Tag Archives: Lichfield

A Cock & Bull Story

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Somehow I’d not spotted these cockerels on Tamworth St before! The cockerels (or chickens as I originally thought they were!) reminded me of some carved cow heads that BrownhillsBob spotted on an old Lichfield butchers shop a few months previous (the old Savers shop) and posted on his great #365daysofbiking blog .

The keystone says that the building was built in 1865.  16 years later the 1881 census for Tamworth St shows the following household:

Name  Relation Marital Status Gender Age Birthplace Occupation Disability

 Henry WELCH Head M Male 54 Rugeley, Stafford, England Poulterer  

 Elizabeth WELCH Wife M Female 56 Harefield, Middlesex, England    

 Louisa WELCH Dau U Female 25 Lichfield School Mistress  

 Arthur WELCH Son U Male 20 Lichfield Poulterers Assistant  

 Alice Mary WELCH Dau U Female 19 Lichfield Dressmaker  

 Elizabeth WELCH Dau U Female 17 Lichfield Pupil Teacher  

 Mary Ann WELCH Dau U Female 15 Lichfield Pupil Teacher  

A poultry dealer on Tamworth St! I think there’s a good chance Mr Henry Welch and his family may have been the occupants of this building? By the way, the rear of the building is also interesting as there is a cart entrance.

Roger Jones (@ziksby on Twitter) very kindly did a bit of investigating on the great historical directories website but could only find general butchers on Tamworth St. However, Henry Welch does turn up as a ‘grocer & poulterer’ in an 1870 directory on Market St, Lichfield. So, it seems at some point between then and 1881 he moved the business to Tamworth St. Did he add the cockerels at this time?

By coincidence, earlier that day I had a look at the mosaic on the landing at Lichfield Library.

Information alongside says:

“This mosaic was rescued by the Lichfield Civic Society in 1985 from the stallriser of 13 Tamworth St. It was restored by Adam Cecconi of Cecconi & Son, Small Heath Birmingham with monies granted by the Swinfen Broun Charitable Trust and is on loan to the college.”

I also found a couple of old adverts for butchers on Tamworth St in a January 1891 edition of the Lichfield Mercury.

HP Craddock Family Butcher, Tamworth St, Lichfield
Fresh Meat daily. Pickled tongue always on hand.

Quantrills Est. 1872
2 Tamworth St, Lichfield
Pork pie & sausage establishment. A great display of hams, porkpies & sausages which surpass any in the city for quality & cheapness. Pure leaf lard, pickled pork etc.
All orders promptly attended to.

Richard Bratby (@RichardBratby) also got in touch via twitter to say that he had seen a photograph of Quantrills and it was on the corner of Bakers Lane, but demolished when the Three Spires shopping centre was built. Richard also said that the photograph is in Heritage Centre collection, so I’ll have to pay them a visit.

I think it would be really interesting to see if any of the other shopfronts & buildings in Lichfield City centre still have clues to the trades that were carried on in them (I think I already found an old branch of Burtons!). If anyone does find any, please get in touch.

 

 

Beacon Place Part Two

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Following on from my last post about Beacon Place, here are my initial attempts to discover what’s left of the estate.

Here’s a map of the Beacon Place area from 1921. It shows the the Greenhough Rd lodge, the Beacon St lodge and the Sandford St lodge (although this isn’t indicated, it’s the building near to the PH on Lower Sandford St, in the parcel of land marked 332).  It doesn’t show the Christ Church Lane lodge, but I’ve covered this elsewhere anyway. Apart from the Sandford St Lodge, which I think would have been located near to Bunkers Hill car park, the lodges are still in existence. A lot of the trees are also still there, the line running down from the icehouse to Christ Church is still very much in evidence. The fish ponds also remain of course.

