Daisy Stuart Shaw, pioneering woman in Lichfield life and politics, is celebrated with a plaque at her former home

The new plaque at 8 Bore Street, celebrating Daisy Stuart Shaw, Lichfield’s first woman mayor (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

It is always good to see new plaques or ways of commemorating pioneering people who have made an impact on public and social life in Lichfield. When I was in Lichfield a few months ago, I had noticed the name of Daisy Stuart Shaw on the Friary Clock Tower. A few days later, a plaque honouring her was unveiled at the house on Bore Street where she lived 100 years ago.

So, it was interesting last week the see the plaque that was unveiled recently at No 8 Bore Street, to honour this pioneering and forward-thinking woman.

Daisy Stuart Shaw (1861-1955) was the wife of Dr Thomas David Stuart Shaw, a Lichfield GP. She was the first woman councillor to sit on Lichfield City Council (1919), the first woman to become Mayor of Lichfield (1927-1928) and the first woman to become an Alderman of the city.

Daisy Stuart Shaw was born Daisy Ramsay in Edinburgh in 1861. She had been a nurse before she married Dr Thomas David Stuart Shaw, a general practitioner. The couple moved from Gloucester to Lichfield 120 years ago in 1905 when her husband took over the practice of Dr Welchman, a medical practice in Bore Street that dated back to the 1850s.

No 8 Bore Street … Daisy and Thomas Stuart Shaw moved to Lichfield in 1905 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

In Lichfield, Daisy became involved in working with the Victoria Cottage Hospital, which had opened on Sandford Street in 1889. At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Freeford Manor, the home of the Dyott family near Lichfield, became a military hospital for soldiers wounded in action. Daisy worked there as a VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) Red Cross nurse, looking after wounded soldiers.

In the last year of World War I, an act was passed in 1918 giving women the vote for the first time. The Act came after almost 30 years of campaigning, but was also a response to the women who had worked throughout the war in factories, farms and businesses. Thousands of men who had previously been disenfranchised, mainly because they were not house owners, were also given the vote.

Daisy Stuart Shaw became the first woman member of Lichfield City Council the following year when she was elected a councillor for the South Ward in November 1919. She was re-elected in 1923 and was a councillor for over 20 years. She took a particular interest in the rights of women, particularly women who were widows or on low incomes, in the welfare of children, and in housing reform.

Both Daisy and Thomas Stuart Shaw continued to be actively involved in the Victoria Cottage Hospital in the inter-war years. By the 1920s, the hospital on Sandford Street had become too small to meet the needs of an growing number of patients and the couple were involved in fundraising efforts to build a new, purpose-built, hospital on land off The Friary, on the other side of the Bowling Green public house.

Thomas provided his medical services to the new hospital voluntarily and they both dedicated many hours of their own time and funds, ensuring the success the new hospital in the days long before the National Health Service.

Meanwhile, Daisy was the first woman to become the Mayor of Lichfield, holding office in 1927-1928. As Mayor, she took part in the official reopening of the Clock Tower on The Friary in 1928, after it had been relocated, brick by brick, from its original location on the junction of Bore Street, Saint John Street and Bird Street. While Daisy was Mayor of Lichfield, the Sheriff of Lichfield in 1927-1928 was Joseph Henry Bridgeman, the son of Robert Bridgeman, the noted stonemason and wood carver, whose premises were on Quonians Lane, off Dam Street.

Daisy Stuart Shaw was Mayor of Lichfield when the Clock Tower was moved a new location in 1928 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Ten years later, Daisy was honoured when she became the first woman to be made an alderman of Lichfield by Lichfield City Council in 1938 in recognition of her long service and dedication, and for her tireless voluntary work in and around the city.

After almost 40 years in Lichfield, the Stuart Shaws retired in 1945 and moved away from their adopted city. The general committee of the Victoria Hospital made a presentation to them, recognising their ‘outstanding services of a public and charitable nature’.

Daisy died in 1955 in Castle Douglas in her native Scotland. Her widowed husband died in 1960.

