HERITAGE CRIME AND CHURCH DESECRATION

This morning the Police were called to St John the Baptist Chester following the discovery of mindless vandalism by graffiti on a Grade I Listed Church and a Scheduled Ancient Monument.

Further investigation of the famous Ruins of the original Cathedral revealed Satanic comments and a Pentagram, often portrayed as a symbolic representation of Satanism.

The Ruins are a part of St John’s and stand on Consecrated Ground; the Rector will seek advice from the Archdeacon of Chester, St John’s Architect, Cheshire West and Chester Council and Historic England as to how the offending symbols and writing can be removed and the site re- blessed.

The Rector Comments: The offending material may have been perpetrated by young people who might not have realised the extent of the offence that has been caused, However, if it was perpetrated by persons with the full knowledge that the act was offensive, then we are looking at a criminal act alongside the commission of a Heritage Crime by damaging the walls of a Scheduled Ancient Monument.

St John the Baptist Chester is the oldest standing building in the City still used for its original purpose and from the Norman Conquest until the Reformation it was The Cathedral or Co-Cathedral (With Lichfield and Coventry) of the Diocese of Mercia. Prior to that it stood as the great Saxon Minster of West Mercia founded in 689 by Æthelred, king of Mercia and St Wilfrid of Ripon on what is considered to be a very early Christian Site going back to the 3^rd century and the early Church.