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