After more than half a century, Daisy Stuart Shaw’s commemoration was championed by the city council chair, Councillor Ann Hughes, who said she ‘learned about Daisy through the Wayward Women history group which set up plaques temporarily across the city in 2021.’ Her story has also been told by local historian and tour guide Jonathan Oates in the local magazine CityLife in Lichfield and on social media platforms.

A blue plaque celebrating Daisy’s life and contribution was installed at 8 Bore Street, her former home, earlier this year. It was unveiled on 7 March at a ceremony that also marked International Women’s Day and that included the Deputy Mayor, Councillor Claire Pinder-Smith, and the town crier, Adrian Holmes.

Daisy Stuart Shaw was the first woman councillor, first woman mayor and first woman alderman in Lichfield (Photograph courtesy of the Saint Mary’s Lichfield Photographic Collection, via Jonathan Oates)

Sources/Further Reading:

Jono Oates, ‘Daisy Stuart Shaw’, Lichfield’s First Lady,’ CityLife in Lichfield, March 2025, p 47

(Professor) Janet Hunt, Staffordshire’s War: Voices of the First World War (Amberley, 2017)

Daily prayer in Lent 2025: 4, Saturday 8 March 2025

The Crucifix above the High Altar in Saint Chad’s Cathedral, Birmingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Lent began this week with Ash Wednesday, and tomorrow is the First Sunday in Lent (Lent I). The Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Edward King (1829-1910), Bishop of Lincoln; Felix (647), Bishop, Apostle to the East Angles; and Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy (1883-1929), Priest and Poet.

Today is also International Women’s Day, and to mark the day the current edition of Citylife in Lichfield magazine includes a feature by local historian Jono Oates on the story of Daisy Stuart Shaw, the first woman to be a councillor in Lichfield and the first woman to be Mayor of Lichfield. She was the Mayor of Lichfield when the Friary Clock was relocated brick-by-brick in 1928, and her name appears on one of the plaques on the clock tower.

After a lull last weekend, the Six Nations Championship resumes this afternoon. I am planning a short visit to London this morning, but later in the day I hope to find somewhere appropriate in Stony Stratford to watch the matches between Ireland and France (14:15), which should decide the championship, and Scotland and Wales (16:45).

Before this day begins, 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.

‘Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house’ (Luke 5: 29) … in the Great Dining Room in Aston Hall, Birmingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Luke 5: 27-32 (NRSVA):

27 After this he went out and saw a tax-collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ 28 And he got up, left everything, and followed him.

29 Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house; and there was a large crowd of tax-collectors and others sitting at the table with them. 30 The Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to his disciples, saying, ‘Why do you eat and drink with tax-collectors and sinners?’ 31 Jesus answered, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; 32 I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.’

‘The Bull’ by Laurence Broderick is a popular feature in Birmingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Today’s Reflection:

In the Gospel reading at the Eucharist yesterday (Matthew 9: 14-15), Christ discussed the question about fasting put to him by the disciples of John the Baptist. The same question comes up again in today’s reading (Luke 5: 27-32) in the response to the lavish banquet Levi arranges in his house to welcome Jesus, especially during Lent, which we are supposed to mark with ‘prayer, fasting, and self-denial’.

But the difference between the welcome Jesus receives from Levi and the large crowd of tax-collectors and sinners at the banquet and the criticism levied by those who complain about this eating and drinking reminds me of ‘Indifference’, or ‘When Jesus came to Birmingham,’ a poem by the priest-poet Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy (‘Woodbine Willie’), who is remembered in the Church Calendar today.

Woodbine Willie wrote this poem while he was a chaplain during World War I. He felt God’s heartbeat for people and ministered faithfully, through practical love and through his poetry, to the ordinary soldiers living through ‘hell on earth’ in the trenches.

In this poem, Kennedy compares the behaviour of Christ’s contemporaries with our behaviour today towards the stranger and the outcast, and challenges us in Lent to consider whether we are following Christ to Golgotha.