As we know the mansion no longer exists, and houses were built on the area. I think it was located somewhere in the region of Seckham Rd. What’s interesting, although I suppose it makes sense, is that the new roads in this area  seem to follow the line of the old carriage drives shown on the 1921 map. For example, if you compare the google map* below, the route of Swinfen Broun Rd is similar to the that of the carriageway from the Greenhough Rd lodge. Beaconfields seems to follow the line of the carriageway from the Beacon St lodge.

I think that the icehouse shown on the map is located between the Shaw Lane carpark and the pavilion near to the playground, where there is a definite bump in the ground which seems to correspond with the map. It doesn’t come over particularly well in the photograph unfortunately, so the next time you’re in Beacon Park, you’ll have to go and have a look yourself!

The footpath marked next to it on the map is also still in existence.

I think part of the estate’s boundary walls are between Beacon Mews and Beaconfields, on Beacon St.

There are also some walls running alongside Shaw Lane. I wonder what that gap in the wall was for? I should have taken a better picture of it!

So, these are my findings so far. I’m hoping there will be more. The map shows a couple of other buildings (e.g.two fairly near to Christ Church, some near to where the ice house), so I’d be interested to know what these were. 

If anyone has anything to add (or if I’ve made any mistakes – I’m not great with maps!), please let me know. Oh and if any one wants to see any other bits of the 1921 Lichfield map, get in touch.

*just a quick HT to Pastorm as that’s where I heard about scribblemaps from

Hollow within a holloway

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Like its neighbour Abnalls Lane, Cross in Hand Lane is (at least in parts) a holloway. As mentioned before, Cross in Hand used to be the main road to Stafford. I understand from reading information on the Two Saints Way project that it would also would have been one of the last stages of the pilgrimage route between Chester and Lichfield. According to Thomas Harwood it was also where the Sheriff’s Ride (the next one coming up soon on 10th September) used to begin and finish. So, that’s what I do know.

Now for what I don’t know…..

This ‘cave’ can be found by walking about 200m up Cross in Hand Lane from the A51. It’s on the right hand side, opposite a lovely white cottage.  I first read about it in Cuthbert Brown’s Lichfield Remembered, but he doesn’t know what it is either! Is it somewhere stone has been extracted from? A natural feature? Anyone have any ideas?

Edit 25 minutes later!
It is natural. Brownhills Bob tells me via Twitter that it is a water fissure where softer rock has been washed out. So thank you to him, mystery solved 🙂

Gone for a Burton on Market St

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I have been shopping in Market St countless times before, yet today I noticed something I hadn’t before. A foundation stone in black marble, with an inscription This stone laid by Stanley Howard Burton 1938. “That’s quite interesting”, I thought and walked on. I got as far as Cross Keys and then stopped. I had my camera with me, why hadn’t I taken a photo? Who was Stanley Howard Burton? A combination of curiosity and conscience got the better of me. I had to have another look and take a photo. On doing so, I noticed that there were actually two stones.

Arnold James Burton had laid the stone on the opposite side. Two Burtons – brothers or father and son? Burtons…..hmmm….

A google search didn’t show up anything for Lichfield specifically, but I did find a Flickr stream devoted to the Burton menswear empire’s deco buildings, which shows similar stones to those in Market St and confirmed that this building was once home to a branch of what was once the world’s largest tailoring store. It seems that members of the Burton family often laid the foundation stone at their new buildings.  In Lichfield’s case it was two of the sons of business founder Montague Burton.

The history of the Burton family and their business is interesting.  Montague Burton arrived in the country as a 15 year old Lithuanian named Meshe Osinsky. I’ve read on the company’s website that he adopted the surname Burton after he spent a couple of hours at Burton on Trent railway station. A great summary of Mr Burton Snr’s life can be found on the Moving Here website and also on the BBC local history website for Leeds .

I’m glad I went back for a second look at that stone on Market St. Now I’ve taken the photos I might go the full monty and add them to the Burton Deco Flickr group.

Edit: There are some photographs on the Flickr stream of Burton buildings in Walsall & Wolverhampton, with stylised lions & elephants. Apparently, there are Burton buildings in Sutton, Stafford, Birmingham and other local towns and cities so keep your eyes open!

