Chester Rows east side of Northgate Street. Originally there were also Rows in Lower Bridge Street but these were blocked during the 17th and 18th centuries. As the ground floor buildings are usually lower than the street level, they are sometime known as "crypts". However, as the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner points out, this is not a strictly accurate description because the level of the floors of the buildings is a half-storey rather than a full-storey level below the street. Rows were built in the four main streets leading from Chester Cross, each of which originated during the settlement's early development. In
How Many Miles to Babylon? In the 1824 edition of "The Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia" there's a description of the rhyme and the game, giving the distance as "six, seven or a lang eight". The rhyme was originally accompanied by a singing game in which two lines face each other, with one player in the middle. At the end of the rhyme the players have to cross the space and any caught help the original player in the middle catch the others. The game seems to have fallen out of use in the twentieth century. In literature In film In music How Many Miles to Babylon?