Kennedy once wrote: ‘We have taught our people to use prayer too much as a means of comfort – not in the original and heroic sense of uplifting, inspiring, strengthening, but in the more modern and baser sense of soothing sorrow, dulling pain, and drying tears – the comfort of the cushion, not the comfort of the Cross.’

Geoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy was given his nickname ‘Woodbine Willie’ during World War I because of his reputation for giving Woodbine cigarettes along with pastoral and spiritual support to injured and dying soldiers.

He was born in Leeds in 1883, the seventh of nine children born to Jeanette Anketell and William Studdert Kennedy, a vicar in Leeds. His family came from Co Limerick, Co Clare and Clonfert, Co Galway. He was educated at Leeds Grammar School and then went to Trinity College Dublin, where he received his degree in classics and divinity in 1904.

After a year’s training for ordination, he was appointed a curate in Rugby. In 1914, he was appointed Vicar of Saint Paul’s in Worcester. On the outbreak of World War I, he volunteered as a chaplain on the Western Front, and it was there he was given the nickname ‘Woodbine Willie.’

In 1917, he ran into ‘No Man’s Land’ at the Messines Ridge, to help the wounded during an attack on the German frontline. For his bravery, he was decorated with the Military Cross.

His poems about his war-time experiences were published in Rough Rhymes of a Padre (1918), and More Rough Rhymes (1919).

But during the war, he was also converted to Christian Socialism and pacifism, which influenced his books Lies (1919), Democracy and the Dog-Collar (1921) – which included chapters such as ‘The Church Is Not a Movement but a Mob,’ ‘Capitalism is Nothing But Greed, Grab, and Profit-Mongering,’ and ‘So-Called Religious Education Worse than Useless’ – Food for the Fed Up (1921), The Wicket Gate (1923), and The Word and the Work (1925).

After the war, he was appointed to the Church of Saint Edmund, King and Martyr, in Lombard Street, London. But he soon moved to work for the Industrial Christian Fellowship, travelling throughout Britain on speaking tours.

He addressed the Anglo-Catholic Congress in London in July 1923, when he said:

‘It is not enough to make the devotional life our main concern, and allow an occasional lecture or preachment on social matters to be added as a make-weight. The social life must be brought right into the heart of our devotion, and our devotion right into the heart of our social life. There is only one spiritual life, and that is the sacramental life – sacramental in its fullest, its widest, and its deepest sense, which means the consecration of the whole man and all his human relationships to God.

‘There must be free and open passage between the sanctuary and the street. We must destroy within ourselves our present feeling that we descend to a lower level when we leave the song of the angels and the archangels and begin to study economic conditions, questions of wages, hours and housing. It is hard, very hard, but it must be done. It must be done not only for the sake of the street, but for the sake of the sanctuary, too. If the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament obscures the Omnipresence of God in the world, then the Sacrament is idolatrous, and our worship is actual sin, for all sin at its roots is the denial of the Omnipresence of God.

‘I have been to Mass in churches where I felt it was sinful – sinful because there was no passion for social righteousness behind it. When ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you; yea, when ye make long prayers I will not hear you; your hands are full of blood … Cease to do evil, learn to do well. Seek judgement. Relieve the oppressed. Judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Little children, keep yourselves from idols.

‘Remember that medieval ritual was a natural expression of medieval life, which, at any rate, tried to consecrate all things to God – tried to build the Kingdom of God on earth, and dedicated all arts and crafts, all human activities to him. In that setting it meant much; apart from that setting it means nothing, and worse than nothing – it is a hollow mockery. The way out is not to destroy ritual, but to restore righteousness, and make our flaming colours the banners of a Church militant here on earth …’

Woodbine Willie was taken ill on one of his speaking tours and he died in Liverpool 96 years ago on 8 March 1929.

Indifference, by GA Studdert Kennedy

When Jesus came to Golgotha, they hanged Him on a tree,
They drove great nails through hands and feet, and made a Calvary;
They crowned Him with a crown of thorns, red were His wounds and deep,
For those were crude and cruel days, and human flesh was cheap.

