The annoying death of Brooke

Lichfield is full of little historical monuments like this one in Dam Street. It commemorates the death of a Parliamentarian general in the English Civil War, Lord Brooke, whose army had cut off the Royalist forces in the city. 
He died 365 years ago today.

The Parliamentary side was understandably aggrieved by this loss of a general and shortly afterwards a pamphlet appeared, called 'England’s Losse and Lamentation'. It said that Lichfield was “the sinke of iniquity, cage of unclean and wicked spirits; ungodly, prophane, and most perfidiously wicked; chief instrument of the Kingdomes misery. Let the remembrance of thee be hatefull; and thy name blotted out from among the Townes of the Provinces.”   Like I said...aggrieved.

Incidentally, the monument says Brooke was shot by a sniper whose job was to "annoy the besiegers".
The plaque was erected in the 1700s, when the word ‘annoy’ presumably had a little more venom to it than it does today…!

Is this Sam Johnson I see?

Lichfield Festival is upon us soon (starts July 1st), and no doubt there will be lots of references to the city's most famous son, Doctor Samuel Johnson.

The city is so proud of the famous eighteenth-century "scribbler" that this rather startling mosaic (erected 1976) can be seen on one street-corner as a sort of tribute to him.
However, it would be interesting to know how many passers-by could correctly identify it as a depiction of Sam. He's not as famous as he was.

Lichfield mysteries

Aren't regional 'mstery plays' a great thing?
Traditionally, and deliberately, the actors are recruited from the local populace, so their performances are raw and uneven.  The old-English text of the plays is anachronistic and strange.  The whole idea is to be flexible and even to ad-lib...  The old Bible stories are not as familiar as the might be to a modern audience.
But, somehow, it all works. It's all charming.

It was Lichfield's turn this weekend to stage their cycle of such plays. 
The scene above shows Eve talking with The Serpent; the scene below is Mary learning that she is to be a mother.

The Queen & David Bowie

It was a bit of a surprise to come across this exact copy of a famous piece of Banksy street-art … in a pub yard in Lichfield. The Queen is shown with a ‘Ziggy Stardust’ stripe across her face.

The original work appeared in Bristol in 2012, but seems rather poignant suddenly with the recent death of David Bowie in January. The George IV Pub is a bit of a music venue.

Werburgh, a home-grown saint

It's the feast-day of Saint Werburgh on February 3rd, so spare a thought for her this week. 
She is one of Staffordshire's own home-grown saints, which is why she has her own special niche on the frontage of Lichfield Cathedral (see photo).

The story of her relics (ie her bones) is an odd one, because they were whizzed away from her grave as the Vikings advanced - in order to find a safer resting-place for them.  They ended up in Chester, but were destroyed (historians believe) in the Reformation.

Izaak Walton - up with the saints

Happy birthday Izaak Walton! Izaak is pretty much the doyen of Staffordshire's greatest writers, though Arnold Bennett runs him a close second.  For some reason, a good number of pubs in the county are named after Izaak.
Of course, it's doubtful if anyone reads his works much any more, four hundred years later - even his famous 'Compleat Angler' but - would he have ever expected that anyway?

He has the unique (I think) honour of being the only writer to have his statue in the pantheon on the exterior of a cathedral - though I'd love to know if I'm wrong.
In this picture, he takes his place in a niche on the outside of Lichfield Cathedral along with saints and angels and demons (and occasional king and bishop) - beat that, Arnold Bennett!

Cafe with built-on gravestones

Hmm. The little tea-shop adjacent to Lichfield Cathedral is very pleasant in many ways... but the wall in its car-park is (oddly) lined with grave-stones...
As you can see in this photo, whoever made the arrangement even decided that there wasn't enough room on the left end for one more gravestone, so s/he seems to have sliced the last one down the middle, thus making only a half of it left!
Very strange.  But no-one in the cafe seemed to know what it was all about.  (Maybe the car-park is built over a small graveyard).

Staffordshire against slavery

It's Anti-Slavery Day tomorrow -and Staffordshire has a proud record in the campaign to oppose slavery at the end of the eighteenth century.  Erasmus Darwin (whose statue this is, in Beacon Park in Lichfield) was one of the local thinkers who were bitterly opposed to the slave trade, and was also one of those who took part in the campaign to boycott sugar from the West Indies in 1792.  (Strange to think that boycotts were used even back then...).

By the way, you'll notice in the statue's left hand three shells - because his motto was E Conchis Omnia (Everything From Shells).  He was one of the first people to consider evolution scientifically, and his motto reflected his thinking on that matter.

Unique hedgehog

There is only one 'Hedgehog Pub' in the UK (maybe the world?) - at least that's what an internet search seems to suggest.
I don't know why this fact interests me, but it does.

The Hedgehog is on the outskirts of Lichfield.  It dates back to the eighteenth century.

Skeletal effigy

This rather grim effigy is one of the oldest monuments in Lichfield Cathedral, dating back to the end of the 15th century.  The tomb-figure is that of Thomas Heywode, a dean of the cathedral, who seems to have been also responsible for maintaining its library.

Quite what the original figure looked like, I guess we may never know.  The monument, despite its great age, is not much talked about in the guides; and the actual piece itself is decayed, and almost tucked away, behind the North Door.  However, I can quite believe that the good Dean had no problem being represented in a skeletal way - they were not so squeamish about the processes of death in those days.

Boswell - in with the traders

James Boswell looks rather cheeky, and rather pleased with himself in this statue-portrait in Lichfield's Market Square.  Some people say he probably was just that, though this likeness was made some hundred years after Boswell had actually died.

