Patrick Comerford
A good measure of a literary city and a cathedral city is whether it has a good library, a good museum and good bookshops.
Since my teens, I have valued the research and reading facilities at the library in Lichfield in its varied locations, first at the former Public Library and Art Gallery on Bird Street, later at the Friary, and more recently, since 2019, in the former Saint Mary’s Church, though with the sad and controversial loss of the Lichfield Record Office, established in 1959.
The original Library and Museum, bedside the Museum Gardens and Beacon Park on Bird Street in Lichfield, was built in 1857-1859 and designed in an Italianate style by the Wolverhampton architectural practice of Bidlake and Lovatt. It forms an interesting pair with the former Probate Court next door, and both face the Remembrance Garden on the other side of Bird Street and the causeway over Minster Pool.
Lichfield Cathedral has an important library that has been housed in the upper room of the Chapter House since 1758. But, until the mid-19th century, towns in England and Ireland did not have public libraries as we know them today.
Most libraries were attached to colleges or cathedrals or were in private stately homes. Commercial libraries were a response to the popularity of the rise of the novel in the 18th and 19th centuries, but libraries were still unknown to the working class, many of whom were uneducated and illiterate.
The Chartists, who demanded social and electoral reform and building land colonies, also set up reading rooms. By the mid-19th century, many clubs societies and institutes for working people provided lectures, libraries and book borrowing facilities, charging a nominal annual membership fee.
A Reading and Mutual Instruction Society was formed in Lichfield in 1850, and soon had over 100 members. That year, the Public Libraries Act was passed, allowing local councils to levy a halfpenny rate to fund local libraries and museums. One of the first of these was in Lichfield, where the Free Library and Museum opened in an elegant Italianate building on Bird Street in 1859.
The Reading and Mutual Instruction Society in Lichfield wound itself up and donated its books to the new library, giving everyone access to books. That year too saw the Museum Grounds open as a public park.
The architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner describes the library as ‘small, of yellow brick and funny.’ The library was built in 1857-1859 and was designed by the architectural practice of George Bidlake and Henry Lovatt, based in Wolverhampton.
The two-storey-over basement building was designed in the renaissance style with a right-angle plan with an inset octagonal entrance tower with a cupola. It is built in brick with buff brick façades, ashlar dressings, a parapeted roof, three-window and six-window ranges, blind arcading. The plinth has a square ashlar plaque inscribed: ‘Free Library and Museum’.
Other features include flanking roundels, lotus capitals, tympana with archivolts and keys, blind arcading, ashlar colonnettes, 20th century buttresses, and ashlar balustrading. Inside there is a geometrical stair with slender iron balusters and a wreathed handrail.
A stone statue of a lone sailor is a familiar site on the side of the building, with the name ‘HMS Powerful’ on his hat band. HMS Powerful was a Royal Navy cruiser launched in 1895, and it played an important role in delivering troops and guns for the relief of Ladysmith during the Boer War.
The lone sailor was originally intended for a Boer War memorial in York, but was later given to the City of Lichfield by Robert Bridgeman in 1901 and placed on the Free Library and Museum, Bird Street, now the Registry Office.
The architects Lovatt and Bidlake designed an impressive list of works, from railway buildings, docks and reservoirs, to churches, hotels and theatres, and landmark buildings in London. The include the Carlton Hotel, Nos 16 and 17 St James’s Place, later the Stafford Hotel, and His Majesty’s Theatre in the Haymarket, the New Gaiety Theatre in the Strand, and the King’s Theatre, Hammersmith, as well as the New Theatre Royal in Birmingham, Bilston Town Hall and the Congregational Church Sedgley. The firm also built the American Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Paris for GE Street.
Henry Lovatt (1831-1913) was born in Wolverhampton and trained as an architect. He formed a partnership with another local architect, George Bidlake, in Darlington Street in 1853. Then in 1858 he bought the small firm of builders and contractors, John Ellis, also in Darlington Street, and turned it into an important firm in the Victorian building industry.
Lovatt lived a full and varied life. On his estate at Low Hill in Wolverhampton, he bred pedigree shorthorn cattle and sheep, grew equally celebrated orchids and collected art, including a collection of watercolours that he sold at Christie’s in 1907 when he retired and left Low Hill.
Lovatt’s partner George Bidlake (1830-1892) was a Wolverhampton architect who lived at No 54 Waterloo Road, next to the Subscription Library. His offices were in Darlington Street until his partnership with Lovatt in 1853.
Bidlake also designed Queen Street Congregational Chapel (demolished), Saint Jude’s Church (1867-1869), Tettenhall Road, Saint Mary’s Church, Coseley, Tettenhall Towers, now part of Tettenhall College, Trinity Methodist Church, Compton Road (demolished), the workhouse at Trysull, and the Congregational Chapel, Stone.
Bidlake wrote on architectural matters and in 1865 published Sketches of Churches Designed for the Use of Nonconformists. He later moved to Leamington.
His son, William Henry Bidlake (1861-1938), was the leading Birmingham architect in the Arts and Crafts movement and was the Director of the School of Architecture at Birmingham School of Art in 1919-1924. He had been a pupil of George Frederick Bodley (1827-1907), a leading Gothic Revival architect, and was known in his own time as ‘the man who rebuilt Birmingham’.
The museum moved in 1958 into the former probate court to the north of the library building. The museum closed in 1970 and the collections went into storage. The library moved out of its original building to the Friary in 1989-1990. The building was listed Grade II in 1993 and in 2003 became the Lichfield Registry Office, now the Lichfield Registration Office. The location beside Beacon Park and the views of Lichfield Cathedral from the Remembrance Gardens and Minister Pool provide romantic backdrops for wedding photographs.
The former Probate Court next door is also a Grade II listed building. It stands on the site of the house where the actor David Garrick (1716-1779) spent his early life. Hs mother, Arabella Clough, was the daughter of a Vicar Choral of Lichfield Cathedral, Anthony Clough, and he was educated at Lichfield Grammar School before becoming one of the first and last students at the school Samuel Johnson set up in Edial.
Garrick’s early family home was demolished in 1856, and the former probate court was built in 1856-1858. It is a single-storey building with a basement. An interesting feature is the elliptical-headed entrance has moulded arch and hood, the recessed six-panel door and the frieze above inscribed ‘Probate Court.’
In many dioceses, each archdeaconry had its own probate court. In Lichfield, this did not happen and the Consistory Court was the main court for the whole diocese. Until 1858, wills were generally proved in the diocesan courts, so the building in Lichfield is a rare example of a purpose-built probate court.
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