I was invited to take part in the 950th anniversary celebrations of St John’s Church in Chester, which took place on Saturday 14 June 2025 with an open church day full of talks, activities, public engagement. It’s a fitting time for reflection—on the church itself, on the landscape that surrounds it, and on the wider historical forces that once shaped this area of the River Dee in Chester, Cheshire. As a landscape historian and archaeologist, my work often focuses on the interplay between place and power, and St John’s is one of the richest sites for that kind of reflection.