detail on the city Walls, the Chester Canal and the former Mickle Trafford to Shotton railway line- now the Millennium Greenway, part of the National Cycle Network. It also maintains a very useful list of links to other Chester-related websites. The site is best known for its tour of the city walls. This and other tours of the walls (of variable quality) are found at:

Within the "Virtual Stroll" pages can be found Phil Jones' detailed history of Chester. This is a very well-illustrated and linked-in history of the city from the Iron Age onwards. More historical stuff can be found on Mr Jones website. Another good historical picture show can be found at the Virtual Chester site - graphically very good (if you use a PC), but lacking the background provided by "Virtual Stroll" and may crash on Mac's OSX as it requires "Quicktime".

For the amphitheatre see: Chester Amphitheatre Project

For on-line maps of Chester a really impressive map tool can be found here on the County Council site. This has both modern maps and older ones. It is really worth a look! (as is this one).

Some reconstructions can be found at Julian Baum's Site (and also some projections of what Chester might look like in the far future)

More in-depth history can be found at British History Online. This is a major academic project and has very extensive links to the original sources of much of the historical data discussed. If you have comments on this excellent resource you can post them here. Lewis's history of Chester from his Topographical Guide can be found on-line here but may not always be "accurate". For the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which mentions Chester in several places, a translated version can be found here.

Several useful articles on local history can be found on chestermagazine.com

There are other history sites:

Finally our own Chester Books page lists all the on-line texts we can find relating to Chester. Many of these are the original sources for the articles you will find here.

[edit] Sites for Tourists (see Attractions)

Many of the historical sites and attractions in Chester have their own websites. These are listed on the Attractions page. Quite a lot of useful information can also be found on the council website (for example), but this can be difficult to navigate. If you find a good link to information about a particular attraction, please add to the page on the attraction.

For general tourist information (welcome to Chester BTW!) the following may be useful, although we obviously can't guarantee the accuracy of any of the information.

  • ChesterTourist.com IMHO is a bit harsh on the eye but, it is up to date, and it does contain a huge number of photographs and has a fantastic video collection on U-tube!
  • Visit Chester, the website of the official Tourism Board.
  • Trip Advisor's online listings for Chester (a US site, but you can add and read reviews about the hotels).
  • e-travelguide, another set of links to pubs, shops, hotels etc.
  • Kids Guide is a Chester-based site run by Zena Barrick and is full of ideas for things to do with your children in Chester and surrounds. A great one-stop shop...
  • Chester City Guide is based on interactive maps
  • City of Chester - has some interesting old photos
  • Chester a portrait a website dedicated to images and text about this historical city
  • Heritage Cities entry for Chester
  • Manchester 2002's page on Chester - bit out of date but good for wonderful quotes, such as: After the Romans abandoned Britain in the 5th century AD, and Chester, like most of Britain, fell prey to marauding Viking invaders. By the 10th century, Aethelflaeda, a daughter of King Alfred the Great, had moved to Chester, driven out the Norsemen, and strengthened and extended the city walls. After 1066, William the Conqueror appointed his cruel nephew, Hugh the Wolf, as the first Earl of Chester, a title still held by the monarch's son, Prince Charles, to this day. Hugh immediately set about building Chester Castle to secure his title against a largely unsympathetic and subdued populace
  • canal map showing how Chester can be visited by barge - a very impressive bit of software! - zoom right in to see every canal feature listed.
  • Ukattraction provides an interactive map with links to information
  • Britainexpress has short articles on some attractions in Chester
  • Tell-A-Tourist site about Chester
  • RealTravel page on Chester
  • even Virgin Trains have a Chester Website - which does say "..other historic inns include The Boot on Eastgate Row and the Bear and Billett on Bridge Street. "
  • Chester at "Walled Towns"
  • The iguide page for Chester
  • Chester at Squidoo
  • Stuart's stories - a bit cheesy.

[edit] Tour Guides (see: Tours and Guides)

[edit] Chester in the wikis of other languages

More for fun rather than information, but here are what wiki's in other languages say about Chester:

