On my way up to Borrowcop Hill,  a house name jumped out at me  – Sweet Apple Cottage. Unlike its neighbours, it made no obvious allusion to its surroundings. It’s here on Borrowcop Lane.

Sweet Apple Cottage, Borrowcop Lane

The name is on the kind of plaque you often see on similar Victorian houses, together with the date of 1883, so I don’t think it’s a case of more recent owners just choosing a quaint name.
My first thoughts were perhaps it referenced an orchard.  However, a search on google has turned up one possible clue.  A place called Sweet Apple Court elsewhere in the country was named after a man called Sweetapple.  It’s apparently a Saxon surname, one that I’d never heard of until today.  So was there a Sweetapple in Lichfield that gave his unusual name to this house?  Or is there another explanation?

Last night on Twitter, I was complaining about slugs snacking on my tomato plants. Down at the allotments, we are all in competition with rabbits, pigeons and field mice as to who gets to the fruit and veg first. Thankfully, I do not also have to contend with cattle, as people in years gone by did! Stray animals were a serious threat to food production and so pinfolds and pounds were erected, where the rogue livestock could be impounded. The animals would be released to their owners on payment of a fine, although there were stories of animals mysteriously disappearing from the pounds overnight….!  In England in Particular’s section on pinfolds, they liken the animals to today’s wrongly parked cars! (1)

Here in Lichfield in the 1500s, the person responsible for rounding up and impounding the animals was the ‘Warden of the Fields’. By the mid 1600s, the job title had changed to ‘Pinner’. Two Pinners were elected in Lichfield, with one taking responsibility for St Chad’s parish and the other St Michael’s parish. They were appointed at the ancient manorial court of St George,  which still takes place every year.

We are lucky to have a well preserved pinfold here in Lichfield, located at Pinfold Road (where else?), where Beacon St becomes the Stafford Rd. The listed building description says the present structure dates to the 18^th century, but that it has earlier origins. According to the County History, there was an earlier pinfold in Beacon Street by 1645, near the corner of the later Anson Avenue.  This was removed in 1809 and replaced by the Stafford Rd pinfold.

The County History also says that another pinfold stood at Greenhill in 1498 and it is thought it was relocated in the early 19^th century to the junction of Broad Lane and Boley Lane. I have had a look at www.old-maps.co.uk and the Boley pinfold can be seen on a 1955 map of Lichfield, but has disappeared by 1966.  Sadly, no trace of it exists. The Greenhill pinfold can still be seen on John Snape’s 1781 plan of Lichfield .

The terms pounds and pinfolds both seem to be used interchangeably in Lichfield, although pounds is the more common of the two. A fantastic website called Pounds and Pinfolds has been set up, the intention of which “is to raise awareness of these modest buildings by identifying all of the surviving examples, recording their location and condition and encouraging their restoration or preservation”. Our pinfold doesn’t feature on the National Register that the website is compiling, so I’m sending details over to them for inclusion.

This little fellow must have been rounded up last night….

Sources

1.England in Particular by Sue Clifford & Angela King
2. www.thurgartonhistory.co.uk
3.History of the County of Stafford: Volume 14: Lichfield (1990)
4.www.lichfield.gov.uk

Easter Hill is the former vicarage of Christ Church at Leomansley built in the 1840s, around the same time as the church.  The older front part of the house is divided into flats and the rear, added later, is now a separate house.
What has always puzzled me is the bell on the left side of the building, under the eaves.

I have always assumed the bell had a religious use e.g. to call people to church, but couldn’t understand why this would be necessary.  Christ Church has always had a bell and it is easily within earshot of its flock.  In 1851 there were only 27 households in Leomansley.  However, BrownhillsBob came up with the suggestion that it could be a firebell, used to alert the local brigade and distinct from the church bell.  Bob has informed me there is such a bell on the council house at Brownhills.  This secular use seems much more likely and definitely warrants investigation.

If anyone else has any suggestions as to what the bell could have been for, please let me know!

Lichfield Castle isn’t a spectacular ruin like Kenilworth nor a well-preserved motte and bailey like Tamworth. Our castle is a conundrum and the mystery of where it stood has intrigued people for centuries.