When Jesus came to Birmingham, they simply passed Him by.
They would not hurt a hair of Him, they only let Him die;
For men had grown more tender, and they would not give Him pain,
They only just passed down the street, and left Him in the rain.

Still Jesus cried, ‘Forgive them, for they know not what they do,’
And still it rained the winter rain that drenched Him through and through;
The crowds went home and left the streets without a soul to see,
And Jesus crouched against a wall, and cried for Calvary.

The Crucified Christ and candlesticks by Peter Eugene Ball in the north aisle of Saint Philip’s Cathedral, Birmingham … the cross is made from a simple wooden sleeper, the Crucified Christ from copper and bronze foil (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Saturday 8 March 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), has been ‘The World’s Greatest Leader: Jesus Christ.’ This theme was introduced last Sunday by the Right Revd Filomena Tete Estevão, Bishop of Angola.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Saturday 8 March 2025) invites us to pray:

Lord, we give you thanks and praise for the strength, resilience, and leadership of women across the world.

The Collect:

God of peace,
who gave such grace to your servant Edward King
that whomever he met he drew to Christ:
fill us, we pray, with tender sympathy and joyful faith,
that we also may win others
to know the love that passes knowledge;
through him who is the shepherd and guardian of our souls,
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:

God, shepherd of your people,
whose servant Edward King revealed the loving service of Christ
in his ministry as a pastor of your people:
by this eucharist in which we share
awaken within us the love of Christ
and keep us faithful to our Christian calling;
through him who laid down his life for us,
but is alive and reigns with you, now and for ever.

Collect on the Eve of Lent I:

Almighty God,
whose Son Jesus Christ fasted forty days in the wilderness,
and was tempted as we are, yet without sin:
give us grace to discipline ourselves in obedience to your Spirit;
and, as you know our weakness,
so may we know your power to save;
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.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

Inside Saint Peter and Saint Paul Church in Aston, Birmingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

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

Today is International Women’s Day … the name of Daisy Stuart Shaw, the first woman Mayor of Lichfield, is on the Friary Clock Tower (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The ‘Lichfield Mercury’ has been off the streets since April … can it be saved?

A glass of wine with an old friend … the Lichfield Mercury, first published on 7 July 1815, has not been printed since 9 April 2020 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I began my career as a journalist as a freelance feature writer in the Lichfield Mercury almost 50 years.

Now, half a century later, the future of the Lichfield Mercury looks grim. Although the newspaper’s publishers are maintaining a skeletal-like presence on Facebook and other social media platforms, no print version of this 200-year-old local newspaper has been published for the past four months.

The Lichfield Mercury, now a free newspaper that depends on advertising for revenue, has not been printed since April 2020. Due to the fall-off in advertising revenue, the main source of income, the parent company Reach plc decided the Mercury could not survive and stopped printing it.

Now a petition has been launched by Lichfield photographer Robert Yardley to bring back the Lichfield Mercury as a paid-for weekly newspaper.

‘If there are enough people supporting the petition, I am optimistic this will work,’ he says.

Lichfield is well-served by a local monthly magazine CityLife in Lichfield and by a daily news blog, Lichfield Live, with an active Facebook feed. But he believes the Lichfield Mercury as a paid-for newspaper could ‘be as good as the Tamworth Herald, with more content than before. You will be informed of public notices, road closures, council decisions, news of new housing developments, and more.’

To illustrate his argument, he looks at the HS2 project, and says ‘there are ground investigation survey works that Balfour Beatty will be completing during 2020/2021, and the work is planned to re-commence in August 2020. You would be able to read about this and more if we had the Lichfield Mercury.’

He suggests, ‘When you are in the newsagents next time, have a look at the Tamworth Herald to see what it could be like.’

