17 September 2019

A visit to Lichfield to
talk about the role of
the Comberford family

The Hedgehog Vintage Inn on Stafford Road, Lichfield … staying here during a talk on the Comberford family at Lichfield Civic Society (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I am in Lichfield later today [17 September 2019] at the invitation of Lichfield Civic Society to speak later this evening about the Comberford family of Comberford Hall and the Moat House on Lichfield Street, Tamworth, and their role in the civic and ecclesiastical life of Lichfield over the centuries.

Lichfield Civic Society invited me to speak last year [24 April 2018] on the Wyatt family of Weeford, an architectural dynasty from the Lichfield area who left their mark on the shape of buildings throughout these islands.

It is interesting to speak on my own family links with Lichfield, and this evening’s lecture [17 September 2019] begins at 7.45 p.m. in the Wade Street Church Community Rooms in Frog Lane.

Earlier this year [9 May 2019], I spoke to Tamworth and District Civic Society on the Moat House and the Comberford family. That evening was a part of the commemorations of the 400th anniversary of the visit to Tamworth in 1619 of King James I, who stayed at Tamworth Castle, and his son, the future King Charles I, who was a guest of the Comberford family at the Moat House.

I am staying tonight at the Hedgehog Vintage Inn on the north side of Lichfield, close to the junction of Stafford Road and the Western Bypass, one of my favourite places to stay anywhere.

Hopefully there will be time today and tomorrow to also visit Lichfield Cathedral, either for Choral Evensong this evening or the mid-day Eucharist tomorrow, to visit the Chapel of Saint John’s Hospital, which has shaped my spirituality and my Anglicanism since I was in my late teens, and the bookshops of Lichfield.

Saint John’s Hospital Lichfield … the chapel shaped my spirituality and my Anglicanism in my late teens (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

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