Chester's amphitheatre lay outside the south-east corner of the legionary fortress, on a bluff overlooking the River Dee. Its main entrances faced north and south, with smaller entrances facing east and west. In between each of these entrances were two doorways giving access to a corridor running around the outside of the building and staircases leading up to the seats.
No-one knew that Chester had an amphitheatre until 1929, when a large curved wall appeared while an underground boiler room was being built onto the south side of Dee House. A local schoolmaster, W. J. Williams, was the first to recognise what this meant. In the early 1930s parts of the western entrance, the outer wall, the arena walls and the arena itself were discovered.
However, In 1926 Chester Corporation had put forward proposals to straighten the road between the New Gate and St John's church. This would have cut straight across the centre of the amphitheatre. There were many angry protests and the dispute reached the national newspapers. Eventually there was a change of heart, and it was agreed that the new road would curve round to the north of the monument
More background history to the Amphitheatre Site and other amphitheatres around the world.
There have been many excavations carried out at the amphitheatre site over the years. The most recent excavation took place during the summer months of 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003.
A lot of very interesting information was gathered duirng this time, which was all documented by former Chester City Council archaeologist Keith Matthews. Keith has now moved on to do other things, but has kindly allowed us to reproduce his findings in this website.
His highly detialed and interesting findings can be found on the follwing pages: