Minerva's Shrine

It may look like a hobbit house, but this old, weathered rock was actually the site of ancient Roman worship. It’s where quarrymen came to honor Minerva, the Roman equivalent of the Greek Athena, goddess of war, art, wisdom, and craftsmen. It was probably out of respect for this latter attribute that laborers carved a shrine to her out of the natural rock nearly 2,000 years ago.

The shrine sits in Edgar’s Field, now a quiet park on the banks of the River Dee but once a massive quarry where workers excavated and carried off the huge blocks of sandstone used to build Chester’s Roman wall. Here, before their shrine, quarrymen made offerings and prayed for success and safety in the course of their grueling, risky labor. 

Such shrines were not uncommon in the ancient world, but a combination of the intervening centuries and collectors have claimed nearly all of them—according to Historic England, it’s believed this is Western Europe’s only representation of a Roman goddess that’s still in its original location. As such, it’s the only shrine of its kind in the United Kingdom.

The shrine is a bit the worse for wear. Weather and vandalism have worn off all the paint and nearly all the details which once adorned the figure of Minerva. A careful eye, though, can still discern her figure holding a spear and wearing a helmet, an owl over her shoulder on the right. The stone columns and awning over the shrine are a 19th-century addition, placed there in the hopes of warding off further damage. 

To the right of the shrine is a small barred opening known as Edgar’s Cave. It, like the park in which it sits, is named for King Edgar the Peaceable, who held a council in or near the field in the year 973. He is said to have received homage there from the lesser kings of the island. Later writers described a fanciful scene of Edgar being rowed up the Dee by eight princes; while that’s almost certainly an embellishment, it has remained a popular, romantic image associated with Chester.