Chester Amphitheatre Project Blog

Trench II in the Grosvenor Park, Chester, has already produced over thirty musket balls and we think that this can be tied into the following event recorded in 1641 - a year before the outbreak of the Civil War.

Photograph: Civil-War musket balls that were recoverd from Trench B at the Chester Amphitheatre excavation in 2006


'A bloody conspiracy of the Papists in Cheshire, intended for the destruction of the whole County.'



There was an order made by Parliament, that all Papists throughout England should be disarmed. The mayor of Chester ordered the 'Trained Bands' (the local militia) that those Papists who would not agree to this order should have their houses searched, and that if resistance was met "to shoot down their house about their ears"; which was to be done the very next day (20th November 1641). The Papists, hearing of this, gathered at Lord Cholmondeley's Mansion and in the night time 15 of them "in arms" set about "battering down the city walls". This made a "very great noise" which drew the attention of the City Watch who were "very much amazed". However, as the watch were mostly made up of old men, they retreated to the City gate and cried out "Treason, Treason, against the City". The Trained Bands were roused and chased 13 of the traitors to Lord Cholmondeley's House, where they were captured having been denied entrance by the Porter of the gate-house.

Having been denied entrance to Cholmondeley's House 10 of the Trained Band fired their muskets and battered down part of the house, which caused Lord Cholmondeley to make an escape via a back-door across the fields (now Grosvenor Park). The Trained Band then came upon 50 Papists with "muskets at the ready" , and as soon as the Papists saw the Band they fired killing 25, before retreating through a back door; where they ran in to the rest of the Band, and a "bloody skirmish ensued". Eventually the Papists "trusted to the swiftness of their feet" (they decided to make a run for it) but "the bullets made great haste after them" and 19 were killed, including their leader a Mr Henry Starkey. They were subsequently "buried in the highway together".

Chester Archaeology Service will be digging in Grosvenor Park, Chester, between the 14th May and the 6th July 2007.

Several trenches will be dug on the western side of the park in order to answer a number of questions. The main aim is to locate the remains of a large town-house known as Cholmondeley's Mansion which was demolished when the park was laid out in 1867. It is thought that the house sat on the site of earlier medieval buildings attached to the church of St. John.


Cholmondeley's Mansion with St. John's Church to the rear. John McGahey, 1852

We also want to find out what was there in Roman times. A specific target will be a large ditch which was found during the building of the Union Street swimming baths in 1899, and again more recently in 1994. The more recent work also uncovered a complete adult human skeleton buried in the top of the ditch and we will be studying these remains to discover the date, age and sex of the person over the coming weeks.


As well as tackling these questions, the dig is being used as a training project for archaeology students at Chester University, and will also be open to volunteers.

The work supports both a Conservation Management Plan for the park and an application by Chester City Council under the Heritage Lottery Fund 'Parks for People' programme, due to be submitted in March 2008.