LEARNED SOCIETIES
In the early 18th century Cestrians with scientific or
antiquarian interests pursued them among small
groups of friends like the circle of Henry Prescott,
deputy registrar of Chester diocese. (fn. 1) Public lectures on
practical science were being staged by 1750, and in the
1780s there was briefly a Free Conversation Society for
cultivating 'moral and intellectual knowledge'. (fn. 2) A
successor established in 1812, the Chester Literary
and Philosophical Society, had among its two dozen
members the chaplain of Little St. John's, the master of
a commercial school, shopkeepers, clergymen, a
physician, and the publisher of the Chester Chronicle,
John Fletcher. It met to discuss papers and hear
lectures, and bought scientific apparatus, but seems
to have ceased after a year. (fn. 3) The Chester Cymmrodorion Society founded in 1822 had among its objects
research into the history, customs, language, and literature of the Welsh, and held lectures and discussions at
least in its early years but seems by the later 1830s to
have become principally a dining club. (fn. 4)
The Chester Literary Improvement Society was
apparently founded in 1847 by William Axon; probably the same body as the Literary and Scientific
Society of 1849, its fate after 1855 is obscure. (fn. 5) A
Chester Natural History Society lasted only from
1858 to 1859. (fn. 6)
The first of the two really successful learned societies,
eventually known as the Chester Archaeological
Society, was established in 1849 at a public meeting
convened by the Revd. William Massie, rector of St.
Mary's, which intended as much an architectural
pressure group as a society for disinterested antiquarianism. The immediate inspiration seems to have been
the 1849 meeting of the British Archaeological Association in Chester. The local body's original name had
the words 'Architectural, Archaeological, and Historic'
in that order, and the first three of its five leading
objects were the improvement of architectural taste
and practice, the illustration and preservation of the
remains of antiquity (probably mainly meaning old
buildings), and the recommendation of plans for new
and restored buildings. To those ends the committee
was always to include four practising architects or
builders. A fifth of the early members were clergymen,
but there was also a serious attempt to attract ladies,
'young men . . . engaged in the shops and offices of the
city', and 'the industrious and intelligent artisan'
through six categories of membership. Almost as
many women as clergymen joined in the early years,
making the society relatively unusual. Meetings were at
first held in the City Library, over the Commercial
News Room in Northgate Street (Fig. 177, p. 292). (fn. 7)
Part of the motivation for the society was an overt
hostility to neo-classical architecture, as exemplified by
the parish churches of St. Bridget (1829) and St. Paul
(1830), and a corresponding adoration of Gothic in
church architecture and 'medieval' timber-framing in
domestic and commercial buildings, but opinion
among members was not uniform, (fn. 8) and the society
soon spread its interests into antiquarian matters
broadly defined. For instance in 1852 it lobbied,
unsuccessfully, for the retention locally of the palatinate records, as it did for their return in 1912–14. (fn. 9)
Meetings certainly included architectural subjects but
also ranged widely over archaeology and history. (fn. 10)
The society's impetus was faltering from the late
1850s and failed altogether in 1872: no minutes were
kept, meetings became infrequent and informal, the
Journal appeared irregularly and then not at all, and
membership fell away, but the society was never
formally wound up. It was relaunched as the Archaeological and Historic Society of the County and City of
Chester and North Wales by Dean Howson in 1883
and was definitely afloat again from 1886, when a new
constitution was adopted; the society's declared objects
were now the publication of archaeological and historical information and the preservation of antiquities in
the newly opened Grosvenor Museum. The Journal was
restarted under the successive editorships of Thomas
Hughes and J. P. Earwaker, and membership rose to
267 in 1888–9. The new museum played an important
part in the revival, providing a location for meetings
and storage for the society's library and collections,
accumulated from the early years and hitherto kept in
very poor conditions at the Albion Rooms in Lower
Bridge Street. (fn. 11) The renewal of interest was also due in
large measure to excitement over the discovery of
extensive Roman remains in the city, and many
members had an active involvement in local archaeology. (fn. 12) A regular winter lecture programme of six or
seven meetings was established, excursions to places of
historical interest were begun in 1894, and the Journal
appeared regularly. Those core activities remained
essentially the same in the 1990s. (fn. 13)
Figure 177:
Commercial News Room and City Library
The revived society also renewed its role as an
influential body of opinion in favour of conservation,
but without the ecclesiological slant of the early years.
It took a part, for example, in preserving Bishop
Lloyd's House in 1898 and was especially active from
the mid 1920s to the Second World War, when it
helped to save St. Peter's church, the Blue Bell Inn, and
the old Newgate. Although it resumed lobbying the city
council in the 1950s, the formation of Chester Civic
Trust in 1959 provided a new forum for such public
campaigns. (fn. 14) Management of the Grosvenor Museum
was transferred to the city council in 1915, (fn. 15) but the
society was increasingly important as a collector of
archival materials, especially the papers of such local
antiquaries as J. P. Earwaker (1898), Canon Rupert
Morris (1918), and Thomas Hughes (1925–6). Only
with the appointment of the first city archivist in 1948
did the society willingly give up its role as a de facto
local record office. (fn. 16) Archaeology returned to the forefront of the society's interests in the 1920s and
remained there for the rest of the 20th century. Its
centrality was signalled in the 1960s by the change of
name to the Chester Archaeological Society. The
society took a leading part in the excavation of the
amphitheatre in the 1960s, but from the 1970s its role
was restricted to providing volunteers for digs directed
by professional archaeologists employed by the city
council. (fn. 17)
The city's other long-lasting learned body, the
Natural Science Society, was founded in 1871 under
the direct inspiration of Charles Kingsley, who arrived
in Chester as a canon of the cathedral in 1870 and gave
a series of lectures on botany. The society took root and
grew branches which by 1911 covered almost every
aspect of natural science. Lectures on literature and art
were dropped after the First World War. The society
was a leading promoter of the Grosvenor Museum and
of the School of Science, and had over 1,000 members
in the early 20th century. Popular lectures and field
trips, rather than active research, became the main
emphasis from the 1920s. Scientific Proceedings were
published 1874–1907 and 1947–51, and the society
remained alive in 1995. (fn. 18)