1971 Sir Nikolaus Pevsner ( b. 1902 ) , An extract from Chester in the Cheshire volume of the series Buildings of England written in collaboration with Edward Hubbard .

In the popular view Chester is the English medieval city par excellence . It has preserved its walls all around and within them are half timbered houses galore , and they are built with covered galleries on a level half - way up what would be the level of ground floor ceilings in towns less quaint . These so called Rows are indeed the most remarkable medieval feature of Chester , for they certainly existed in C.13 . But do they make Chester a medieval city ? It is difficult to reach vital conclusions ; for Chester is a busy town of about 60,000 inhabitants . It is not like Durham or Salisbury , let alone Wells or Ely , and not even like Lincoln , where the cathedral is on the hill away from the main streets . At Chester the main shopping and the main traffic are right by the cathedral , hardly separated from it . One can come to conclusion on the character of the town only early in the morning or on a Sunday . If one then tries to make up accounts , Chester is not medieval , it is a Victorian city . What deceives is the black and white 95 per cent is Victorian and after . It is deceive because the motifs are accurately imitated .....
Chester is the Roman deva , and was one of the principal towns of England headquarters of the 20th Legion . Little is preserved so that it makes a visual impact , but the principal axes of the street pattern inside the walls are pure Roman ..... One mighty tower of the castle survives , and the walls of Chester dating from C.12 to C.14 .They are more completely preserved than anywhere else in England .......

1975 Donald W. Insall wrote the following preface to the book Chronicle of Chester the 200 years 1775-1975

I was quite enchanted at Chester , so that I could with difficult quit it ( Boswell in 1778 )
Perhaps no biographer on earth is more revealing of the human situation - its successes and failures strengths and weaknesses , comedy and suffering - than an old newspaper . . ..
There can at the same time be few great cities whose strength and continuity of human and family tradition show more tenacity than here at Chester . around the walls of Committee Room No. 1 at the Town Hall - fading gently into their chocolate background as the dates go back - stretch year by year , the names of continuous chain ( if this is the right collective noun ) of Mayors , from William the Clerk in 1238 to Wilfred Mitchell in 1974 , now ' First Mayor of the reorganized City under the Local Government Act of 1972 '
The supporting names of Chester's Town Clerk on the other hand , present an astonishingly sparse total by the sheer length of their reigns . after only twenty-six names over four tumultuous centuries ( from 1404 - 1799 ) four Clerks alone ( Wm. Richard's 1799 , John Maddock 1817 , John Walker 1857 and Samuel Smith 1886 ) span a whole century ; then only two ( James Dickson 1903 and Gerald Burkinshaw 1939 ) reach to their successors , Malcolm Kermode , by 1969 - an astonishing record of continuous and devoted service .

As I stood last night at midnight at the meeting of Chester ancient ways, under the names not only of Watergate but Via Principalis , while around me nodded the tall black and white gables of a century ago ( mostly for seasonal renewal brings new leaves to ever tree ) , I wondered what this spot may see in another hundred years . What then will be its main shaping influences ? If tomorrow there were suddenly no oil or petrol , how would our cities survive ? Would Chester fare better than most ? Almost certainly it would , for ancient towns congregated to serve their people by closeness and community ; the dispersing and almost explosive power of rapid motor transport and allied attractions of suburban living have damaged our city certainly , but not yet destroyed its delicate fabric .
Through the mist I seemed to sense the City Cross again in its rightful place : may we yet see these symbolic stones reassembled here - perhaps even in this European Architectural Heritage Year ? If so , what a handsome echo this event will make , answering back to some earlier column in the ' Chester Chronicle ' ; and I may be there to see ! This is why , when like Boswell so many of us have been captured and enslaved by this far city ,it is such a privilege now to share in seeing through the devoted eyes of its editor , Hubert Hughes .....