Sources:

1.http://www.movinghere.org.uk/galleries/histories/jewish/working_lives/montague_burton1.htm#

Monk's Walk

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I discovered this gorgeous garden at the back of Lichfield Library a few weeks ago.  There are plants from the 17th and 18th century, supplied by Castle Bromwich Hall Gardens and Victorian plants from The Walled Garden nursery at Bretby Park, Burton on Trent. The walls running alongside are interesting. There’s a mixture of brick and stone and a bricked up entrance. I’m guessing that it’s called Monk’s Walk in reference to the Friary which once occupied the site, but I’ve yet to find much information about the history of the garden.

Edit 11/10/2011

I’ve found more information on the history of the garden on the Staffordshire Gardens & Park Trusts website.

A Bower Queen in Beacon Park

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This beautiful photograph is of Clara Talbott, and it was her prize for being chosen as the Lichfield Bower Queen in 1931. Clara was the third Queen to be crowned and although other parts of the Bower date back to much earlier, it seems this tradition only began in 1929. The Lichfield Mercury reported that Clara’s ‘long auburn hair had provided a very favourable comparison with the more modern ‘bobs’ and ‘shingles’. It goes on to tell us that Clara was assisted by her ‘fair maids of honour’ Misses R Orton, M Barker, F Nevill and K Carroll.

A mirror was used to give the impression of a reflection in water.

The photograph belongs to Vickie Sutton, Clara’s granddaughter. She told me that the photograph was taken in woods around Leomansley, where the A51 western bypass now cuts through the woodland. I understand that these trees here were planted by the owners of the now vanished Beacon Place.

Woodland at the edge of Beacon Park and the old carriage driveway from Christ Church to Beacon Place, with the A51 through the middle!

Clara’s family farmed land on Beacon Park and once married, Clara and her husband Frederick Hatchett lived in The Lodge in Greenhough Rd. As the name suggests this was a lodge for Beacon Place and at one point was used as a laundry for the house – it was known as Laundry Lodge in 1891! Vickie has heard from a family member that it may also have been used a some sort of cafe for soldiers in the first world war. I haven’t been able to find any specific references to this yet but records show that Beacon Place was used by officers during WWI and was purchased by the war department in 1922. Cuthbert Brown remembers military figures entering Beacon Place in his wonderful book ‘Lichfield Remembered’.

Once again huge thanks to Vickie for allowing me to share this. The Beacon Place Estate is definitely on my list of things to explore. It may be long gone, but traces of it still linger on….

Sources:

Lichfield Mercury May 1931
A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 14: Lichfield (1990)
1891 Census
Lichfield Remembered by Cuthbert Brown
Chatting to Vickie Sutton, font of Lichfield knowledge!

The Tombstone at Lichfield Library

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I may be wrong but I’m assuming that there aren’t many libraries which have a 14th century tombstone embedded in their wall. I couldn’t quite believe that Lichfield library did either and so after watching the Queen travel up Bird St to the Cathedral, it was time for the really exciting part of yesterday to commence! Sorry Ma’am.

I was reading a copy of ‘Hyacinths and Haricot Beans: Friary School Memories’ by Jean Bird.  The book tells of a slab from a tomb found during renovations in 1926 being incorporated in the Friary building itself, which of course housed the school prior to its move to Eastern Avenue.

Checking the site’s listed building description confirmed this:

“…window to right of entrance has ex-situ gravestone of C14 or earlier below: calvary cross fleury and worn inscription to Richard the Merchant, found in 1746”

Another fairly recent reference was the Public Monument and Sculpture Association National Recording Project which described the stone as being placed ‘at the rear of Tamworth & Lichfield College, set into the wall by founder’s door’.

Anyone passing would never notice the stone....

At the rear? Well, at least that would explain how I managed to visit at least once a week, without noticing a large tombstone embedded into the wall.  In fact, once I got to the back of the building and the founder’s door, it was clear that few would notice the stone. Partially obscured by a shrub, a faint carving of a cross can be detected. Time and weather have not treated the stone well.

