Nick's visit to Chester
Blog post
Nick | Committee Member

We began with a Latte from The Black Sheep Coffee house (they've been one of my favourites for about 5 years now since I discovered them round the corner from my office in Gresham Street, London). Then a bit of a wander around the town, down by the river, along the city walls and through the Roman Gardens and then off to the Cathedral for a light lunch followed by a guided tour of the Cathedral.

The Cathedral tour is run daily by volunteers and is well worth it for a few pounds. It lasts for about one and a half hours and takes you through the origins and the Abbey/Cathedral's 1300 year history. Although it has a very long history it is very much built or remodelled in the gothic style and has been further renovated during the Victorian era, without which it's unlikely much would have remained standing.

On the day of our visit the Nave was being setup ready for a music event that evening so access to some areas was limited or unfortunately not possible (so my series on square tower ceilings remains on hold as I wasn't able to get properly underneath, despite my plea to one of the sound technicians. See image 10: The one that got away!).

The Cathedral has many fine examples of Victorian decoration. Such as the Vaulted Nave Ceiling (image 01), this is constructed entirely in Oak, even the bits that look like stone. Then moving on to image 02, The Angel Choir ceiling, a highly decorated painted oak vaulted ceiling that you can only really appreciate by zooming in to a photograph.

Images 03 and 04 show just two examples of the coloured marble mosaics that are made from naturally coloured Itallian marble.

Image 05 shows the Creation Window by Rosalind Grimshaw commissioned in the early 2000's and tells the story of the six day's of the creation with modern imagery. This can be seen in the refectory.

In the Abbey you can see the more traditional Nativity window, image 06, which is another stunning example of the stained glass around the Cathedral.

Image 07 and 08 were both taken in the choir area of the abbey, and show the highly decorated marble floor between the choir stalls and the intricate detail of the canopies over the choir stalls.

And then finally for this image set, image 09 shows a section of the sculpture by Chris Butler entitled, The Water of Life. It's a fabulous sculpture and represents the story of Jesus and the woman of Samaria at the well. There are further works by Chris in and outside the Cathedral also worth seeing, but maybe not as easy to photograph without more patience.

Tour complete it was then back to Black Sheep Coffee for another Latte.

The next day was spent on a Guided City Walking Tour which is a great way to learn more about the City and to discover some of it's hidden history, followed by a bit more shopping and another quick visit to the Cathedral to pickup a few more photos that hadn't been possible the day before.