Chester Romans

Chester Romans is a visitor’s guide to Roman Chester: Deva Victrix, the fortress of the Twentieth Legion, its amphitheatre and the city walls that still follow two of its sides. It’s one of OakFox’s own sites, rebuilt from the ground up in October 2026.

The Problem

Chester was one of Roman Britain’s legionary fortresses, but most of it is under the city. The amphitheatre and a stretch of the north wall are on show. Most of the headquarters, the baths and the barracks lie beneath the shops, streets and cathedral of the old city. So a guide has to help you picture what isn’t there any more, and the old Chester Romans couldn’t:

• No pictures at all. Its ten pages had no photographs, paintings or maps, so there was nothing to show what the fortress looked like or where it stood.
• Short pages. Each had 200 to 500 words: enough to mention a site, not to answer the questions visitors ask about it.
• Nothing to do. No map to explore, no route to follow, nothing that moved. You read it once and left.
• Missing the big searches. Popular questions had no page, like what Chester was called in Roman times, a map of the fortress, the legion that built it, or a day out with children.
• Invisible when shared. With no share image or structured data, a link posted to WhatsApp or Facebook showed no picture, and search engines had little to go on.

The Brief

Make it the guide that shows you Roman Chester. That means far more animated, interactive and interesting:

• paintings and films of the fortress as it was;
• sketches that draw themselves in;
• scroll effects that tell the story as you read;
• a map you can explore, with the fortress drawn over today’s streets.

And it had to become the best answer for the searches people make about Chester and the Romans.

The Solution

Look and Feel

The look is stone, limewash and lamplight. Headings are set in Cinzel, a typeface based on Roman inscriptions, with DEVA·VICTRIX carved large over the opening film. Body text is Alegreya Sans, which stays readable on a phone in the sun.

The home page tells the fortress’s story as you scroll:

• the painting changes as you read;
• ink sketches of the legionary’s kit draw themselves in;
• the arena has a then-and-now slider;
• the walls appear at night;
• a sideways gallery shows life outside the gates.

Colour Palette

• Night (#0C151B) - the dark behind the paintings and films.
• Limewash (#ECEBE6) - the page, the colour of a plastered Roman wall.
• Sandstone (#A9462B) - the red stone Chester’s walls are built from, used for buttons and the fortress on the map.
• Gold (#C99A3B) - the inscriptions and highlights.
• Verdigris (#4E8A7A) - weathered bronze, for the Roman sites that have been rebuilt.

Key Features

• An interactive map of the fortress - Deva Victrix drawn over today’s streets from OpenStreetMap, with every Roman site marked by whether you can see it, find it in a museum, or only know it’s underneath. It prints and downloads.
• 25 guide pages - each opens with a plain answer, then visiting facts, the questions people ask, and the sources it was checked against. Where good sources disagree, like the founding date or how many the amphitheatre held, the page says so.
• A free self-guided walking tour - nine stops from the Cross to Minerva’s Shrine, drawn as a route on the map.
• For families and schools - a kids’ page with a quiz, and a school trip planner with costs, ratios and risk points for KS2 teachers.
• Honest tour comparisons - the soldier tour, the Deva Roman Experience, the museums and the free options side by side.

Fast, and Found

It’s a static site. Pictures come in modern formats at the right size for each screen. The films only load when they’re on screen, and they stay still for anyone who has asked their device for less motion. Every page carries structured data for search engines: articles, questions, attractions, the walking tour and the quiz. There’s also an llms.txt for AI assistants, and IndexNow tells Bing about every new page.

What We Built

• Website design and development (static Next.js)
• Keyword research and 25 search-led guide pages, fact-checked against sources
• An interactive, printable map of the Roman fortress from OpenStreetMap data
• Scroll storytelling, a then-and-now slider and sketches that draw themselves in
• Search and AI-search groundwork: structured data, llms.txt, IndexNow, Search Console and Bing
• Hosting on OakFox’s own server

Visit Chester Romans · Map of Roman Chester · Self-guided Roman walk