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In 1779 Boswell wrote to Samuel Johnson: "Chester pleases me more
than any town I ever saw." CHESTER , forty miles southwest of
Manchester, has changed since then, but not so much. A glorious two-mile
ring of medieval and Roman walls encircle a neat kernel of Tudor and
Victorian buildings, including the unique raised arcades called the "Rows".
Very much the commercial hub of its county, Chester has enough in the
way of sights, restaurants and atmosphere to make it an enjoyable base
for a couple of days.
In 79 AD the Romans built Deva Castra here, their largest known fortress
in Britain. Later, Ethelfleda, the daughter of King Alfred the Great,
extended and refortified the place, only to have it brutally sacked by
William the Conqueror's armies. Trade routes to Ireland made Chester the
most prosperous port in the northwest, a status it recovered after the
English Civil War, which saw a two-year-long siege of the town at the
hands of the Parliamentarians. By the middle of the eighteenth century,
however, silting of the port had forced the Irish trade to be rerouted
first through Parkgate on the Dee estuary, and then to Liverpool. Things
improved a little with the Industrial Revolution, as the canal and
railway networks made Chester an important regional trading centre, a
function it still retains
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