City in West Sussex, England
Chichester
Chichester's cathedral spire fell down in 1861, the city's Roman streets still shape the centre, and a plumber's trench uncovered a palace.
Key information
- County
- West Sussex
- Nation
- England
- Population
- About 26,800 (2011 Census)
- Known for
- Medieval cathedral, Roman street plan, Chichester Festival Theatre, Goodwood nearby
- What locals are called
- Cicestrians
- Famous people
- William Collins, Richard of Chichester, Laurence Olivier (festival theatre's first director), William Blake (tried here)
- Football clubs
- Chichester City
About Chichester
The city that still follows a Roman plan
Walk to the middle of Chichester and you are standing where two Roman roads crossed. The four main streets, North, South, East and West, still run out from the centre like the spokes of a wheel, just as they did when the Romans founded Noviomagus Reginorum, roughly "the new market of the Regni". The city walls follow the Roman circuit too, rebuilt and patched over the centuries, and you can still walk much of the way round them on top. Not many English cities can say their medieval street pattern is really a Roman one. The modern name comes later. It is said to come from Cissa, a South Saxon leader, and the Old English word for a Roman fort or town, ceaster: Cissa's ceaster, eventually Chichester.
The cathedral with a tower of its own
Chichester Cathedral was consecrated in 1108 and has two oddities. It is the only medieval English cathedral you can see from the sea, and it has a bell tower standing apart from the main building, the only detached medieval cathedral bell tower left in the country. The spire has a dramatic story. In 1861 the central tower and spire collapsed. It was rebuilt in the 1860s under the architect George Gilbert Scott, and the spire has dominated the skyline across the flat coastal plain ever since. Inside, old and modern sit side by side. There is a stained-glass window by Marc Chagall, made in the 1970s, and a Graham Sutherland painting of the Resurrection. Another favourite is the tomb of the Earl of Arundel and his wife, which inspired Philip Larkin's poem "An Arundel Tomb" and its famous closing line about what will survive of us. The cathedral also remembers St Richard of Chichester, the thirteenth-century bishop, who is the city's own saint.
A palace found by accident
In 1960 a workman digging a trench for a water pipe at Fishbourne, just outside Chichester, hit something unexpected. It turned out to be the remains of a vast Roman building, now known as Fishbourne Roman Palace, the largest residential Roman building yet discovered in Britain. Its mosaic floors are among the finest in the country. The discovery transformed ideas about how grand life could be in Roman Britain, and it began with a drainage job. That is typical of the area: ancient Britain keeps turning up under the gardens and fields around the city.
Olivier, thrust stages and Georgian charm
Chichester Festival Theatre opened in 1962 with a daring thrust stage, where the audience sits around three sides. Laurence Olivier was its first artistic director, and he went on to lead the new National Theatre. Productions here regularly transfer to London's West End. The city is just as proud of its Georgian side. Pallant House, built in 1712 for a wine merchant, is now a gallery of modern British art, and the gateposts outside are topped with stone ostriches. The streets around the Pallants are so neat and brick-built that they are sometimes called "Little London". At the crossroads, the Market Cross, an elaborate octagon built in 1501, still marks the middle of the city.
Harbours, horses and tomatoes
Chichester Harbour, a maze of tidal creeks just to the south, is a paradise for sailors and for wading birds. At Bosham, on its shore, locals tell the legend of King Canute commanding the tide. To the north-east lies the Goodwood estate, home of Glorious Goodwood horse racing, the Festival of Speed and the Goodwood Revival, where visitors turn up dressed in 1940s and 1950s outfits. On the flat farmland south of the city, near Selsey, growers produce famous tomatoes under glass, one of the area's best-known foods. And each October the Sloe Fair, a funfair with medieval roots, takes over a car park in the city.
Poets, painters and a famous trial
The poet William Collins, author of "Ode to Evening", was born in Chichester in 1721. William Blake lived at nearby Felpham, and in 1804 he stood trial for sedition in the city after an argument with a soldier in his garden. He was acquitted. Students add energy to the place too, thanks to the University of Chichester, which grew out of a teacher training college founded in the 1830s. The football club, Chichester City, plays at non-league level. People from the city are known as Cicestrians, a name that reflects the Latin form Cicestria.