After posting about the Unicorn Inn, someone asked if I knew anything about the Goats Head as they’d seen an old photograph of it. Well, I kid you not, it turns out it’s yet another old Lichfield boozer that’s still there. Sort of.Â

In June 1969, the Mercury reported that the Goats Head would become a branch of Barclays Bank to meet increasing demand for services. The New Year chimed the bells of doom for the inn and also, the end of an era for licensees Horace and Maud Wilson. The Wilsons were born in the city and had run four Lichfield pubs in the course of their careers. They cut their teeth at the Angelesey in Curborough Rd, now a Co-op, and then went to the Kings Head for nine years, followed by the Swan for a further nine, before spending twelve years at the Goats Head. Mr Wilson had been born at the Royal Oak on the Walsall Rd, which had been kept by his grandfather, a cooper.
At the New Years Eve party, old aquaintances were not forgotten as 65 year old Fred Matthews of The Parchments, who had worked at the hotel as a hostler recalled a Mrs Lyons from the Roundabout at Handsacre who was apparently six foot tall and strong as a bull and had, ‘carried a bag of ‘taters under her arms from The Old Crown to this yard where she used to have to stand on an empty crate to get into the float or the ‘oss and cart would-a tipped up’.

I’d read that on one of the corners of Bore Street and Breadmarket St, Father John Kirk was installed as the priest of a new chapel established above a bakery when Pipe Hall in Burntwood, which had become established as a centre for Roman Catholicism in the area, was sold. Whilst this must have been handy for daily bread, directly above a baker’s oven was not a good place for a congregation to gather and the heat at times must have been too much like the bad place for comfort. In 1802, Father Kirk bought land in Upper St John St and built a new chapel and presbytery there, originally known as St Peter and Paul but later called Holy Cross. I was praying the chapel was located in the building that became the Goats Head purely so I could make a reference to the father, son and holy goat. However, in The Gentleman’s Magazine it says it was ‘that known in present as the Dolphin public house’ which is that known in present as White Stuff on the opposite corner.

You’ll have to look at the photo via this link as I have totes failed to embed it. https://www.search.staffspasttrack.org.uk/Details.aspx?ResourceID=6841
Talking of signs, I found a lovely article in the Lichfield Mercury from September 1970 on the Bower Brothers – Eric, John, Ted, Malcolm and David – whose dad Sydney, the son of a stonemason, had established a sign painting business in a 1920 in the backyard of a big Burton Brewery. The brothers had painted a sign for the Goats Head Inn but also the Bowling Green, The Malt Shovel, The Nelson, The Nag’s Head and many other pubs in the Lichfield and Burntwood area. Thirty hours of work produced one double sided sign, each one a unique piece of art which began with research into the name, and then a small watercolour painting submitted for approval, before being scaled up and transferred to wood. Eric kept a book of the designs from around Lichfield which would be a a wonderful thing to see, as would have been the exhibition of pub signs at the Bowling Green Inn in February 1949. The Bowling Green’s own sign back then showed Francis Drake finishing off his game before defeating the Spanish Armada and the article in the Lichfield Mercury says a new sign at the Three Crowns in Breadmarket Street depicted three warriors wearing their crowns (which sounds suspiciously like a reference to that old Lichfield legend of the three Christian kings buried up on Borrowcop) was also on display.

The Three Crowns was closed in the 1960s and converted to offices. At the time Mr Winterton the auctioneer whose firm were moving into the building said the emphasis was on renovation rather than reconstruction and so, like its neighbour the Goats Head, it’s yet another old Lichfield pub which is still there in body if not in spirits.
I’m really keen to do more on the pub signs of Lichfield and the surrounding area over the Christmas break, but even though I would really, really like to, I’m not going to be able to get round all of our fine hostelries before the end of the year. So if you are out and about enjoying festive frolics this Yuletide, and you spot an interesting sign, please do share a photo, either on Twitter @lichfieldlore or on the Lichfield Discovered FB page, or by emailing thelichfeldian@yahoo.co.uk. What do you think – anybody inn?
Sources:
‘Lichfield: Roman Catholicism and Protestant nonconformity’, in A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 14, Lichfield, ed. M W Greenslade (London, 1990), pp. 155-159
Lichfield Mercury Archive