Almost 500 years ago John Leland wrote that there had been a castle of ancient time in the south end of the town, but that nothing remained.  He noted that there was a place called Castle Field , where there were dykes, but concluded that it was more likely that the castle would have stood in the Close, with the ground being somewhat castle-like.

Remains of North East Tower, as seen from Gaia Lane

Home for many years to the Levett family of Lichfield, Wychnor Hall is also home to an unusual marital custom that began in the reign of Edward III.  A couple, still happily married after a year and a day, could go to the hall, accompanied by some neighbours, who were prepared to testify to their marital bliss.

After the husband had sworn under oath that he ‘would not have changed for none other, farer ne fowler, richer ne powrer, ne for none other descended of gretter lynage, slepyng ne waking, at noo tyme; and if the seid X were sole, and I sole, I wolde take her to be my wife before all the wymen of the worlde, of what condytions soevere they be, good or evyle, as helpe me God, and his seyntys, and this flesh, and all fleshes’, the couple were presented with a flitch of bacon (which I understand is half a pig).

Apparently, the records show that only three couples were ever awarded the bacon.  The first couple argued so much over it on the way out, they had to give it striaght back!  The second couple hadn’t seen each other since their wedding day, as the husband was a seaman.  It’s said that the third couple were ‘a good-natured man and his dumb wife’.Thomas Pennant writing in the 1780s noted that ‘the flitch has remained untouched, from the first century of its institution to the present: and we are credibly informed, that the late and present worthy owners of the manor were deterred from entering into the holy state, through the dread of not obtaining a single rasher from their own bacon’.   However, in Horace Walpole’s letter to the Countess of Aylesbury, on Aug. 23, 1760 he states that ‘it is thirty years since the flitch was claimed’.

According to The Spectator in 1714, one hungry couple applied soon after their honeymoon.  However, it was deemed that insufficient time since their marriage had elapsed and they were sent away with just one rasher of bacon for their troubles.   I’m assuming things went a bit wrong for them, as they didn’t return to claim the full flitch.

The Wychnor Flitch by LadyJake (2008)

By the second half of the 18^th century, the flitch was symbolic – a picture carved into the wood above the fireplace, in the main hall.  Apparently it still hangs there, as can be seen on  this photo, found on ladyJake’s Flickr photostream, which she has kindly given me permission to use here.

Some centuries old graffiti.

(There is also a connection with my previous post about Drayton Manor.  Robert Dudley, married Lettice Knollys in 1578 and they are buried together at St Mary’s, Warwick, opposite the tomb of their three year old son).

Sources:

Perhaps the sun has gone to my head, but I’m going to bring part of this post to you in the form of a poem.  With apologies to Alfred Noyes, whose famous poem I have plundered, here is my story of Lichfield born highwayman Jack Withers, based on information found in Charles Johnson’s “General History of the Lives and Adventures of the most famous Highwaymen, Murderers, Street Robbers etc” and in the Newgate Calendar.  

Young Jack Withers was a Lichfield lad,
Trained to be a butcher, same as his Dad,
And butcher he did, in a terrible way.
This is the villain’s story,
So bloody and so gory,
This is Jack Withers story, I tell to you today.

With no work in Lichfield, the city he departed,
And found himself in London with a band of thieves black hearted.
He found himself in trouble, and away Jack was sent,
Off to be a soldier,
A soldier, a soldier,
Off to be a soldier in the Flanders town of Ghent.

At the local Church in Ghent, coins were collected in a box,
Jack seized his opportunity and picked the holy lock,
His pockets bulged with coins, yet he still took more
And the money of the Virgin,
The Blessed Virgin Mary,
Fell jingling and a jangling upon the marble floor.

Jack was taken to the Cardinal, to receive his punishment
But told him that his heretical life, he did repent
His sinner’s prayers had been answered by a miracle tis true!
The box was opened by the statue,
The Blessed Virgin’s statue
And the coins had been a gift from her to start his life anew.

Jack abandoned then his colours and returned to his homeland
Where he took to the highways, upon which he would demand,
That travellers should, if they valued their life,
Stand and deliver,
Their worldly goods deliver,
Stand and deliver, or else meet his butcher’s knife.  

