A portion of Chester’s iconic Roman walls that collapsed four years ago is to be restored.
Chester is the only city in the UK to boast a complete circuit of Roman walls. A section between St John Street and Newgate Street collapsed in January 2020 while developers were conducting digging work. Access to the landlocked site and disagreements between the site’s owners and Cheshire West and Chester Council (CWaCC) have hindered progress to repair it, but the council have now said that sufficient progress has been made to allow repair work to commence.
Karen Shore, the deputy leader of CWaCC, said recently that preparation for the repairs has taken longer than the council would have liked due to reasons beyond its control, saying it was a significant project:
“…involving a scheduled ancient monument that has required a great deal of planning with our heritage engineers, project managers, contractors and insurers, together with a great deal of technical work required to overcome the challenges of accessing such a constrained site and to obtain the relevant consents from English Heritage.”
Chester’s historic walls are two thousand years old and stretch for two miles around the city centre. Being no longer needed for defence in the 18th century, they were converted into a fashionable walkway for the public.
They now form part of the charm that attracts people to study in Chester. If you’re one of these and looking for student rentals in Chester, you can find a range of options not too far from Chester’s Roman walls.
Written by Mark
