City in Staffordshire, England
Lichfield
Lichfield's name may mean 'field of the dead', yet it gave us the dictionary, the Darwins and the only medieval English cathedral with three spires.
Key information
- County
- Staffordshire
- Nation
- England
- Population
- about 35,000 in the city (2021 Census: 34,738)
- Known for
- Its three-spired cathedral, Samuel Johnson and the Staffordshire Hoard connection
- What locals are called
- Lichfeldians
- Famous people
- Samuel Johnson, Erasmus Darwin, David Garrick, Elias Ashmole
- Football clubs
- Lichfield City FC
About Lichfield
The cathedral with three spires
Lichfield Cathedral is the only medieval English cathedral with three spires, and locals call them the Ladies of the Vale. The central spire is the tallest, with two shorter ones on the west front. The building is made from warm red sandstone, and its west front is crowded with statues. Many are Victorian replacements for figures lost in the Civil War. That war nearly finished the place. The cathedral close was fortified for the king and underwent three sieges: two in 1643 and one in 1646. The central spire was toppled by cannon fire and had to be rebuilt after the Restoration, when Bishop John Hacket reportedly set about the repairs with great energy. Inside, the cathedral holds the Lichfield Angel, an eighth-century carving found under the nave in 2003. It is thought to show the Archangel Gabriel and is one of the finest pieces of Anglo-Saxon art discovered in recent decades.
A city that wrote the dictionary
Samuel Johnson was born in Lichfield in 1709, above his father's bookshop in Breadmarket Street. The house is now a museum, and a statue of him sits in the Market Square, looking out over the place where he grew up. He went on to compile A Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755 after about nine years of work. It defined some 40,000 words and set the standard for English lexicography until the Oxford English Dictionary arrived. Johnson never stopped being fond of his home town. His biographer James Boswell visited Lichfield with him, and the pair are commemorated in the square, where Boswell has his own statue nearby. David Garrick was born in Hereford in 1717 and grew up in Lichfield, where he became Johnson's pupil. He became the greatest actor of his age and managed the Drury Lane Theatre in London. The two travelled to the capital together, famously with very little money between them.
The Lunar Society and a very busy doctor
Lichfield earned the name City of Philosophers in the eighteenth century. Erasmus Darwin, doctor, poet, inventor and grandfather of Charles Darwin, lived here from 1756 and helped found the Lunar Society, a group of industrialists and thinkers who met at full moon so they could ride home safely. Darwin's house beside the cathedral close is now a museum. He was fascinated by evolution, wrote long poems about plants and designed a speaking machine and a steering mechanism for carriages. Another local, Elias Ashmole, born in 1617, gave his collection of curiosities to Oxford University. It became the Ashmolean Museum, the first university museum in the world.
A name that may mean a field of corpses
The old story says Lichfield means 'field of the dead', pointing to Christians supposedly martyred here under the Roman emperor Diocletian. The city's coat of arms shows a landscape strewn with slain martyrs, which makes it one of the grimmest civic emblems in England. Historians usually link the name to the Roman and British settlement of Letocetum, nearby at Wall, rather than to a massacre. Still, the martyr tale stuck, and it has shaped the city's imagery for centuries. The place became properly important in 669, when St Chad made it the seat of his bishopric of Mercia. His shrine drew pilgrims throughout the Middle Ages, and the Staffordshire Hoard, the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold ever found, was discovered in a field near the city in 2009. Some of it is displayed in nearby Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent.
Pools, parades and an old tradition
Lichfield has a rare pair of lakes in the middle of the city. Minster Pool and Stowe Pool sit on either side of the cathedral, and the Stowe Pool path leads to St Chad's Church. Johnson was baptised at St Mary's Church in the Market Square. The city is also the only one in England with a surviving Court of Array, held with the Greenhill Bower. This tradition began as a medieval gathering of men with their weapons, and each Spring Bank Holiday Monday the city still marks it with a procession through the streets, historically by the local guilds, and a fair. Lichfield is served by two railway stations, Lichfield City and Lichfield Trent Valley.
Food, football and today
Lichfield is a market city in the best sense, and Saturday trading in the Market Square dates back centuries. Staffordshire oatcakes, savoury pancakes stuffed with cheese and bacon, are the traditional local bite, and the city's pubs and tearooms fill with cathedral visitors. On the sporting side, Lichfield City FC play non-league football, and the city is also home to a well-regarded cricket club. Many residents commute to Birmingham, about 15 miles to the south, but the cathedral skyline keeps the place firmly its own.