A bright and breezy day in Chester – why not visit a car park?
Having previously visited a car park on one’s previous visit.
Pepper Street Car Park
So off we go into the Shopping Centre.
From high street style to independent finds, coffee breaks to long lunches, there’s so much to discover here. Plan your visit, explore what’s new, and enjoy a day that’s every bit as relaxed as it is rewarding.
Up in the lift, walking just one flight of stairs, right to the top.
Pepper Street Car Park
The weir and former causeway stands across the River Dee. It was originally built in 1093 by Hugh Lupus, first Earl of Chester. It was built for St Werburgh’s Benedictine Abbey – now Chester Cathedral. It channelled the water to allow it to power a series of mills along the Dee. These mills were amongst the largest and most valuable in England during the 13th century. They were in use until 1910.
The weir was restored in the early 20th century to serve the City Council’s hydro-electric power station
Chester generated its own clean carbon-free electricity for almost half of the city’s needs from the hydroelectric building on Castle Drive between 1914 and 1949.
From 1932 the city was buying electricity from the Central Electricity Board’s embryonic national grid in order to cope with demand which grew to over 23,000 consumers by 1946.
The Hydro Electric Station on the River Dee is a Grade II listed building.
Photo: Len Morgan
At nationalisation in 1948 the corporation’s system came under the Merseyside and North Wales Electricity Board – Manweb, which in 1968–70 built its administrative headquarters in Sealand Road. The buildings had as their centrepiece a seven-storey Y-plan office block, which dominated the skyline looking west from the city centre until it was demolished in the 1990s.
I was wandering the streets of Chester when I came upon this decorated doorway in Newgate Street.
In consultation with the current owners panda mami – we concurred that the building was once in service to the electrical generating industry.
Architecturally pre-National Grid, this implies that it would have been part of Chester’s independent provision.
It can be seen in the top left of this archive photograph.
Electricity House in the days of Chester Corporation Electricity Department.
Later subsumed by MANWEB.
My thanks to Richard Brook aka Mainstream Modern for his invaluable research
The building has the most shockingly assertive Futurist emblems embedded within the window grilles.
Any work of art that lacks a sense of aggression can never be a masterpiece.
If she’s put together fine and she’s reading my mind
I can’t stop I can’t stop myself
Lightning is striking again
Lightning is striking again and again and again and again
Lou Christie and Twyla Herbert
The arch above the entrance is adorned with these carved stone electrical emblems – also rendered in the Futurist Moderne manner.
The pumping house is to become a visitor’s centre – named the Hydro Hub.
Singin through you to me
Thunderbolts caught easily
Shouts the truth peacefully
Electricity
Don van Vliet
So it came to pass I visited another underpass or two – I’m a one man subway sect.
Having been to Scarborough, Rotherham, Milton Keynes, Newcastle and Stockport.
I’m overwhelmed by the underpass, where the passage of time is both slowed and hurried.
A feeling of unease will hasten your pace, a strange sense of transcendence allows you to linger longer.
There’s a world going on underground.
Rattle big black bones in the danger zone
There’s a rumblin’ groan down below
There’s a big dark town, it’s a place I’ve found
There’s a world going on underground
The interlocking, converging and diverging passageways lit by both daylight, LED and UV have given the images a variety of colour casts.
Let’s take a look!
Plas Newton Ln Chester CH2 1SA
Architect: LAG Prichard – Son & Partners 1964/66
I caught the 51 Bus from the Bus Exchange – and the ever so helpful fellow passengers put me off at the right stop.
The church is set back from the road and sands in substantial grounds – visible through the surrounding houses.
A large site at the corner of Plas Newton Lane and Newhall Road was acquired, and a new church designed by the architects LAG Prichard, Son & Partners. The design embodied the ideals of Vatican II, with no seating more than fifty feet from the altar. It was designed for 675 people. The foundation stone was laid in September 1964 by Canon Murphy, and the 115 ft spire lowered into position in December 1964. The first Mass was on 19 December 1965, and the church was officially opened in 1966 by Bishop Grasar. St Columba was the third new Catholic church to be built in Chester after the Second World War.
The only glazing to survive from the original church scheme is small triangles of glazing on the sanctuary elevation and the dalle de verre-style baptistery window by Hans Unger & E Schulze.
Unger & Schulze ran a prominent mosaic and glass studio in London from 1960-74, and provided a large mosaic for another LAG Prichard church in 1965, St Jude’s in Worsley Mesnes – Wigan.
The coloured glazing depicting St Columba, Christ and the apostles was added in 1986.
It is such a striking and dynamic church – angular, very angular.
Let’s take a good look around and about.
