Chester walls to be repaired after five-year wait

Work to repair a section of Chester's Roman walls will start over next summer - five years after it partly collapsed.

Repairs are due to take place to the Grade I-listed historic fortifications in three stages.

Initial investigations will take place next summer, with the repairs scheduled for the following year.

The collapse, near Newgate Street, happened during nearby building work by developers in January 2020.

Specialist engineers from Balfour Beatty will carry out the work on site, which is difficult to access.

The engineers will get to the site through Grosvenor car park. Noise, vibration and air quality monitoring equipment will be installed before work starts.

A temporary ramp will also be built to provide access from the basement of the car park up into the rear yard of 15-19 Newgate Street.

Councillor Karen Shore, Cheshire West and Chester Council deputy leader, said: "Following this, the painstaking job begins to remove and record all of the material that fell, while propping and protecting the wall from further damage."

Chester is the only city in the UK with a complete circuit of walls still in place.

They form a two-mile (3.2km) circuit around the city centre.

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