As well as excavating and interpreting the physical remains of the Roman amphitheatre, the site offers an opportunity to examine how it influenced the development of the city of Chester as we see it today.
We know very little about how the site of the amphitheatre was used between the 4th and 6th centuries AD. In the 7th century AD, tradition has it that St John’s Church, which is next to the amphitheatre, was founded. It has also been suggested that the siting of a church here may have been deliberately chosen so as to maintain a Christian connection to the amphitheatre.
Why? It may have been because the site of the amphitheatre was still considered to have some importance for local early Christians. Were there memories of Christians being killed in the arena? Alternatively, it may have been that the site retained a prestigious status such as an important centre of power or fortification after the Romans had left. The placement of a church close by would have reinforced that importance. Perhaps there was a Roman shrine or Romano-Celtic temple close to the amphitheatre and early Christians wished to continue worshiping on the same site.
To examine the relationship between St John’s and the amphitheatre, the first stage of this type of non-invasive investigation involves looking closely at shapes and patterns to learn how built structures, such as walls and buildings, and positions of features shown on old maps, relate to each other.
The amphitheatre, despite being the oldest and most deeply buried, is relatively straight forward to understand in terms of location, shape and size. The northern half has been excavated, demonstrating that it is an elliptical shape. Therefore, the size and the location of the unexcavated part can be predicted with some certainty.
However, St John’s is a very different story. Its location, size and shape might seem obvious; after all, the church is visible and stands above the ground. But nothing could be further from the truth. Firstly, the building that stands today has been rebuilt a number of times since at least the 12th century. The ruins at the east and west are testament to its long and complex history.
The one thing that cannot be said with any certainty, is whether this building is on the site of the original St John’s established in the 7th century. One theory is that the eastern entrance of the amphitheatre was re-used as the crypt of that original church. If so, why was the church re-founded in the 10th century on a different site, that of the present church. This was clearly an important church as it became Chester’s first cathedral in 1072.
Another complication, is that by the 12th century, St John’s was situated within a larger enclosed area or ‘enclave’ - probably defined by walls - to separate the religious area from the world outside. This enclave in turn, may have been sub-divided by other walls to separate the specific area of worship, such as the church, from the domestic quarters of the canons, lodgings etc.
The exact limits of this larger religious enclave and any sub-divisions have never been properly identified. So, it is impossible to fully understand the link between the siting of a Christian church and the amphitheatre unless we understand much more about the size and changes to St John’s church and enclave through the last 1300 years.
A map by John Speed dating to around 1610 has been the starting point for this investigation. It is the earliest known map that shows St John’s and Little St John Street curving round the amphitheatre. It contains valuable clues as to the extent of the buildings and the religious enclave. It is especially important because some of the features on it can be traced on later mapping, and some still exist today as walls and boundaries, although their significance is only just coming to light as a result of this investigation.
Some of the features shown on this map have been rebuilt on the same line in later years, so that now they appear to be part of the modern landscape. In urban areas, although buildings on plots of land often change position and shape as they are knocked down and rebuilt, property boundaries such as walls, frequently remain in the same position because they usually define legal ownership. Often these boundaries are rebuilt on the same line as building styles change, brick replacing stone for instance. So what might appear to be an uninteresting brick wall may in fact be the last phase of a boundary which has been in existence for hundreds, and in some cases thousands of years.
This investigation is revealing that there is evidence that some of the ‘lost’ boundaries of the enclosure around St John’s church shown on the 16th century map are still in existence but disguised in the modern landscape: