Tuesday 25^th February – Tuesday 3^rd March 2020

We sat by Cow Lane Bridge, very close to the centre of Chester City and made the most of our time. We bought quite a few things for the boat that we had been leaving until Chester and also bought new winter jackets, my Berghaus for example, was beginning to let dampness through.

A few jobs were done on the boat, stowage for the vacuum cleaner, a new rail in the bathroom corridor for hanging washing, amongst others.

Brenda has done quite a bit of city shopping and reorganising of cupboards and drawers. New cookware was bought and the old stuff dumped.

I have ‘chased dead bodies’ as Brenda terms it, Family History research. A numbers of branches of my family lived and are buried in Chester and the Cheshire Archives are held here. A lot of my time was taken up with researching records in the archive office, photographing known and existing addresses and searching for graves in the overgrown Overleigh Cemetery where the only grave located was that of my 3x Great Grandparents.

Brenda met up with Barbara for a catch-up, the first time they have met since Peter’s funeral.

I travelled to Middlewich for the weekend to have the kids while Tracey was away. As always, thoroughly enjoyed it and went swimming on the Saturday afternoon. Apparently it was noisy around the boat over the weekend, but no incidents.

We are moored across from Union Terrace, an address where my Great Grandfather was born and his parents lived, and have been frequenting the Union Vaults, a typical no-frills local near the boat. It sits on the corner of Egerton Street and Milton Street, addresses where my forbearers had lived in the past. Union Vaults seems to be a Catholic pub that is very busy in the late afternoons when guys have finished work for the day.

It houses a ‘Bagatelle’ team and apparently Chester has the only Bagatelle league in the world of which the Union Vaults is repeatedly the Champion. The game is a type of billiards and was believed to have been brought to Britain by French prisoners-of-war during the Napoleonic Wars.

We got friendly with a couple of the locals who regaled us with tales of what this area had been like in the past, within living memory. The leadworks was known as the ‘Deader’ because employees never lived long. There was a big cattle market where the bus station is now situated, the cattle being mainly transported into the city by train, into Northgate Station, that has also disappeared and been replaced by the Northgate Leisure Centre. The cattle were then driven across Cow Lane Bridge, hence the name, into the slaughter house on Queen Street. They also told us of a Leper Hospital that used to be located at Boughton, and whose graveyard still exists and of the monument to one George Marsh, a Catholic, who was burnt at the stake near the site, for his religious convictions in 1555. Catholics have a loooong memory. 

     

                

                                                                         Former Leper Graveyard at Boughton                                       

                                                                      Monument to George Marsh, burnt at the stake

Views over the flooded Dee Valley from Broughton

Apparently in the mid-19^th century, the population of Boughton was about 95% Irish Catholic after the Irish potato famines.

We loved local history and engaging with the locals wherever we travel. The source of a lot of knowledge is held within a local pub. The key is how to unlock it.