The Abbey Gateway is in Chester, Cheshire, England and leads from Northgate Street into Abbey Square. It is recorded in the

National Heritage List for England The National Heritage List for England (NHLE) is England's official database of protected heritage assets. It includes details of all English listed buildings, scheduled monuments, register of historic parks and gardens, protected shipwrecks, a ...

as a designated Grade I

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

History

The gateway was built as a

gatehouse A gatehouse is a type of fortified gateway, an entry control point building, enclosing or accompanying a gateway for a town, religious house, castle, manor house, or other fortification building of importance. Gatehouses are typically the mo ...

around 1300 and its upper storey was rebuilt around 1800. It was formerly the main access to the precinct of St Werburgh's Abbey. It is thought that the architect was Richard Lenginour (Richard the Engineer).

Architecture

The gateway is built in red

sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates ...

with

gable A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system used, which reflects climate, material availability, and aesth ...

s to the front and rear. The west face has a central arch for vehicles and a smaller arch to the south for pedestrians. On each side of the central arch is a

blind niche A niche (CanE, or ) in Classical architecture is an exedra or an apse that has been reduced in size, retaining the half-dome heading usual for an apse. Nero's Domus Aurea (AD 64–69) was the first semi-private dwelling that possessed rooms ...

. In the upper storey is a 16-pane window in a

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

arch. On the east face is one arch, larger than that on the west face. In the upper storey is a central window in a Gothic arch with a rectangular window on each side. In the gable end is another Gothic-shaped window. To the south of the arch is a diminishing

turret Turret may refer to: * Turret (architecture), a small tower that projects above the wall of a building * Gun turret, a mechanism of a projectile-firing weapon * Objective turret, an indexable holder of multiple lenses in an optical microscope * Mi ...

containing an arched doorway with a small window above it.

References

{{Reflist Grade I listed buildings in Chester Abbey Gateway Gates in England Grade I listed gates Chester Cathedral Gatehouses (architecture)

History

Architecture

See also

References