The link between Boswell and Lichfield is a little tenuous.  James Boswell wrote the biography of the great eighteenth-century literary man, Dr Johnson, basically by hanging around with him and writing down a lot of what he said.  Dr Johnson was, of course, born in Lichfield.

I like this statue. James, who is up on a plinth, appears to be glancing down at the market traders in a seemingly wink-and-a-nod way...

Bishop waits for light

As he is in a kneeling position, he looks like a humble supplicant - but Henry Ryder was actually Bishop of Lichfield, and, erm, this is (was) his cathedral.
The great Victorian sculptor, Francis Chantrey, made the piece; and when the sun comes from the north-west, it is washed in light.

Lichfield's small stop

Lichfield Trent Valley is one of those small, bare railway stations which are better called ‘stops’ than stations.  

It has the suffix ‘Trent Valley’ because it was one of the stations on the original, old, and very short, Trent Valley line.

No waggons, carts & cattle

There's a lot of the past in Staffordshire - perhaps too much.  Whether it's the industrial-past or the historic-past, it sometimes sticks around too long.

For example, the notice you see in this photo hangs prominently in Lichfield in the Cathedral Close, which leads up to the cathedral itself (you can see one of its spires in the background).
It says: "The road through the Close, not being a public thoroughfare, no waggons carts & cattle are allowed to pass through.  By order of the Dean & Chapter".

Now, is that a charming relic of a bygone age, or the dead hand of the past forcing itself upon the present?

Lichfield's German twin

The fad for twinning with other European cities seems to be fading away (though it's true that many twinning associations still exist). In the same way, you don't see many signs now for towns announcing their 'nuclear-free' status either.

However, even to this day, Lichfield twins with Limburg an der Lahn, an historic town in the Rhine Valley.
It's still a good idea for nations to speak unto nations, so I like the suggested idealism at least of such projects.

Sapphic Anna grieves in Lichfield

This magnificent tomb is one of the first monuments you notice on walking into Lichfield Cathedral. It celebrates the father of the poet Anna Seward, and was erected in the last eighteenth century.
Anna, known as the Swan of Lichfield for her poetry, had nursed her ailing father for ten years before he died, and then commissioned this memorial; so the female figure in the sculpture represents daughterly grief, and maybe even can be said to symbolic of Anna herself.

Curiously, Anna has now been picked up by literary historians as a possible ‘Sapphic’ writer. She never married, and many of her poems express a longing for her close friend, and adopted sister, Honora, who died young.
She also made friends with the “Ladies of Llangollen Vale” two reclusive women writers of the time, who were known to wear semi-masculine attire.   In Stapleton Martin's monograph, she expresses support for women's rights, and a disdain for the type of marriage she saw around her.
I guess it’s possible – why not? – though no one has yet suggested she was a practising lesbian.

One other thing about the tomb is that it shows a bare-breasted maiden (representing Grief, or Daughterly Duty).
We nowadays find it odd to see bare-breasts on such a solemn piece, and in church too – but it’s possible that the bare chest is trying to show us that the figure of Grief is so distraught that she has let her clothes fall into disarray.

Related link:
Seward Tomb (in Public Sculpture of Staffordshire And the Black Country)

Grimy end to pilgrimage path

This rather grimy pool is what is supposed to remain of the sacred 'Saint Chad's Well'. It sits in the churchyard of St Chad's Church which is on the outskirts of Lichfield.

It's a pretty unprepossessing sight, and very disappointing - especially now as it is one end of the new Two Saints Way, a pilgrimage path from Lichfield to Chester.
Saint Chad is the Lichfield connection, being a local saint from the 7th Century. At this site, or near it anyway, he is supposed to have prayed, and pilgrims started visiting it soon after his death.

The present structure around the well is, er, brutalist in style, replacing a rather nice well-house which was pulled down in the 1940s.
It's not worth travelling to see, sadly.

Related link: What Not To Do With A Holy Well

Medieval artists have a joke

Medieval artists could just as subversive (and as able to insert humour in serious places) as the artists of today.
I say this because, in my previous two posts, I have been writing about a jokey art project which has 'infiltrated' the Potteries Museum - but the long-ago artists who made the carvings in his photo seem to have been of the same mindset!

These carvings - in the chapter house of Lichfield Cathedral - are hundreds of years old, but display exactly the same impish humour.
Quite what the masons who made them were thinking - or what the story behind them is - I just don't know.

But it made me laugh out loud in what is, really, a very serious place!

Margarine sculpture

The Lichfield Food Festival took place this weekend, and I took advantage of some special restaurant offers (3 courses for £10..).
In the food hall, I came across this lady and this extraordinary sculpture - made of margarine! She was manning Simon Smith's stall - Simon was the chef at Thrales, which was a very good restaurant indeed.

War isn't like this

I'm afraid I get quite angry when I see war memorials like this (this one is in St Chad's, Lichfield). They are quite common in English churches and graveyards.
The point is that they show a knight in shining armour - a figure that is an exemplar of a soldier's great virtues - nobility, honour, chivalry, courage.  Of course, the knight is sometimes Saint George, the patron of England, but not always.

But what makes me so aggravated (and gloomy) about such memorials is that the Great War wasn't some medieval jousting tournament where men fought with the colours of their ladies tied to their armour. As we know the First World War was much messier.
To my mind, these knightly figures are not just a glorification of war, but a lie. Yes, they were supposed to comfort the bereaved families, but...honestly...!

More honest memorials started to come in the 1920s, usually showing a 'Tommy' in khaki uniform; and the knight-figure had all but disappeared by the time of the Second World War. During that war, conflict came home of course, with all the terrible bombing raids - and these sorts of 'chivalric' myths just wouldn't wash any more.

This post has been featured on Taphophile Tragics (the cemetery-enthusiasts' website)