A stroll into the past...

Tudor & Stuart Walking Tour of Chester
Explore early modern Chester through the eyes of those who built some its most beautiful historic buildings and hear tales of dissolution, pestilence and civil war.

Georgian & Regency Walking Tour of Lancaster
Explore Lancaster through the eyes of those working its roads, admiring beautiful historic buildings as you hear tales of its everyday industries, entertainments and conflicts.
A brief history of Chester and Lancaster
Scroll through the timeline to discover some fascinating local facts...
Wars of the Roses end
Henry VII grants Chester its great charter
Pilgrimage of Grace rebels arrive in Lancaster
Henry VIII dissolves Chester‘s friaries, turning St Werburgh’s Abbey into new cathedral
(www.chestercathedral.com)
Lancaster Priory dissolved, reopening as parish church
(www.lancasterpriory.org)
Birth of William Shakespeare
Death of Elizabeth I, the last Tudor monarch
Pendle witches tried at Lancaster Castle (www.visitlancashire.com)
James I
visits Chester on northern progress
visits Lancaster Castle on northern progress
Royalists capture Lancaster but not its castle
(www.lancastercastle.com)
Parliamentary siege of Chester (www.visitcheshire.com)
Quaker George Fox preaches in Lancaster (www.pendleheritage.co.uk)
Charles II visits Lancaster Castle, freeing its prisoners (www.lancashire.gov.uk)
Great Plague
(www.sicktodeath.org)
James II talks religious
toleration when visiting Chester (www.westcheshiremuseums.co.uk)
William III brings troops to Chester for Irish campaign
Death of Anne I, the last Stuart monarch
Lancaster’s port breaks free of Chester’s control (www.visitlancaster.org.uk)
Precautionary walling up of Chester’s Watergate and Northgate against Jacobites
Bonnie Prince Charlie arrives in Lancaster with 5000 Jacobites (www.visitlancaster.org.uk)
John Poole publishes Chester Chronicle
Chester-Nantwich Canal opens (www.gps-routes.co.uk)
John Rennie’s Wyre Viaduct opens for Lancaster’s canal (www.lancaster.gov.uk)
William Minshull
publishes Lancaster Gazette
Start of Napoleonic Wars
Duke of Wellington visits Park House, Chester
Princess Victoria opens the Grosvenor Bridge in Chester
Grasshopper Tea Warehouse opens in Lancaster
(www.thecoffeehopper.com)