Replacement steps on to Chester’s historic city walls – made from recycled plastic bottles – have opened

Visitors to Chester’s historic City Walls can now use the newly opened steps at King Charles Tower Green.

The old wooden steps, which led onto the City Walls from the recently landscaped King Charles Tower Green and the Iceland car park, had to be propped up for several years due to rot-causing fungi that thrived in the dark and damp north-eastern corner of the City Wall.

The old steps have now been dismantled and replaced with a new structure made from fibre-reinforced polymer, which looks like wood but is made from recycled plastic bottles.

The new steps are more accessible and meet current design regulations, making it easier for people with reduced mobility or vision to use them.

The new structure has a design life of 60+ years, requires little to no maintenance, is resistant to vandalism, and blends well with the historic backdrop of the City Walls.

The Council spends £600,000 each year repairing Chester City Walls and has spent around £6m since it became responsible for them, to ensure they can be enjoyed by generations to come.

All work on the Walls has to be granted permission by Historic England, and the Walls are about two miles long and were first built by the Romans nearly 2000 years ago.

They were extended and developed in the Saxon period and rebuilt and extended by the Normans in the 12th century. Throughout the middle ages, Chester was one of the most protected and strategically important cities in the county.

The Walls have been constantly altered, repaired, and sometimes attacked, but they survive today because from the 18th century, they were no longer needed for defense and were adapted to become a fashionable walk and public amenity.