Our second week began in the medieval town of Chester, where we engaged in the little study of gothic vs. Norman architecture pictured here. You can quickly tell the difference between the later Gothic style and the early Norman style by examining arches. As you can see in this photo of Chester Cathedral, the pointed arch of the face of the Cathedral indicates it is of Gothic design, while the rounded arches in the foreground indicate... that we're inside a McDonalds. Sometimes you have to eat fast food to see everything you want.

A walk into downtown Chester is a walk into the past. Its original, half-timbered shops, all tucked in a row, form a sort of medieval version of a strip-mall, with an open-air walkway one floor up that runs for blocks. You can see this walkway in the building at the right of this photo.

Several of the buildings also have crypts dating from the 1200s. In fact, Chester was originally a Roman town that is now, for the most part, buried underneath the medieval town. Many English cities have this Roman-Norman-Gothic-Modern layering in their basements.

And speaking of basements, the Dewa Roman Experience is a fine participatory museum, despite its hole-in-the-wall entrance. We were wondering a bit as we walked down the long, narrow alley to a brightly-colored entrance, past the attendant, and down the stairs into a reproduction of a Roman slave ship.
The Dewa museum is really four museums in one: a Disneyland-like recreation of the Roman town, with talking mannekins; a view of real archeological digs on-site; a museum of many Roman artifacts that were unearthed locally; and an interactive museum where you can design your own Roman mosaics and dress up in Roman soldier's armor (which is heavy!).

To think of everything we would have missed if we hadn't happened down that particular road and bumped into that particular life-sized Roman soldier signboard! We love the serendipity of wandering around town and seeing what we find. A couple good guidebooks don't hurt either. We found the Rough Guide to be generally indispensible, but occasionally down on simple amusements (like hanging out in a bronze-age cave); the combination of it and the more objective Blue Guide usually gave a good balance of ideas of interesting and fun places to see.
From ancient Rome we travelled to a relatively modern locale: Erddig House, south of Wrexham. Erddig is a wonderfully-detailed 1700's manor house whose last owner (before the National Trust) was a theatrical fellow who enjoyed inviting his friends over for dessert in the then-empty servants' hall. The outbuilding pictured here contains a dung-wagon and various farm implements used on the estate.
Into the time machine again, we popped out in the Victorian open-air museum of Blists Hill in Ironbridge gorge. Ironbridge is the birthplace of wrought iron, which formed the Victorian world. The very helpful and informative printer here identified himself only as "Phil the Print", but gladly answered all our detailed questions. We spent the day learning about printing, candlemaking, dentistry, tinsmithing, and ironforging.
Brother Cadfael fans will recognise Shrewsbury Abbey, the home of the fictional monk-detective. We managed to miss the Cadfael experience next door, instead spending our day at the Abbey and the nearby Rowley's House museum. The abbey was a magnificent and powerful institution before the English reformation, but suffered greatly in the transition. The west end of the building is shown here; the original east end, choir, and altars of the abbey were destroyed in the dissolution of the monastary, then damaged again by Victorian "restoration" and road building. Telford's Victorian turnpike road right next to the abbey has weakened the structure enough that the bells can no longer be rung.

Rowley's House museum contains a wonderful collection of Roman artifacts from the nearby ruin of Roman Wroxeter, including a stone inscription from the forum that contains letters carved so precisely they look machine-printed.
As we left Upper Brompton Farm (an absolutely wonderful B&B near Shrewsbury), our hosts recommended we visit Stokesay Castle, which we had overlooked in the tour book. We are eternally grateful for the advice, for Stokesay is a 13th-century fortified house that is the best example of its kind in the country. It showed how comfortable and inviting living in the 1200's could be, in spite of the open-pit fireplace in the drafty great hall.