The Schoolmaster’s House (left) at the old Grammar School on Saint John Street, Lichfield … a new home for Lichfield Discovered (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
Patrick Comerford
I was in Lichfield last week as a guest of the community heritage and history group Lichfield Discovered at the ‘house warmer’ to unveil plans for the Schoolmaster’s House at the old Grammar School on Saint John Street.
Lichfield Discovered has plans to use the rooms in the centuries-old buildings for workshops, tours, events, talks and exhibitions for an initial five-year period, under an agreement with Lichfield District Council.
The former school buildings at the corner of Saint John Street and Frog Lane were bought by Lichfield Rural District Council in 1917 and became council's offices in 1920. In recent years, the rooms have been part of the council offices, for two centuries the property was part of Lichfield Grammar School, where both Samuel Johnson and David Garrick went to school. But, until now, the building has not been open to the public.
The oldest surviving part of the complex is the former headmaster’s house at 45 Saint John Street, built in 1682. The main school room behind the house was rebuilt in 1849. The features that still remain include wood panelling, fireplaces and a wooden spiral staircase up to the attic, which was once used as a dormitory by school boarding pupils and still has some of their names carved into doors.
Lichfield Discovered has found a new home at the old grammar school (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
I have been involved with Lichfield Discovered in small ways in the past, including leading a walking tour around the Cathedral Close in 2014, and recording five interviews with Dave Moore for Lichfield Discovered, discussing my family connections with Lichfield, in 2015.
The former school buildings are part of a larger complex that includes the modern offices that are home to Lichfield District Council. Both the council chamber and the office of the leader of the council are housed in two of older buildings, the Old Grammar School and the School Master’s House. These older buildings in the complex date back to 1682, and have a history that goes back even further, over 500 years.
In its day, it is said, the old grammar school in Lichfield ranked alongside schools such as Eton and Winchester. The school was on the same site for more than 400 years. In that time, it provided education to many famous people, who later went on to be influential in their age.
Lichfield Grammar School was founded in 1495 when Bishop William Smyth refounded Saint John’s Hospital (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
The school dates back to November 1495, when William Smyth, Bishop of Lichfield in 1493-1496, refounded the Hospital of Saint John the Baptist and added to it a school for poor children. In the new statutes, Bishop Smyth wrote: ‘It is appointed that there be a Master of Grammar in Priests Orders who shall instruct in grammar all Scholars Gratis, which Master shall receive for his stipend the sum of £10 annually.’
Smyth was a benefactor of a number of educational institutions: he was a co-founder of Brasenose College, Oxford, endowed a fellowship in Oriel College, and gave manors to Lincoln College.
The first school probably stood nearer the road than its successors and must have been demolished before 1577 as a deed from the 27 April 1577 describes the ‘new school’.
The Schoolmaster’s House was built in the Jacobean style in 1682, and fronts onto Saint John Street. The grammar school was separated from Saint John’s Hospital in 1692, but the school continued to use the chapel.
The schoolboys who attended the school included local worthies such the antiquarian Elias Ashmole, the lexicographer Samuel Johnson, the Shakespearean actor David Garrick and the politician and essayist Joseph Addison.
The stone mullioned windows on the ground floor of the building, adjoining the garden, were originally in the second grammar school, which was built in 1577 and demolished in 1849 to make way for the present building. As well as being home to 14 successive headmasters of the grammar school, the attics were also used as dormitories for the boarders. Some of their initials can still be seen carved into the oak doors.
The Jacobean oak fireplace in the house was originally made for No 11 Market Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
The site was used as a grammar school until 1903, and the area at the front was used as a playground. In the end, the lack of land meant the school moved to a site on Upper Saint John Street. It merged with King’s Hill Secondary Modern in 1971 to become King Edward VI School.
Meanwhile, the school and master’s house were sold In December 1902 to Theophilus Basil Percy Levett, who promptly sold them two months later to Dr Herbert Major Morgan.
Dr Morgan brought the Jacobean oak fireplace to the house. It was originally made over 400 years ago for the house at 11 Market Street, and its features include carefully carved dragons, wand marine creatures fossilised in the marble.
Lichfield Rural District Council bought the property in 1917, but it was immediately taken over by the army and was used it as a pay office for the Lincolnshire Regiment for the rest of World War I. After World War I, Lichfield Rural District Council regained ownership of the building. It has been used for local government offices since 1920, and the school house now houses the council chamber.
