Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society 87

This two-part paper presents nine Roman and thirteen post-Roman coin hoards from Cheshire and neighbouring areas, with catalogues and discussions of their significance. Most have been found since the creation of the Portable Antiquities Scheme and are published only on its database. The others are old discoveries and have either never been published or the identifications need revision.

This paper takes an explicitly archaeological approach to the debates around the impact of industrialisation on the city of Chester. These debates focus on the city’s transport geography and the influence of the landed interest. The current study draws upon more than two decades of archaeological research across the country on the impact of industrialisation, which have seen the development of new approaches to the analysis of the large amount of data now available for the period, in particular the use of the Manchester Methodology and Historic Landscape Characterisation. It uses the archaeological and landscape data for Chester to show how new monument types associated with industrialisation spread across the city geographically and through time. In doing so it emphasises the role of new manufacturing, metal and transport industries in the development of the physical extent of the city, especially around the port and in Newtown. It also provides quantifiable evidence for the historical observations that the impact of industrialisation on the city was spasmodic and in some areas late, that the impact of the arrival of the railways was an important late change to the industrial base of the city, and also suggests that Handbridge was a failed industrial suburb of the eighteenth century. Whilst not providing answers as to the origins of industrialisation within the city it does provide new evidence for its impact and suggest new directions of research.

Norton Priory Museum houses the finds from one of the most extensively excavated monastic sites in Europe. Opened in 1982, by 2010 the building was no longer fit for purpose and the collections were under threat. A major grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund made possible an ambitious reconstruction on two floors, adjoining and on top of the twelfth-century undercroft. This has permitted the display of a much greater number and wider range of objects covering the whole history of the site, including the post-Dissolution period, and its landscape setting. Interactive technology encourages visitors to engage with the lives of previous inhabitants and with the results of an active research programme.