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

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Yonder white stone building at the head of St. John Street is the well-known banking establishment of Messrs. Williams & Co., usually denominated the Old Bank. And, here, crossing the street at an altitude of some thirty feet, is the Eastgate, a noble arch, with a postern on either side, erected in 1769, on the site of a Gateway, dating back to the days of the Third Edward, by Robert, first Marquis of Westminster, whose arms, with those of the city, ornament the keystone of the centre arch.

Handsome and commodious as is the present Eastgate,—on every score but that of convenience, it is immeasurably inferior to its predecessor. Could we but look upon the structure as it existed only a hundred years ago, with its beautiful Gothic archway, flanked by two massive octagonal towers, four stories in height, supporting the Gate itself and the rooms above,—could we but resuscitate the time-worn embattlements of that “ancient of days,” we should wonder at and pity the spurious taste that decreed its fall. “Oh, but,” we may be told, “the present Gate was a public improvement.” A plague upon such improvements, say we! We should vastly have preferred, and so would every lover of the antique, whether citizen or stranger, to have retained the old Gate in its integrity, altered, had need been, to meet the growing wants of the times, rather than have thus consigned it to the ruthless hands of the destroyer. Oh! ye spirits of the valiant dead,—you who lost your lives defending this Gate against the cannons of Cromwell, why did ye not rise up from your graves, and arrest the mad course of that “age of improvement!” When this Gate was being demolished, the massive arches of the original Roman structure were laid bare to the view, and a portion of one of them is yet to be seen on the north-west side of the present Gateway.