Civic heraldry in the council chamber (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
After the reorganisation of local government in 1974, the building passed to Lichfield District Council. A large extension was added in 1987 facing Frog Lane, incorporating a new main entrance, but the 1849 school room continues to serve as the council chamber. The council leader Doug Pullen was among the speakers at last week’s ‘house warmer.’
Today, Lichfield Discovered has more than 10,000 followers online, including historians, teachers, community workers and museum curators who volunteer in their own time.
Katie Gomez of Lichfield Discovered describes the building as stunning and packed with history, and says she is passionate about using it as a place to share Lichfield’s history and legacy. The future plans include open days, tours of the building, family history days and events in partnership with museums throughout the region.
The former school house now houses the council chamber for Lichfield District Council (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
10 February 2025
Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025:
8, Monday 10 February 2025
‘When they got out of the boat, people at once recognised him’ (Mark 6: 54) … the Ilen, the last of Ireland’s traditional wooden sailing ships, at Foynes Harbour after sailing across the Shannon Estuary (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford
We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent are a little more than three weeks away (5 March 2025) and the week began yesterday with the Fourth Sunday before Lent (9 February 2025).
The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Saint Scholastica (ca 543), sister of Saint Benedict and Abbess of Plombariola. Later this evening, I intend to be at Evensong in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford. Before today begins, however, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
They ‘begged him that they might touch even the fringe his cloak’ (Mark 6: 56) … a choice of prayer shawls with fringes in the synagogue in Chania in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Mark 6: 53-56 (NRSVA):
53 When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. 54 When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, 55 and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. 56 And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the market-places, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.
‘When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat’ (Mark 6: 53) … a moored boat in the harbour in Georgioupoli in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Today’s Reflection:
Between now and Ash Wednesday (5 March 2025), we are in what the Church Calendar calls ‘Ordinary Time.’
Two striking emphases in Saint Mark’s Gospel are the stories of Christ healing about healing those on the margins and assuring those on the margins that they too are called into the Kingdom of God.
Those people on the margins include people who are seen as sinners, foreigners and unclean, especially women and children. The ways they are belittled is symbolised in our Gospel readings all last week:
• The healing of the ‘possessed’ man who lives among the tombs (Mark 5: 1-20, 3 February 2025);
• a dying girl who is only 12 years old and a woman unable to find help from doctors for 12 years (Mark 5: 21-43, 4 February 2025);
• Christ lays his hands on and curing sick people (Mark 6: 1-6, 5 February 2025);
• the disciples are sent out in all their vulnerability and poverty (Mark 6: 7-13, 6 February 2025);
• Herod’s fears and wicked response when he hears of these healings and miracles (Mark 6: 14-29, 7 February 2025);
• And then Jesus has compassion for the people who are neglected by their leaders and rulers (Mark 6: 30-34, 8 February 2025).
In today’s reading, Jesus seems to be trying to get away from all the demands and all the expectations that are being laid on his shoulders. The apostles have come back after being sent out two-by-two, and are telling him all they have done and all that has happened.
Now they need a break, and Jesus takes them on a boat and they head off to a quiet place. But there is no escaping the crowd, the people and their demands.
And they ‘bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was’. This happens wherever he goes – in villages and cities, farms and market places (Mark 6: 55-56). It is just enough for them to touch the fringe of his cloak and those who touch it are healed (verse 56).
What did they think they were doing by touching the ‘fringe of his cloak’?
This is not just an act of hope, hoping for healing, but an act of faith, claiming a place in the community of faith, reaching out for love.
Wearing a prayer shawl reminds the wearer and those who see this of all the 613 commandments in Jewish tradition, of the covenant with God.
In touching Christ’s cloak, the sick people are claiming their place at the heart of the community of faith. They are making Jesus ritually unclean, but those who touch him are healed. In touching Christ, they are ‘touched’ by God’s power, and Christ draws them into the Kingdom of God.
These people follow Jesus around everywhere. He has compassion on them because they are ‘like sheep without a shepherd.’ They need healing, not just in mind and body, but in their families and in their society, in political and religious society, in the economy and in the villages, cities, farms and marketplaces where they seek the healing that Christ offers.
Faith and healing come together.
