1. Brook Street in 1960s was a thriving shopping hub back then, boasting a butchers, bakers, grocers, hairdressers, chip shop and choice of pubs
Back in the 1960s, residents living in Newtown really seemed to have it all.
The Brook Street area was a thriving shopping hub back then, boasting a butchers, bakers, grocers, hairdressers, chip shop and choice of pubs - in fact, people rarely had need to venture into town, because they had all they needed on their very doorstep.

2. The People’s Café Brook Street 1960s

3. Cooper’s Fish and Chip Shop, Brook St
The Brook Street area was a thriving shopping hub back then, boasting a butchers, bakers, grocers, hairdressers, chip shop and choice of pubs - in fact, people rarely had need to venture into town, because they had all they needed on their very doorstep.

4. Superette Grocery Store Brook Street
Chester Chronicle 3 June 2015
Chester’s History and Heritage Centre’s Facebook page

5. View up Brook Street

6. Angel Hotel was situated at Number 96 Brook Street, in the triangle between Francis Street and Brook Street. The site is now occupied by the Chester Lodge Residential Home.

7. The property next to Angel Hotel demolished, presumably for the widening of road.

8. Gorse Stacks, the former Cattle Market, giving way to a large car park and the new inner ring road 1971.

9. Chester's only surviving cocoa house signs
Chester's only surviving cocoa house signs. They are beautifully preserved on the facade of the former Railway Cocoa Rooms. In early Summer 2011 this attractive and historic building was reopened by Beer Republic as a bar / restaurant by the name of Kash
Originally the brainchild of the Society of Friends- the Quakers- cocoa houses came about due to pious concern that Chester's working men were preferring to spend their time and money in warm and cosy pubs and 'gin palaces' rather than staying in with their families in their cold, damp homes- or even going to church. Interestingly, prominent among those reforming Quakers were the Cadbury and Fry families- chocolate manufacturers! Could it be that their concern was as much about profits as moral improvement?