Interest in discovering Chester's amphitheatre was stimulated by the Wheelers' excavations of the Caerleon amphitheatre in 1926-7. W J ('Walrus') Williams identified a stretch of masonry exposed in June 1929 as the outer wall of the amphitheatre. It was discovered when a boiler-room was built on the south side of Dee House, an eighteenth-century town house used as a convent school for girls (Williams 1929, 218). The curving wall and the buttresses were the main features that suggested that this was the amphitheatre, which proved to be well preserved. Further trenches dug by P H Lawson, who assumed that its dimensions would have been similar to those of the amphitheatre at Caerleon, confirmed the identification. Lawson's carefully judged and small-scale trenches enabled an accurate assessment of its position and extent to be made. Further work took place in 1930-1 for the Chester Archaeological Society and the University of Liverpool, directed by Professors Newstead and Droop (1932, 10ff). They examined parts of the western entrance, perimeter and arena walls and the arena itself. Much of the structural history of the stone amphitheatre was established by their work. In 1934, more trial holes were excavated in the cellar of St John's House and at 19 Little St John Street, which revealed parts of the northern outer wall of the amphitheatre (Newstead 1948, 103f).
Controversial proposals had been put forward in 1926 by the City Corporation to straighten Newgate and Little St John Street between the City Wall and St John's Church (Crosby 1999, 80). Hostility to the scheme was increased by the discovery of the amphitheatre in 1929, when it was realised that the new road would cut directly across the centre of the monument. The City Improvement Committee delayed inviting tenders for the construction of the new road to allow the Chester Archaeological Society time to raise funds to cover the cost of diverting the road around the outside of the site, some £23, 798. A special exhibition was held in 1932 at the Grosvenor Museum (which was then run by the Archaeological Society) to help raise money (Carrington 1996).
The walls lining the proposed road had been built, cutting the site in two, and a new gate through the City Wall was under construction when the Ministry of Transport effectively blocked the scheme in 1933 by refusing loan sanction. This occurred as a result of extensive local and national protest at the imminent destruction of the amphitheatre; opponents of the scheme included the Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald. The Archaeological Society formed a Trust, which bought St John's House, on the north-eastern corner of the monument, while the remainder of the northern half remained derelict for some years. The house was leased to Cheshire County Council from 1934 to 1957. The outbreak of the war in 1939 led to the shelving of plans for the site's imminent excavation (Mason 1987, 151). However, by the late 1950s, the income generated in rent from St John's House had increased to a point that allowed it to consider the excavation of the northern part of the site, although financial help from the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works was necessary.
St John's House was demolished in 1958. In the previous year, small-scale excavation had commenced, at the Ministry of Works' request, to confirm the exact positions of the amphitheatre's walls. Hugh Thompson, then curator of the Grosvenor Museum, carried out the work (Thompson 1996, 50). This was to allow the Corporation to fix a final line for Little St John Street. Large-scale excavations followed between 1960 and 1969, still under the direction of Hugh Thompson, with the most detailed work after 1965, following the transfer of the St John's House site to state ownership (Crosby 1999, 83). Dennis Petch, Hugh Thompson's successor at the Grosvenor Museum, was also involved in some of the later work. The Ministry of Works funded most of the work, with help from the Archaeological Society. This major excavation has been fully reported (Thompson 1976).
Between 1960 and 1972 the exposed remains were consolidated by the Ministry of Works and Department of the Environment. The partially leaning arena wall was jacked back up into a vertical position in short lengths. However, the outer and concentric walls had been too severely robbed to permit restoration, so thin concrete slabs on the newly created grass bank marked their positions. An interpretation panel was set up inside the main entrance to the site and the nemeseum is labelled as such. A few architectural fragments were cemented to the paving inside the modern western entrance to the site, and a replica altar was set up inside the nemeseum (details of this work are provided by John Weaver in Thompson 1976, 236 ff.). The consolidated remains were opened to the public in August 1972 and continue to be one of the city's main archaeological attractions. It is in the care of the Department of the Environment (and latterly English Heritage) under a management agreement with the City Council.
Controversial plans were put forward in the 1980s to excavate the remainder of the amphitheatre and reconstruct at least part of it as a heritage attraction (Crosby 1999, 95). Permission was granted to demolish Dee House, a Grade II listed building, to allow the scheme to happen. It was to include a state-of-the-art interpretation centre, a reconstruction of part of the Roman structure and peripheral activities (including Roman galleys plying the River Dee and a café selling 'Roman' food). Owing to lack of finance, the plans came to nothing and Planning Permission for the scheme lapsed in October 1995.
Further development proposals were submitted to the City Council in 1993, involving the modification of the Dee House site, which had been sold by British Telecom to McLean Homes Ltd. Dee House itself and the gardens to its north were transferred to the ownership of Chester City Council, while the remainder was retained by McLean's. Permission was initially sought to demolish the 1929 extension to the south of Dee House with the intention of designing an office block to replace it.
Lancaster University Archaeological Unit was commissioned to undertake an archaeological evaluation of the entire site (Buxton 1993). Although the excavation was designed to extend no deeper than the top of 'significant' archaeology (defined in this instance as deposits that pre-dated the construction of Dee House in 1730), it proved difficult (and often unhelpful) to define this as the cut-off point. Twenty-eight trial trenches showed that preservation of the amphitheatre varied across the site. Beneath the eighteenth-century house, extensive cellarage had destroyed all but the foundation deposits, while outside and beneath the 1920s extension, preservation was much better. Following the evaluation, the scheme was granted Planning Permission in 1995.
Archaeological implications (Scheduled Monument Consent etc.)
A second phase of evaluation took place in 1994, conducted by Chester Archaeology (Cleary et al. 1994), following a further application to lower the car park area to the east and south-east of the historic core of Dee House. Only those deposits that would be affected by the proposals were evaluated. They were found to consist largely of garden soils and features associated with gardening practices, including the substantial remains of three greenhouses dating from the later nineteenth century. One sherd of late Saxon Chester-type ware was recovered, residual in a deposit of c 1700×30 (J E C Edwards in Cleary et al. 1994, 25). Other fragments of late Saxon pottery had been recovered during the 1960s excavation and a further sherd was found at the Bishop's Palace to the south in 1976.
The beginning of site work in February 2000 caused further controversy, when construction began on the office block that had been granted permission in 1995. Many local residents have been outraged at what they perceive as the 'loss' of the amphitheatre to excavation, demanding that the site be completely uncovered and displayed. The controversy has extended from the local press into national media (for instance The Daily Telegraph 18 April 2000).
The controversy has focused on a number of discrete elements:
The archives for the 1920s and 1930s excavations have not been located and it is unlikely that the primary record of the earliest interventions survives. However, Chester Archaeology does have some of the drawings from the 1930s excavations. The archives and finds from the 1960s excavation are stored in the Grosvenor Museum, Chester. The archives of the 1990s evaluations are held in their entirety by Chester Archaeology.