These connections are made in a prayer or poem in the Service of the Heart, a prayer book I use regularly for my personal prayers and reflections. This poem or prayer ‘Lord God of test tube and blueprint’ is by Norman Corwin (1910-2011):
Lord God of test tube and blueprint,
Who jointed molecules of dust and shook them till their name was Adam,
Who taught worms and stars how they could live together,
Appear now among the parliaments of conquerors and give instruction to their schemes:
Measure out new liberties so none shall suffer from his father’s colour or the credo of his choice:
Post proofs that brotherhood is not so wild a dream as those who profit by postponing it pretend:
Sit at the treaty table and convoy the hopes of the little peoples through expected straits,
And press into the final seal a sign that peace will come for longer than posterities can see ahead,
That man unto his fellow man shall be a friend forever.
Norman Lewis Corwin once declared: ‘I believe in promise, just promise … any species that can weigh the very earth he’s standing on, that can receive and analyze light coming from a galaxy a billion light years distant from us, any species that can produce a Beethoven and a Mozart and a Shakespeare, and the extraordinary accomplishments of our species, scientifically and in medicine and in the humanities, there’s illimitable opportunity for promises to be delivered and met.’
I fell on the street in London on Friday afternoon and ended up in the A&E unit in University College London Hospital with a bruised and swollen face, eye and lips. There I was acutely aware of how hospital staff, medical researchers, scientists, doctors, nurses, porters, and cheerful receptions are all working with the ‘Lord God of test tube and blueprint’ and offering hope and healing to people of faith and of none.
‘When they had crossed over, they … moored the boat’ (Mark 6: 53) … a moored boat on the shore of Canon Island, in the Shannon Estuary, near Kildysert, Co Clare (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Today’s Prayers (Monday 10 February 2025):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Founders’ Day.’ USPG and SPCK are celebrating ‘Founders’ Day’ in Saint James’s Church, Picadilly, next week (Monday 17 February 2025). This theme was introduced yesterday with a Reflection by Dr Jo Sadgrove, Research and Learning Advisor, USPG.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 10 February 2025) invites us to pray:
Lord, forgive us for the ways in which your Church has been complicit in systems of oppression and death. Shine your light upon the darkness of our past and lead us into true repentance and healing.
The Collect:
O God,
you know us to be set
in the midst of so many and great dangers,
that by reason of the frailty of our nature
we cannot always stand upright:
grant to us such strength and protection
as may support us in all dangers
and carry us through all temptations;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Go before us, Lord, in all we do
with your most gracious favour,
and guide us with your continual help,
that in all our works
begun, continued and ended in you,
we may glorify your holy name,
and finally by your mercy receive everlasting life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Lord of the hosts of heaven,
our salvation and our strength,
without you we are lost:
guard us from all that harms or hurts
and raise us when we fall;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
‘When they had crossed over, they … moored the boat’ (Mark 6: 53) … a moored boat on the River Ouse in Old Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
Patrick Comerford
We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent are a little more than three weeks away (5 March 2025) and the week began yesterday with the Fourth Sunday before Lent (9 February 2025).
The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Saint Scholastica (ca 543), sister of Saint Benedict and Abbess of Plombariola. Later this evening, I intend to be at Evensong in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford. Before today begins, however, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
They ‘begged him that they might touch even the fringe his cloak’ (Mark 6: 56) … a choice of prayer shawls with fringes in the synagogue in Chania in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Mark 6: 53-56 (NRSVA):
53 When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. 54 When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, 55 and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. 56 And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the market-places, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.
‘When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat’ (Mark 6: 53) … a moored boat in the harbour in Georgioupoli in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Today’s Reflection:
Between now and Ash Wednesday (5 March 2025), we are in what the Church Calendar calls ‘Ordinary Time.’
Two striking emphases in Saint Mark’s Gospel are the stories of Christ healing about healing those on the margins and assuring those on the margins that they too are called into the Kingdom of God.
Those people on the margins include people who are seen as sinners, foreigners and unclean, especially women and children. The ways they are belittled is symbolised in our Gospel readings all last week:
• The healing of the ‘possessed’ man who lives among the tombs (Mark 5: 1-20, 3 February 2025);
• a dying girl who is only 12 years old and a woman unable to find help from doctors for 12 years (Mark 5: 21-43, 4 February 2025);
• Christ lays his hands on and curing sick people (Mark 6: 1-6, 5 February 2025);
• the disciples are sent out in all their vulnerability and poverty (Mark 6: 7-13, 6 February 2025);
• Herod’s fears and wicked response when he hears of these healings and miracles (Mark 6: 14-29, 7 February 2025);
• And then Jesus has compassion for the people who are neglected by their leaders and rulers (Mark 6: 30-34, 8 February 2025).
