What was Chester called in Roman times?

Deva: named after the river

The Romans often named a place after its river, and Deva is the Dee. The Greek geographer Ptolemy, writing in the 2nd century, gives the river as Dēva. The British word behind it probably meant “the goddess” or “the holy one”: the Dee seems to have been a sacred river long before the legions arrived.

You will also see the spelling Dewa, an older rendering of the same name, still used by some local businesses. The two are the same place.

Victrix: borrowed from the legion

“Victrix” means victorious. It was part of the full title of the Twentieth Legion, Legio XX Valeria Victrix, which arrived at Chester in about AD 88 and stayed for around three hundred years. Modern writers add it to distinguish the legionary fortress from the river, and the pairing has stuck: you will find Deva Victrix in museums, on signs and in the names of local clubs.

How Deva became Chester

After the Roman army left, around AD 410, people went on living inside the old defences. The Anglo-Saxons who later took control called the place Legeceaster, the city of the legions, after the soldiers whose fortress still stood. Their word ceaster came from the Latin castra, a military camp, and they used it for Roman forts and towns all over England: it survives in Manchester, Lancaster, Worcester and Cirencester.

Over time the first part of the name fell away, leaving Chester. Cheshire, the county, began as the shire of Chester.

Not to be confused with

• Chesters Roman Fort, a cavalry fort on Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland.
• Chester-le-Street in County Durham and Chesterfield in Derbyshire, which share the same Old English word but not this fortress.
• Deva in Romania, an unrelated town in Transylvania.

If you came for the Roman fortress on the Dee in Cheshire, you are in the right place: start with the map of Roman Chester.