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The Minerva Shrine.

I was twelve-ish when I discovered the Minerva Shrine in Chester. I was already deeply in awe/love with my matron river (and remain so), and discovering the shrine to a powerful, ancient, kick-your-arse-and-make-you-pay kind of goddess blew my mind. There she was, carved in the soft red sandstone of my home, one hand holding her spear, the other her owl. Like magic.

The carving is pretty degraded thanks to the effects of weather, and the fact that defacing the shrine became a pastime to young dickheads in the fifties (I’ve just found this out). Wankers. I hope she pecked their fucking eyes out.

This is still a special place. As it should be, being the only surviving rock-cut Roman shrine in its original location in the whole of western Europe and dating from around 79 AD. She sits on the banks of the River Dee, which has its own goddess, Aerwen, a fierce goddess for fierce river, and radiates her power across the small park that has grown around her.

When I was a little witchling nobody left offerings at the shrine, nobody I knew, apart from my Classics teacher, had even heard of Minerva. People had forgotten her name, and I had to find my way to her feet surreptitiously, making excuses to my friends when we were out in town on a Saturday, horrified in case they smelled the witch in me, my offerings seeming paltry and pathetic in the face of such power. But now my flowers are not the only offerings at the shrine, and I see women walk over to the almost indecipherable but fiercely present Minerva and bow their heads. It makes my day. She may not be my matron goddess, but she is the spirit of the city of my childhood and I will always bring her flowers.