Northgate Development Progress

From Chester Wiki

1 The Roman Legionary Fortress
2 Sub-Roman Phase
3 Post-medieval Intensification of Land Use
4 Slum Clearance and Commercial Development
5 Strong Room
6 Pictures

[edit] The Roman Legionary Fortress

The Chester Northgate site occupies the greater part of the north-western quarter of a Roman fortress. The Fortress was begun in the 70s AD by the 2nd Legion and was later reoccupied by the 20th Legion. The site is roughly defined by the streets of the Roman fortress: to the east by the main north-south street; to the south by the main east-west street; and to the west by the Fortress wall and rampart (part of which survives in a heavily damaged form) and its intra-mural street. An irregular grid of north-south and east-west Roman streets then divided up the intervening site. The Headquarters building {Principia) of the fortress was in the south-east corner where the remains of the strongroom still survive. To the north, under the present Town Hall, was another large building, possibly a store building or hospital and to the west of this building was a building with an elliptical plan that was destroyed when The Forum Centre was built. The rest of the site was filled with a store, a workshop and barrack blocks, in the area of Hamilton House and the bowling green.

[edit] Sub-Roman Phase

The Fortress was abandoned in the 5th Century AD. The Roman street pattern and buildings survived sufficiently, in ruin form at least, to influence the later Saxon topography. However, the area behind Watergate Street and Northgate Street seemed to have been given over to agricultural or horticultural activity and does not appear to have been occupied.Re-emergence of the Town from Late 9th-10th Centuries.

There was a brief Danish occupation of Chester and in 907 the town was refortified. It is at this time that the medieval street pattern may have emerged within the area of the proposals, e.g. Crook Street, Goss Street and Hamilton Place. These streets may reflect earlier Roman alignments. Settlement would have been widely spread across the area and a number of Late Saxon buldings have already been excavated. Princess Street was not developed until after the Norman Conquest when the focus of building became concentrated on the main street frontages and Chester began to take on an urban character.

The origins of the Row System on Northgate and Watergate are still not fully understood but it was certainly in existence by the mid 13 Century. The side-street frontages began to be built up and the backland areas were used for refuse pits and semi-industrial purposes. The application area occupies about 15% of the medieval town.

[edit] Post-medieval Intensification of Land Use

As Chester's population expanded so the backs of the medieval plots began to be built on. As population density increased in the 18th and 19th centuries yards and courts were built to exploit the backland. The only exception was the area of the Bowling Green that appears to have remained open continuously since Roman times. The original covered market was built in the 1860s.

[edit] Slum Clearance and Commercial Development

By the 20th Century the high-density buildings in the backland area had become run down and they were cleared away together with the original market hall (1967) to make way for the bus exchange, the Forum and associateddevelopments. In the process the medieval street pattern, particularly the line of Crook Street was lost. Much of the below ground archaeology was destroyed at this time, although deposits were largely undisturbed in the north-western area on either side of Hunter Street, to the east of Goss Street and possibly undersome of the streets, although the latter would have been disturbed by services.

[edit] Strong Room

The Roman Strong Room, which for years has been given poor treatment, was not in our view to be displayed to full advantage in the revised library scheme. We consider the Roman Strong Room to be of great symbolic importance to Chester, and hence the comments in our previous correspondence"

Following further discussions and exchange of additional information, English Heritage agreed that the removal of the cantilevered floor over part of the archaeological remains is not practicable. Accordingly their objections to this one remaining part of the scheme were withdrawn.

However, English Heritage point out that archaeological interpretation in the relatively constrained foyer space will be all the more critical and they have requested that the most careful attention is given to getting it absolutely right and achieving an exemplary scheme. They comment that "adequate budgetary provision will be needed to cover items such as lighting, treatment of the public realm immediately outside the building, conservation of the remains, finishes to the viewing well and surrounding areas, as well as the actual interpretative displays both inside and outside. Practical considerations such as access for maintenance and cleaning will also need careful thought^ Material Considerations

The Northgate site contains some of the best-preserved remains of the Roman fortress, in particular the legionary barracks and Centurions' quarters. The archaeological constraints as set out in the Draft Development Brief for the site require the preservation of the most important remains (mainly in the north west part of the site around the bowling green).

The current Development Brief (Donaldsons on behalf of CCC, 1999) calls for the protection, as far as possible, of the archaeological deposits within the boundary.