A mile outside of Uxbridge, an ill-fated Postman came,
Jack stole the man’s eight shillings; then to conceal his blame,
He slit the man’s throat open with his sharp butcher’s knife,
Gut filled with stones,
And thrown into a pond,
Jack the Highwayman and Butcher had taken his first life.

In the Norfolk town of Thetford, in April 1703,
Found guilty of foul murder and highway robbery,
Lichfield’s Jack Withers was condemned to be hung,
And no miracle could save him,
Save him, save him
No miracle could save him, from the gallows, Withers swung.

Whilst Jack Withers was born in Lichfield, he committed most of his crimes elsewhere.  However, there were other dangerous robbers in the area. On 30th January 1703, a gang held up the Shrewsbury coach in Brownhills, robbing the passengers.  A few days later, the same gang robbed two drovers returning from Newcastle Fair, murdering one of them and wounding the other.  Two days after the gang attacked none other than the High Sheriff of Staffordshire, accompanying his lady and servants from Lichfield Fair. The gang took sixty guineas, and cut off one of the servants’ hands. However, this latest attack was to prove the gang’s undoing. After a huge search nine of them were apprehended – three of them were women dressed in men’s clothes!
As you would expect, some of the tales about highwaymen in this area can be dismissed as nothing more than fanciful legend (there is a story about Dick Turpin jumping the tollgate at Brownhills, but as BrownhillsBob points out on his website this would have been chronologically impossible.) Others could be true – several pubs in and around Lichfield make claims that they sheltered the notorious Turpin and his associates.  Whitehall, on Beacon St, was once an inn called the Coach and Horses and according to a book by H Snowden Ward in 1893 it was a favourite rendezvous of Dick Turpin and his highwaymen.  “The inn was kept by Judith Jackson, a famous beauty and a powerful and unscrupulous woman, an efficient ally of Turpin and his men”. People who have visited Abbots Bromley may have noticed that at the Goats Head, a room is named after Turpin, to commemorate the night he spent there after supposedly stealing Black Bess from Rugeley Horse Fair. Also, Turpin’s partner in crime at one point was Matthew ‘Captain Tom’ King, said to have been born either at the Welsh Harp in Stonnall (now Wordsley House) or at the Irish Harp in Aldridge and both these highwaymen and others are said to have frequented these areas!
By coincidence,  a certain song was released 30(!) years ago this month. So, we started with a poem and we’ll end with a song.  All together now! “Stand and deliver! I’m the dandy highway man who you’re too scared to mention….”

Most of the medieval figures on the Western Front of Lichfield Cathedral, damaged during the Civil War, were removed in 1744.  However, a few were removed a later date (possibly 1749) by a young chimney sweep at the request of the Dean who was afraid that one of them might fall on his head on his way into or out off the Cathedral!

WR Ingram, on sculpture of St Stephen

Public sculpture of Staffordshire and the Black Country by George Thomas Noszlopy, Fiona Waterhouse
TheCatherals of England MJ Taber

 In 1950, the second Drayton Manor, the one most would associate with today was born, opening with one restaurant, a tea room, three hand operated rides, six rowing boats and some dodgems.  Some of my memories from the 1980s are of frisbee, football and picnics on the grassy car park, trying to stretch the day out, because Mum and Dad wouldn’t buy any more ride tickets; the horror of plastic animals jolting up out of the water and the dark tunnel of the Jungle Cruise *shudder*; finding out the hard way that sitting on the end of the Pirate Ship is not the same ride as sitting in the middle of the Pirate Ship, and perhaps most of all The Snake Train, which was toned down in 1986 and finally closed in 1993, saving future generations from bruises, whiplash and worse. For some pictures of Drayton Manor Park from the 1950s to the 1990s visit their website Drayton Manor 60th Anniversary 

Now, I can’t resist a ghost story, and Drayton Manor has a fair few.  Sir Robert Peel, whilst Prime Minister, was taking a walk in the grounds of Drayton Manor, when apparently his father (deceased) appeared to him and had a chat.

One final interesting fact about Drayton Manor is that the Tamworth Breed Pig originated at the Estate.  Also, there are some pictures of the house and estate at the StaffsPastTrack website