The fading stone

A trip to the Staffs Past track website reveals a drawing of the stone as it was around 250 years ago. It seems the stone was found in 1746 and then somehow lost and then rediscovered in 1926!  Bulldozers working on the new Friary Road in the 1920s cut through the site of the Grey Friars cemetery.  One of the contributors to the Friary School book recalls the bones that were uncovered being reburied ‘in the site opposite’.  Perhaps that’s where the remains of Richard are today.

Whilst round the back of the library, I also discovered the wonderful Monk’s Walk garden, which I shall do a separate post on.  Something else I hadn’t noticed on all of my visits to the library. That’s one of the things with Lichfield, you just never know what’ll turn up next……

Edit 29/8/2011

In ‘A Topographical History of Staffordshire ed. William Pitt’ (1817), I came across a description of how the tombstone turned up in 1746. Apparently on October 14th of that year, Mr Michael Rawlins was living at the Friary and was building a wall with a gate. Whilst digging the foundations, he found the grave stone about 6 foot under the surface with a coffin and bones underneath it. He placed the stone in a niche in the wall of the stables.

 Sources:

Hyacinths and Haricot Beans: Friary School Memories 1892 – 1992 by Jean Bird

From: ‘Lichfield: Education’, A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 14: Lichfield (1990), pp. 170-184. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=42354 Date accessed: 20 July 2011.

http://lichfielddc.limehouse.co.uk/portal/planning/conservation_area_appraisals/lichfieldcaa?

http://www.staffspasttrack.org.uk

Public Monument and Sculpture Association National Recording Project

Sir Gilbert Scott and Lichfield

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Following on from yesterday’s google doodle of the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras, to to commemorate the 200th birthday of Sir George Gilbert Scott, I had a quick look at Scott’s connections to Lichfield.

Scott was the Lichfield cathedral architect from 1855 to 1878, first restoring the interior of the Cathedral and then working on the exterior, including the West Front which had been vandalised during the civil war and covered in roman cement in  an earlier restoration.You can read more about the restoration at the Lichfield Cathedral website. 

It seems Lichfield Cathedral isn’t the only city building that Sir Gilbert Scott was involved with.  In the early days of his career he had formed a partnership with his former assistant William Bonython Moffatt. The Scott & Moffat practice made workhouses their speciality. Apparently, they would monitor the newspapers for adverts by Poor Law Unions looking for architects to build their new workhouses. Scott & Moffat answered an advert placed by the Lichfield Workhouse Board of Guardians, looking for  “Plans and Specifications for a Workhouse to hold two hundred Paupers, in accordance with Mr Kempthorne’s Model.”  Scott & Moffat were eventually selected after much deliberation by the workhouse guardians and work began on the tudor style building on 24th May 1838 and it was officially opened on 8th May 1840. Their work can still be seen at the old St Michael’s hospital on Trent Valley Rd.

Scott and Moffat parted company in 1845, after designing around 40 workhouses together. Scott’s wife Caroline Oldrid was said to have put an end to the partnership, as she believed that Moffat had become unreliable. In 1860, Moffat was was imprisoned as a debtor. After their partnership ended, Scott carried on with his two sons as his assistants. His younger son, John Oldrid Scott took over his father’s practice in 1878 and was the architect overseeing the restoration of the cathedral spire in my previous post! I was reading his notes and letters to the Dean and Chapter just a few days ago (his handwriting is terrible!). Scott’s eldest son George died at the age of 58, strangely enough at the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras Station.

Scott was knighted in 1872 but faced some critiscism during his career.  William Morris and others founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in 1877, in response to what they felt was the unsympathetic restoration of medieval buildings by Victorian Architects, Scott amongst them. Apparently on Scott’s death, Morris described him as ‘the happily dead dog’.

The Midland Hotel was threatened with demolition in the 1960s, but The Victorian Society campaigned and the hotel became grade I listed.  The hotel was reopened earlier this year as the St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel. 