In today’s reading, Jesus seems to be trying to get away from all the demands and all the expectations that are being laid on his shoulders. The apostles have come back after being sent out two-by-two, and are telling him all they have done and all that has happened.
Now they need a break, and Jesus takes them on a boat and they head off to a quiet place. But there is no escaping the crowd, the people and their demands.
And they ‘bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was’. This happens wherever he goes – in villages and cities, farms and market places (Mark 6: 55-56). It is just enough for them to touch the fringe of his cloak and those who touch it are healed (verse 56).
What did they think they were doing by touching the ‘fringe of his cloak’?
This is not just an act of hope, hoping for healing, but an act of faith, claiming a place in the community of faith, reaching out for love.
Wearing a prayer shawl reminds the wearer and those who see this of all the 613 commandments in Jewish tradition, of the covenant with God.
In touching Christ’s cloak, the sick people are claiming their place at the heart of the community of faith. They are making Jesus ritually unclean, but those who touch him are healed. In touching Christ, they are ‘touched’ by God’s power, and Christ draws them into the Kingdom of God.
These people follow Jesus around everywhere. He has compassion on them because they are ‘like sheep without a shepherd.’ They need healing, not just in mind and body, but in their families and in their society, in political and religious society, in the economy and in the villages, cities, farms and marketplaces where they seek the healing that Christ offers.
Faith and healing come together.
These connections are made in a prayer or poem in the Service of the Heart, a prayer book I use regularly for my personal prayers and reflections. This poem or prayer ‘Lord God of test tube and blueprint’ is by Norman Corwin (1910-2011):
Lord God of test tube and blueprint,
Who jointed molecules of dust and shook them till their name was Adam,
Who taught worms and stars how they could live together,
Appear now among the parliaments of conquerors and give instruction to their schemes:
Measure out new liberties so none shall suffer from his father’s colour or the credo of his choice:
Post proofs that brotherhood is not so wild a dream as those who profit by postponing it pretend:
Sit at the treaty table and convoy the hopes of the little peoples through expected straits,
And press into the final seal a sign that peace will come for longer than posterities can see ahead,
That man unto his fellow man shall be a friend forever.
Norman Lewis Corwin once declared: ‘I believe in promise, just promise … any species that can weigh the very earth he’s standing on, that can receive and analyze light coming from a galaxy a billion light years distant from us, any species that can produce a Beethoven and a Mozart and a Shakespeare, and the extraordinary accomplishments of our species, scientifically and in medicine and in the humanities, there’s illimitable opportunity for promises to be delivered and met.’
I fell on the street in London on Friday afternoon and ended up in the A&E unit in University College London Hospital with a bruised and swollen face, eye and lips. There I was acutely aware of how hospital staff, medical researchers, scientists, doctors, nurses, porters, and cheerful receptions are all working with the ‘Lord God of test tube and blueprint’ and offering hope and healing to people of faith and of none.
‘When they had crossed over, they … moored the boat’ (Mark 6: 53) … a moored boat on the shore of Canon Island, in the Shannon Estuary, near Kildysert, Co Clare (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Today’s Prayers (Monday 10 February 2025):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Founders’ Day.’ USPG and SPCK are celebrating ‘Founders’ Day’ in Saint James’s Church, Picadilly, next week (Monday 17 February 2025). This theme was introduced yesterday with a Reflection by Dr Jo Sadgrove, Research and Learning Advisor, USPG.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 10 February 2025) invites us to pray:
Lord, forgive us for the ways in which your Church has been complicit in systems of oppression and death. Shine your light upon the darkness of our past and lead us into true repentance and healing.
The Collect:
O God,
you know us to be set
in the midst of so many and great dangers,
that by reason of the frailty of our nature
we cannot always stand upright:
grant to us such strength and protection
as may support us in all dangers
and carry us through all temptations;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Go before us, Lord, in all we do
with your most gracious favour,
and guide us with your continual help,
that in all our works
begun, continued and ended in you,
we may glorify your holy name,
and finally by your mercy receive everlasting life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Lord of the hosts of heaven,
our salvation and our strength,
without you we are lost:
guard us from all that harms or hurts
and raise us when we fall;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
‘When they had crossed over, they … moored the boat’ (Mark 6: 53) … a moored boat on the River Ouse in Old Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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