Dai’s Reportage: Some drawings around Chester….

We start at the outside of the Watergate looking uphill at it and through into the City.  When I drew this there were road works filling the view; now they are gone, but the top of the gate is covered in construction repair work.

On the newish pedestrian bridge that links the City Wall over the dual carriageway at the end of St Martins Way,  you can look down and see it swing away to the right towards the Fountains Roundabout.  If you walk in that direction the view below to your left is like a 3-D map of streets and their long back gardens and back alleys.

 

Up by the Bull and Stirrup I drew this view down the hill past what was the old bus station; a crane marks the building site that has since become the mammoth new medical, office and flats development.

Next is a view of the same site and crane looking up the hill with the closed and threatened Ship Victory in the foreground

We now turn through the Northgate, passing the steps to the City Walls on the left.  When I drew here the shop at the top of the steps was a book shop, and below a delicatessen; they are now a gift shop and a tapas bar.

Moving now to where Brook Street swings around into Station Road with the Live Rooms on the right – if you turn around and look towards Hoole Bridge you see a line of small shops, a recycling company, and the tunnel leading to the Postal Centre.

 

Then the Recycling Yard can be looked into from the Hoole Bridge pedestrian pavement;  when I drew this it was packed with activity.

 

Swinging right by the station into City Road and turning right at the Westminster Hotel into  Tramway Road and then Crewe Street, this was the view past a terrace on the left towards the tower blocks of flats.  Now the area to the right which had been a Bus Depot and then briefly a car park is vanishing under a large development of student accommodation.

Finally, heading out from the Bars along Boughton past the new Waitrose Store and turning left into Hoole Lane there was a small triangle of green on the left flanked by two lines of housing,  Sadly a fire damaged some of these badly and the area was demolished and new housing built. This drawing was done during the demolition.

The nature of a city is to see continual change, as something new takes over or arises – and drawings become historical records of sorts.