Читать книгу The Stranger's Handbook to Chester and Its Environs онлайн

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For the present, then, we will move on along Frodsham Street, anciently called Cowlane, pausing midway to reflect that in the Quakers’ Meeting-house, at the corner of Union Walk, Friend William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, held forth to his admirers, King James II. being on one occasion an attentive hearer. Continuing on our course a short distance, we emerge from Cowlane into a wide but irregular street, named indifferently Forest or Foregate Street, the latter, from its standing immediately before the gate,—the Eastgate, close by, being always esteemed the porta principalis of the city. Foregate Street forms a part of the old Watling Street of the Romans; so that it existed as a road almost as early as the crucifixion of Our Lord! Fifty years ago this was as curious a street as any within the city; but the ancient piazzas which once ran continuously along it, are now becoming mere specks in the landscape, and “like angels’ visits, few and far between.” Not far from where we are standing, near the corner of St. John’s Street, are two superior travellers’ inns, the Hoppole, and the Blossoms, the latter a house of the highest standing and respectability, admirably adapted for the accommodation of visitors, and for all those who would enjoy the comfort of a home combined with the advantages of a first-class Hotel. At the rear of the Blossoms, in St. John Street, is the Post Office, a neat stuccoed building, erected in 1842, at the sole expense of William Palin, Esq., the present post-master. Prior to this, the business of the Post-Office was conducted in a dark and dreary building, situate up a court, still known as the Old Post-Office Yard. It was to Rowland Hill, and his wonder-working penny stamp, that the citizens owed this satisfactory change from darkness unto light.