Chester is a real city located in Cheshire, England. Hollyoaks's fictional village, also named Hollyoaks, is located in Chester. The city of Chester is home to over 79,000 people and is well known for its extensive Roman walls made of local red sandstone, reflected in Hollyoaks's City Wall.
Despite the show's Chester setting, it has been filmed at Lime Pictures' TV studio at Campus Manor in Childwall, Liverpool since its inception. The exterior sets here attempt to recreate styles familiar to Chester, such as the city walls and Tudor cladding.
Chester is now rarely seen in Hollyoaks - mainly due to factors such as the inconvenience of regular location shooting, or how the show can now make wider use of its Liverpool base - however, it can be seen regularly in many episodes from the 1990s.