You can see a list of the buildings Scott worked on here.  I’m pleased to see that they’ve included a picture of Lichfield Cathedral!

Sources
www.scottisharchitects.org.uk

www.workhouses.org.uk

Cathedral City by Howard Clayton

This Won’t Hurt – A History of the Hospitals of Lichfield by Mary Hutchinson, Ingrid Croot and Anna Sadowski

www.guardian.co.uk Article ‘Sir George Gilbert Scott, the unsung hero of British architecture’

The Cathedral Spire – A Hatchett Job!

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A couple of weeks ago, I was contacted by Vickie Sutton. Vickie is from a family with some amazing connections to Lichfield. She believes it’s vital that the wonderful memories and stories that have been passed down to her are recorded, and shared with other people, so that they don’t get lost and forgotten.

A caricature of Henry Hatchett by one of his colleagues. (1)

One of the first stories Vickie shared with me is about her great grandfather Henry Hatchett. Henry began working for Bridgemans of Lichfield in the 1890s. Employed as a as a labourer, he mastered the arts of casting, cleaning stone and marble.  Henry was periodically sent to Edinburgh to maintain the Last Supper sculpture (based on the painting by Da Vinci) in St Cuthbert’s Church, and as a result, his colleagues gave him the nickname ‘MacHatchett’! (1)Vickie knew that Henry had been involved in restoring the central spire at Lichfield Cathedral and together, we set out to discover the full story…..
 
 

 

 Lichfield is of course famous for having three spires but it seems that the central spire has had all sorts of problems! It was destroyed in 1646 during the civil war and was restored in 1666. Between 1788 and 1795 it was restored again with further work being carried out in 1892/3.

In 1949 there was trouble with the spire again. The Dean reported that in high wind, the ball and cross were moving. An architect, Mr George Pace, was consulted and gave a verdict that came as a shock to the Dean. Due to corrosion of the iron anchors and cramps, and weathering of the mortar, the spire was in such bad condition that the last 11 feet could be shook by hand. It would need to be repaired immediately. Mr Pace later described how in his view, a delay in the work could have resulted in the spire crashing through the cathedral roof. More than 20ft of the spire had to be pulled down and rebuilt. The Dean was unwilling to finance the work with a bank loan believing that it would have been ‘lazy, and stupid, and unsound finance’ and turned instead to the public, launching the ‘Lichfield Spire Repair Fund’. As Christmas 1949 drew near, the Dean urged people donate suggesting it would be a ‘glorious Christmas present’ for the Cathedral. Eventually, the cost of the work amounted to more than £9,000 and the amount was raised by people, not just from Lichfield but from all over the country.(2)

Twenty-two stone courses were removed from the spire to Bridgeman’s premises on Quonians Lane, where they were either replaced or redressed.

A new cross was designed by the architect George Pace, and incorporated the Jerusalem motif, found on the Cathedral Arms. The ball (2 foot in diameter) was taken down and was found to contain several rolls of parchment and a ½ oz of twist (tobacco) and the remains of half a pint of beer! One of the parchments told how the ball and cross had been taken down for repair and re-gilded on 12th September 1893 and was signed by the Rt Rev The Honourable Augustus Legge. The second parchment had a list of those holding civic office at the time and also the signatures of the men engaged in the work. It was on this list that the name Henry Hatchett, labourer appeared. (3)

The scrolls from 1893 were placed in the archives and replaced with a new scroll inscribed with the names of those holding civic office in 1949/50 and once again, the names of those carrying out the work. The ball was re-gilded with two layers of the finest double English gold leaf. This was carried out in situ by Mr George Kingsland from Birmingham. On 19th June 1950, a celebratory meal was held in the Swan Hotel by the Dean & Chapter, to which everyone involved in the work on the spire was invited. Vickie’s family remember there being some sort of grand unveiling of the new cross and ball, but I haven’t been able to locate any details regarding this yet. (4)

I love this story as it shows that even the most well-known of our buildings can still have secrets! I wonder if the addition of the beer and tobacco was an authorised one? Also, does anyone know where the old parchements are stored?

