Qualla: Eastgate, Chester

Eastgate, Chester: Introduction

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stedent, CC BY-SA 3.0. Cameras outnumber locals on the steps below the Eastgate clock most afternoons. The clock has stood there since 1899, its four faces watching over a junction the Romans surveyed in the first century, and it is said to be the most photographed timepiece in England after Big Ben. People queue for the angle, the one that catches the wrought iron cupola against Chester's red sandstone. They have been queuing for it since cameras were heavy boxes on wooden tripods.

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Image: Stedent | CC BY-SA 3.0

Eastgate, Chester: A Roman Front Door

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Julius (User:Juliux), CC BY-SA 3.0. Chester was founded around AD 74 or 75 as the Roman fortress of Deva Victrix, a rectangle with rounded corners on the navigable head of the River Dee. The east gate was the most important entrance from the start; the road through it ran to Manchester and then over the Pennines to...

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Image: Julius (User:Juliux) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Eastgate, Chester: Layers of Stone

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter I. Vardy, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 907, the Saxon kings of Wessex refounded Chester as a burh, and the Roman gate was probably still standing. By the medieval period the Eastgate had been rebuilt as a tall rectangular tower with octagonal corner turrets, the design perhaps influenced by Caernarfon Castle, which...

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Image: Peter I. Vardy | CC BY-SA 3.0

Eastgate, Chester: The Earl's Elegant Arch

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nessy-Pic, CC BY-SA 4.0. By the eighteenth century the city walls were no longer defensive. The Cestrians had turned them into walkways, and the medieval gates obstructed the carriages, carts, and packhorses that wanted to get through. Eastgate went first. In 1768 it was rebuilt as a three-arched sandsto...

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Image: Nessy-Pic | CC BY-SA 4.0

Eastgate, Chester: Diamond Jubilee Ironwork

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Frank Airey, CC BY-SA 2.0. The idea of crowning the gate with a clock came up first in 1872, when Hugh Grosvenor, then the 3rd Marquess of Westminster, asked the Chester architect John Douglas to draw up designs. The Marquess offered to pay half. The Chester Improvement Committee refused to fund the rest, ...

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Image: Frank Airey | CC BY-SA 2.0

Eastgate, Chester: Eighty Years of Winding

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter I. Vardy, CC BY-SA 3.0. Edward Evans-Lloyd, a Chester solicitor and freeman of the city, paid for the clock faces and mechanism. The tower itself was raised by public subscription. The corporation agreed to maintain it forever. On 27 May 1899, three days after Queen Victoria's eightieth birthday, the cl...

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Image: Peter I. Vardy | CC BY-SA 3.0