Chester and the writing on the wall

The city walls in Chester looking across the cathedral green towards the cathedral

30/12/2025

Chester and the writing on the wall

Chester is a city in Cheshire West and Chester located in the North West of England. It sits close to the border with North Wales and is famous for its Roman remains and for being a walled city. It is also famous for its covered medieval tiered rows. These are the streets of shops which can be dated back 800 years and are a precursor of the shopping centres which we know today.

The city walls have been continuously repaired and rebuilt since first being erected by the Romans. They are still under constant repair today and in 2020 part of the walls collapsed close to the Eastgate clock causing a breach. This required a walkway to be erected to allow people to continue their circuit of the walls. Repair of the walls is a complex affair and this area is still awaiting repair as I write today.

Man walking up stone steps to the gate through the city walls — Steps to Chester City Walls

The walk into Chester from the car park just outside of the city walls takes us along Walls Avenue and past a park located in the shadow of the walls themselves. Today as we pass a group are singing and people are walking their dogs or sitting on benches chatting. We walk past the Water Tower to turn alongside the Shropshire Union canal. We continue along the canal path and pass the Northgate Locks where volunteers from the Canals and Rivers Trust are opening the lock gates for barges to pass through. Walking underneath the road bridge we ascend the steps towards the walls where we follow a short pathway to a gateway. Once through this gateway we are inside the city walls and we turn left to walk along Water Tower Street.

Man pointing at the stone in Chester City Wall — The stone in the wall

It is here that we find the stone we are looking for. It is a large red sandstone which does not seem to have weathered as much as those around it. It bears two signatures and a date. 19th century graffiti left as a whisper of the past.

Stone showing the hand carved graffiti — Graffiti stone

We make out that it reads –

E. Thelwell

J. Richards

The year appears to read 1832 although the 3 has weathered badly and is hard to distinguish.

The weathering to the signatures seems to be uniform and so it would appear that they were marked on the stone at the same time but the writing looks different and would indicate two different people had signed the stone.

The stone and its signatures is easy to miss and many people will have walked past and never noticed them. But they are there and we have noticed them and so they still call out to us from the past. A remembrance of two people who long ago signed their name here so that it would remain long after they were gone.

Did they feel the need to be remembered, to leave a lasting memorial? It is something that humans have done for millennia and still do today. This need to leave a mark.

There are no other clues on the stone to reveal who they were or why they signed their names. Was there a special significance to 1832 for them? There is no specific date.

I speculate that they could have been Chester residents who wished to leave a trace of themselves on the city they lived in. Or were they the stonemasons who placed that block in the wall as they repaired it thereby leaving something of themselves behind? Or perhaps they were the quarrymen who cut and worked the stone in the red sandstone quarries which supplied the rock for the walls?

At one time, as we can see on maps from the first half of the 19th century, structures seemed to sit alongside the wall. These structures are no longer there and do not appear on later maps. Was this graffiti associated with these structures whatever they were? I may investigate these further and come back to them in a later Blog.

I may never know any more about E. Thelwell and J. Richards who left only their names behind to show they were once here. My initial research led to dead ends and no strong suspects. I hope someone may have an answer I have missed!

Whoever they were, they have left behind a mystery in their writing on the wall and we are still wondering about them 193 years later.

Did they anticipate that, I wonder?