I really want to thank Vickie for sharing this. We are working on some more of her brilliant family stories at the moment, but in the meantime check out this link and enjoy some of the views from that troublesome central spire.

Sources

1 & 4 The Annals of a Century: Bridgemans of Lichfield 1878 – 1978 by O Keyte

2 & 3Lichfield Mercury Archives accessed at Lichfield Record Office

You say Leamonsley, I say Leomansley

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I still don’t think anyone is quite sure how this area of Lichfield is actually spelled. It’s not suprising, I’ve come across at least five different versions over the last five years! I remember there was an issue with signposts some years ago too. I’m going with Leomansley for consistency as this seems to be the current spelling that most would recognise.

Accoring to a transaction on pre-conquest Lichfield from the Staffordshire Archaeological & Historical Society, the name Leomansley contains elements indicating there may have been a Welsh settlement here around the 6th century.

Lemansyche

In ‘Lichfield: The cathedral close’, A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 14: Lichfield (1990), pp. 57-67, it tells us that

“in the 13th century the cathedral was described as being between Lemansyche and Way Clife. Gaia Lane may have been called Lemansyche as Shaw Lane, the extension of Gaia Lane on the west side of Beacon Street, is in the direction of Leamonsley”.

Edit 2/2/2012 : The origins of placenames is a fascinating but tricky subject. I did read a few days ago that ‘sike’ or ‘sitch’ could be a regional names for a small streams (especially one flowing through flat or marshy ground). Apparently the word was used especially when describing boundaries. It comes from the OE ‘sic’ and in the Midlands became ‘sich’ by the 1500s (2).

So could I be right in thinking that the Lemansyche referred to might be Leomansley Brook, which runs across Beacon Park? This would be in keeping with the boundary idea and also with the stream over marshy ground. As this excerpt from wikipedia says ‘The land on which Beacon Park now stands was originally low lying, poorly drained pasture alongside the Leamonsley Brook. The Museum Gardens and Recreation Grounds were the site of Bishops Fish Pool or Upper Pool. The pool was created when a causeway was built on Beacon Street in the 14th century separating it from Minster Pool. The area around Bishops Fish Pool in all directions was waterlogged marshland, this area south of Bird Street became known as the moggs from the 15th century and later Swan moggs’.

Is this feasible? As I said, a tricky subject, even for experts, and especially for dabblers like me!

Leamonsley

We are told by the County History that that the hamlet* of Leamonsley grew up around the fulling mill on Leamonsley brook in the early 1790s. In 1841 census there were 13 households, including that of the tenant of the mill; with the number rising to 27 households in 1851.

* a term often used to describe a village without a church

Lemondsley

In 1806, the Rev Thomas Harwood referred to “four closes of land, pasture and meadow, lying next together near the said city (Lichfield), called Lemondsley for which the rent of 10s per annum is now paid”.

Lemmonsly

In the book “Trade Tokens” by J.R.S.Whiting, and on http://www.windmillworld.com, there is a reference to a twopenny token of Lemmonsly Worsted Mill, Lichfield (John Henrickson). Henrickson is a “calico, cotton and shirting manufacturer” . The token shows a mill with trees at sides, and river. On the reverse is the arms of Lichfield between oak branches, and text “One pound note for 120 tokens”. A picture can be seen on Flickr following this link.

www.flickr.com/photos/30084068@N08/3305680975/in/photostream

There is no date on the token but John Henrickson let and ran the mill from around 1810 until he went bankrupt in 1815.

Leomansley Mill, now that sounds like an interesting place………..

Sources

‘Lichfield: The 19th century’, A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 14: Lichfield (1990), pp. 24-32. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=42338 .

(2) Edit 2/2/2012 http://voices.yahoo.com/shallow-shoal-shoot-sike-sitch-origins-forms-histories-5293647.html