  • Welsh Chester - Dinas yng ngogledd orllewin Lloegr a chanolfan weinyddol (tref sirol) Sir Gaer yw Caer (Saesneg: Chester).
  • The Danes comment on the Vikings - Under de danske invasioner af England blev byen flere gange plyndret.
  • Czech Chester - Adjektivum spojené s městem je Cestrian. Svatý patron Chestera je svatý Werburgh.
  • Chester by the French - no mention of famous footballers or English spy's. Does mention Philip Egerton the famous collector of fossilised fish.
  • German Chester - has King Charles watching the battle of Rowton Moor from the watertower! (In den 1640er Jahren fand im Rahmen des englischen Bürgerkriegs auf den nahegelegenen Wiesen die Schlacht von Rowton Moor statt, in der die Streitkräfte der Parlaments die Royalisten schlugen, was von König Karl I. vom Wasserturm innerhalb der Stadtmauern aus verfolgt werden konnte.) Mentions the twin town of Lörrach
  • Spanish Chester - football and films - mentions both Michael Owen and Daniel Craig. The recommended sights are: The Eastgate Clock ("Reloj de la puerta del este"), la Catedral de Chester, "el Rio Dee y su puente romano" (they mean the Norman Bridge), and Las murallas de la ciudad.
  • Polish Chester - brillianty summarises the history of Chester from the Romans (Rzymian Castra Devana), through Celts (Celtów) - Anglo-saxons (Anglów i Sasów) - Normans (Normanów) all the way up to King Charles (Karol I).
  • Dutch Chester - mentions Michael Owen and compares Chester with the walled city of Naarden (which has far better walls that Chester).
  • Russian Chester - mentions Майкъл Оуен (Michael Owen) and Св. Уърбърг (St Werburgh);
  • Esperanto wiki says it is in the North and near Wales (Chester estas urbo de Cheshire en la nordo de Britio, ĉirkaŭ Kimrio.) - and not much else.
  • The Gaelg wiki has a brief description of this city of the "Sostyn" (Southrons or Saxons?).
  • In Finnish we are famous for our city walls (Kaupunginmuuri).
  • The Norwegian wiki reminds us that in the Civil War a battle was fought here:- Under borgerkrigen i England sto slaget ved Rowton Moor like utenfor byen.
  • Swedes have a brief entry.
  • On the Indonesian page we are reminded that the "Orang" of Chester are 'Cestrians' - Orang dari Chester disebut Cestrian - ('Orang' means 'person' as in 'Orang Utang' - person of the woods).
  • The Italian Wiki reminds us that the Romans were here - La città fu fondata dai romani, come suggerisce il nome, nel I secolo d.C. I romani la chiamarono Deva o Castra Devana dal nome del fiume Dee.
  • The Turkish wiki has a link to us and directs people to the Grosvenor Müzesi.

[edit] Finding Work in Chester

See Jobs in Chester for the listing page.

[edit] Life in Chester (see also Living in Chester and Media)

For residents associations start at Chestertogether.co.uk which provides a home for these associations.

A good set of demographic information is available from government sources.

There is a very good map at yell.com to find local shops and services.

For day-to-day information the City Council Site is a good place to start but can be a little difficult to find one's way around. There is also Chester Portal - with another useful list of links. Local newspaper and radio websites are listed on the Media page.

Local weather is very well provided for at the Chester College Weather Site. This not only provides daily graphs of temperature, rainfall etc, but also has a mass of historical data on the weather in Chester. There are links from this site to rainfall and thunderstorm radar. The Met Office has a forecast for Chester here

Talking about 'local', how about Newtown?! Newtown ... is the beating heart of Chester and Newtown Saints is the community centre of Newtown!

Other districts in Chester have their own websites - one example is Hoole Online. Yet others are listed on Cheshire Web-Ring. A useful list of telephone numbers is maintained by the local authority at:

If you know of any other ward-specific sites please add them here and on the "neighbourhood" page. There is also a list on the Chester Portal. So far we have:

(For other Blacon sites see a page on Blacon) and the

  • Chester's Garden Quarter produces GQ their very own website!

Many other villages near Chester have a listing at "UKvillages" which is a commercial site but is good for old photo's.

Finally we have a Spam List - these are the internet addresses of the people that have defaced this site.

[edit] Eating, Drinking, Cavorting (see Eating, Drinking and Shopping)

[edit] Takeaway on line

[edit] Others

For independent reviews of going out, there is the incomparable Chester@Large website run by Tracy and Ian Burns. Web-presence is seen as important by many pubs and restaurants in Chester and the Chester Food and Drink Festival gives an award for the best web presence each year (Brasserie 10/16 won the 2007 award). If you are looking for a particular pub and you cannot find it, it may be listed here!

  • Citykey has quite a good site on Chester - useful for finding shops, businesses etc.

Other sites include:

[edit] Clubs and Societies

Got a society website? - then list it here (and add a page if you wish!)

[edit] Free Wifi Spots and Internet Access

There is a dearth of places in Chester that offer free net access to laptop users, but the free wifi spots we know exist are listed on the Media page.

Internet access can be obtained at the following:

[edit] Geek Stuff

[edit] Links Pages

The best:

Others:

The rest:

[edit] Other stuff

Art - CHESTER BEYOND THE WALLS: WATERCOLOURS, DRAWINGS AND PRINTS...

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