Qualla: Lichfield

Lichfield: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bs0u10e01, CC BY-SA 3.0. Three spires rise above the rooftops of a small Staffordshire city, and one of them is leaning slightly. Lichfield Cathedral is the only medieval cathedral in the United Kingdom with three spires - locals call them the Ladies of the Vale - and a visitor who walks up Dam Street toward the close gets to watch them come into view the way 18th-century coaching passengers must have watched them, framed against the green of Minster Pool. The city has 35,000 inhabitants and an almost obscene density of historical association. Samuel Johnson was born in a house on Breadmarket Street in 1709 and went on to compile A Dictionary of the English Language, the most influential dictionary in the language. Elias Ashmole, founder of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, was baptised here in 1617. Erasmus Darwin lived a few streets from where Johnson was born and helped found the Lunar Society. Anna Seward, the poet known across Georgian England as the Swan of Lichfield, wrote here. The combined effect is intoxicating. Johnson himself called Lichfield 'a city of philosophers'.

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Image: Bs0u10e01 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Lichfield: The Ladies of the Vale

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Thomas Quine, CC BY-SA 2.0. Lichfield Cathedral was started in 1195 and largely completed by 1330. It is the only medieval cathedral in the British Isles with three spires - one at the crossing, two at the west end - and it has weathered an extraordinary amount of damage to keep them. The cathedral was twic...

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Image: Thomas Quine | CC BY-SA 2.0

Lichfield: The Doctor's Town

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bs0u10e01, CC BY 3.0. Samuel Johnson was born in 1709 above his father Michael's bookshop on Breadmarket Street, which is now the Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum. He spent his first 27 years in Lichfield before moving to London with David Garrick - the actor who would change English theatre as profou...

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Image: Bs0u10e01 | CC BY 3.0

Lichfield: Erasmus Darwin and the Lunar Society

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Joseph Wright of Derby, Public domain. Just north of the cathedral on Beacon Street stands a tall brick house where the physician, poet, philosopher and natural historian Erasmus Darwin lived from 1758 to 1781. He treated patients across Staffordshire, refused to charge the poor, and wrote epic poems about evolution d...

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Image: Joseph Wright of Derby | Public domain

Lichfield: Ashmole and the Antiquarian

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit After John Riley, Public domain. Elias Ashmole was born in Lichfield on 23 May 1617 and led a life that reads like a Restoration novel. He fought on the royalist side in the Civil War, studied alchemy and astrology, and after the Restoration was rewarded with a series of lucrative court positions. Throughout his...

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Image: After John Riley | Public domain

Lichfield: Getting Around and Settling In

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alex McGregor, CC BY-SA 2.0. Lichfield is small enough to walk. Two railway stations sit on the Cross-City Line from Birmingham, and Lichfield Trent Valley also connects to the West Coast Main Line, putting London Euston as close as 69 minutes by train. The M6 Toll passes just south of the city; the A38 and ...

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Image: Alex McGregor | CC BY-SA 2.0