One of the great thing about doing this blog is that whilst looking for one thing, you find ten other things! It’s amazing how many fascinating things are on your doorstep, or just down the A5 in this case. Until recently, I had never heard of Knaves Castle, but now that I have, I’m intrigued as to what this was. It seems that this question has puzzled people over the centuries.

Back in 1794, in ‘The History and Antiquities of Shenstone’, Rev Henry Sanders wrote that Dr Plot believed that Knaves Castle was a place to watch travellers safely cross ‘this heath, formerly all wood and much infested with robberies’…'(for) which the passengers allowed some small gratuity’.  In complete contrast, he reported that another of Dr Plot’s theories was that ‘the robbers themselves harboured in this place’ and hence the name Knaves Castle.  Rev Sanders’ own opinion is that ‘though there remain no signs of a fort, it seems very likely to have been one to guard strangers passing over so wild and dreary a country as Cannoc Wood is at present; much more was it such formerly, when full of woods and thickets’. I’m assuming that he is referring to Dr Robert Plot who wrote a ‘Natural History of Staffordshire’ in 1686 which included a map showing Knaves Castle (this can be seen on the Staffordshire Past Track website.

In 1870-72, John Marius Wilson’s Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales, says ‘Traces of a Roman camp, called Knave’s Castle, are to the N of the village’ (the village referred to is Ogley Hay).

According to ‘Notes on Staffordshire Place Names’ by WH Duignan of Walsall, earthworks and tumuli are often called castles.  The book states that the tumulus is now almost obliterated and enclosed in a garden, but that sixty years ago was very plain (the book was written in 1902, so ’60 years ago’ would have been the 1840s).

Knave’s Castle is a kilometre west of the Staffordshire Hoard findsite, but Della Hooke from the University of Birmingham, in her paper ‘The Landscape of the Staffordshire Hoard’, casts doubt on the description of Knave’s Castle as a tumulus and believes that it is no more than a raised natural hillock.

The English Heritage description of the site can be at found at the Pastscape website.

Unfortunately, no there are no physical remains of  Knaves Castle.  Was it really a Roman earthwork, a hideout for robbers or just a hill?

Update: Since originally doing this post earlier this year, I have since come across an excellent and much more in depth post on Knaves Castle on The Gatehouse website.  The post concludes that Knaves Castle was an artificial earthwork, albeit one that may have developed from a natural feature.

Anna Seward’s will, was said to have contained a riddle, with instructions to her executors to pay £50 to the first person to provide the correct solution. The enigma ended with the verse:

Now, if your nobler spirit can divine
A corresponding word for every line,
By all these letters clearly shall be shown,
An ancient City of no small renown.

In a compilation of Thomas Sedgwick Whalley’s Journals and Correspondence, there is a letter from Mrs Whalley, to her husband in 1816, enquiring whether he had been told the solution to the rebus by Miss Seward, as someone had managed to make the word ‘Litchfield’ but she had not heard whether the executors had agreed the claim. The editor of the compilation has added a footnote.  He asked a friend to find out more about the enigma. On January 31^st 1863, the friend wrote to tell him that “ having been carefully through both the will and the codicils, which are very lengthy….there is nothing in either which in any way refers to “an enigma” which could be so construed”. Reuben Percy claimed the enigma was a shortened copy of a puzzle published in the Gentleman’s Magazine in March 1757, attributed to Lord Chesterfield. A solution offered by Solyman Brown was IEROSOLUMA, which I think is Greek name for Jerusalem.  You can find various versions of the enigma, and the solution, on Google Books. If, as it seems, The Swan of Lichfield’s will did not contain the ‘enigma’, it would be interesting to discover where the story originated.

Sources
Gleanings from the Harvest Fields of Literature – Charles Carroll Bombaugh Relics of Literature – Reuben PercyAn Essay on American Poetry – Solyman Brown
Journals & Correspondence – by Thomas Sedgwick Whalley, ed. Rev Hill Wickham

Borrowcop Gazebo

St John’s railway bridge

Martyrs Plaque, Beacon Park (from Wikipedia)

Sources:
History of the City & Cathedral of Lichfield by John Jackson
English Heritage Past Scape
‘Lichfield: Town government’, A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 14: Lichfield (1990)Public Sculpture of Staffordshire & the Black Country by George Thomas Noszlopy, Fiona Waterhouse

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.