Monument record 10331 - Possible Post Medieval Drain Pre-dating City Walls, Water Tower Gardens

During an archaeological watching brief carried out at the Water Tower Gardens in 2002, a covered drainage culvert that had once passed beneath the city walls, probably of early post medieval date, was found (1). Exposed when the existing flight of steps from the wall to the garden was dismantled, the culvert ran on a roughly east-west alignment. 0.24m wide and 0.62m high, it followed the steep gradient of the ground down to the gardens, and its walls and capping stones were of local sandstone (1).

The date of the culvert cannot be determined with any degree of precision, however, it clearly pre-dated the adjacent section of the city walls, which was rebuilt when the railway was cut through the walls in 1847, because this had cut through the culvert (1). All that can be said is that it is earlier than the mid-nineteenth century, and that the nature of the building(s) that it served is unknown (1).

<1> Mason Welland Archaeological Consultancy, 2002, Water Tower Gardens, Chester; archaeological watching brief of landscaping scheme., R2715 (Client Report). SCH4829.