In Period (photos & video)

I noticed this first photo on a display board in Chester Grosvenor Shopping Centre when I was there earlier this year, and it intrigued me.




It's a Comet fuselage, being towed through the centre of Chester. Apparently a small number of these were built at Shorts in Belfast, shipped across to Ellesmere Port and sent by road to what is now the Airbus factory in Hawarden. At the time, the Chester ring-road wasn't built, so the only option was to drive through the city centre.

This led to some discussion in the pub as to what route it took to get to that point, because further around the corner in the back of the photo there's either a very sharp left turn up towards the town hall, or going straight along there is Eastgate - the one with the clock on it. 




This other photo I found on-line shows that they were brought under Eastgate, as this view from under the clock shows, with WH Smiths on the left hand side. Clever of those Romans to make sure the gate was large enough to fit a plane fuselage under it. I wonder what they'd have done if it wasn't.