Chester - St John's Church

Just by the Roman amphitheatre is a church which claims to be the original cathedral for Chester, built somewhere in the 4thC (or possibly even earlier!), and later being rebuilt in stone to become the Saxon minster for Chester. At that time, the amphitheatre was being used as some sort of fortified residence, with buildings in the arena and most of the entrances blocked up. It is, of course, outside the City walls.

These are some of the ruins at the east end - I was too early to go inside the church, which opens at 10am. The church was reduced in size at the Reformation, and this bit was converted into Tudor flats! Now the churchyard is home to these cute little things:

I'm sure they were posing for me!

I then crossed the amphitheatre again to get to the Roman garden, which runs along the outside of the City Wall, and is full of columns found in the City, as well as more recent mosaics, and a replica hypocaust.

I didn't expect to find some Civil War history there as well - there's a portion of wall in the picture which has been rebuilt, after being breached by the Parliamentary forces, who set up their cannons at St Johns. There's a plaque at the base of the wall to remember the dead of both sides, set up by the Sealed Knot.

The Roman garden leads down to the river:

It must have been somewhere close to here that my grandad hired a rowing boat to take my gran out on the river, not long after they got married. They'd come down on the train from Manchester for day trips - it must have been 1937 or 38.