Victoria County History, Vol. V, Part 2: The City of Chester: Culture, Buildings, Institutions

Abstract

THEVictoria County History (VCH) of Cheshire proceeds on its stately progress with the appearance of this, the concluding second part of its coverage of the city of Chester. The first part appeared in 2002 (rev. ante, cxix (2004), 1322–4) and pioneered a fresh and entirely welcome approach to the treatment of large towns by the VCH. Devoting two substantial volumes to the task allowed a fullness of detail which is proportional to the way in which small rural parishes are covered. And the structure of the work allowed the strengths of an urban biography on the lines of many recent monographs on individual towns to be combined with the comprehensive factual descriptions of separate topics, of value chiefly for reference purposes, which was the traditional strength (and weakness in many eyes) of the VCH volumes of past decades. The ‘story’ of Chester was told...