The Ma Ma Thai restaurant at No 17 Bird Street … the home of the Lichfield Mercury in the 1970s (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The editor of the Lichfield Mercury, Charlotte Hart, said the newspaper had paused publication after the edition on 9 April 2020 because of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on advertising. She said the company is taking ‘a break’ from printing the paper.

The decision came after the owner Reach PLC confirmed plans to cut all staff pay by 10% and furlough others.

‘We have all been affected by the coronavirus outbreak,’ she told readers. ‘Unfortunately, because a lot of the businesses that advertise their services with us have had to stop trading, we have seen a dramatic fall in our revenue.’

She added: ‘It’s becoming a real struggle to deliver your paper free of charge at the moment. So, it is with a heavy heart that we have decided to take a break from printing our newspaper. The decision has not been taken lightly, but businesses up and down the country are being forced into making unprecedented choices.’

Reach PLC, which owns the Lichfield Mercury, said the measures were needed to help the company navigate the current outbreak.

The Lichfield Mercury and Midland Chronicle was first published on 7 July 1815 by James Amphlett at premises in Bore Street, Lichfield. The back page carried news from the Battle of Waterloo.

John Woolrich bought the newspaper in 1821, then sold it on in 1825. By 1834, the Lichfield Mercury was published every Friday by George Walker Hinde ‘in the ancient house at the corner of the Market Place in which the celebrated Dr Johnson was born.’ Hinde, who was previously editor, had become the owner and publisher, but the paper was then discontinued.

Frederic Brown, a printer and a Conservative, established a new Lichfield Mercury in 1877 in opposition to the Lichfield Chronicle, of which he had previously been a proprietor. When Brown died in 1901, ownership passed to his brother Edward. He in turn sold it to WH Smith & Son in 1905.

The title was later acquired by Allison & Bowen, owners of the Staffordshire Chronicle. It was sold on to a syndicate that incorporated the Lichfield Mercury Ltd in 1934.

An exhibition marking 200 years of the Lichfield Mercury was on display in the Dyott Chapel in Saint Mary’s Church in the Market Square, Lichfield, in July 2015, and the first 200 visitors were presented with a collectable ‘2015’ teaspoon courtesy of the sponsor, the Lichfield company Arthur Price.

The newspaper is now part of the Reach group, Britain’s largest national and regional newspaper publisher, with titles that include the Daily Mirror, Daily Express, Sunday People, Daily Record, Daily Star, OK! and regional titles including the Birmingham Mail, Manchester Evening News, Liverpool Echo and Bristol Post.

You can click the link to sign Robert Yardley’s petition HERE and to share it with friends.

An early masthead of the Lichfield Mercury, which was revived in 1877

The loss of a unique Art Deco cinema is a lost opportunity in Lichfield

The Regal Cinema on Tamworth Street, Lichfield, by night earlier this year (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

Work began last week on the demolition of the Regal Cinema on Tamworth Street in the centre of Lichfield. Machinery arrived at the rear of the building facing Cross Keys on Wednesday [25 July 2018], the site was fenced off, and the demolition work began on Thursday.

For some people in Lichfield, the former cinema has been an eyesore for years. But for others, the Regal Cinema this was an important part of their memories from childhood and teenage years.

The demolition comes as a surprise, if not a shock, to many, not only because of those cherished memories, but because the Regal Cinema has long been listed for its Art Deco frontage.

The developers promised last week that this façade will be saved and incorporated into the new building. Richard McGarry of PBM Contractors Ltd told the Lichfield Mercury: ‘The listed façade is staying but the rest of the building is coming down.

‘We will be on site conservatively for between four to six weeks.’

The Art Deco style cinema building in Tamworth Street has been lying empty for more than 10 years. During the past decade, the once-handsome frontage has deteriorated, vegetation has been growing from the windows and it has become increasingly shabby in appearance.

The Regal Cinema opened at 23-27 Tamworth Street 86 years ago, on 18 July 1932, and it operated for more than four decades until it closed in 1974.

The building reopened some years later as a KwikSave supermarket. But the supermarket closed in July 2007 when KwikSave went into administration. Since then, numerous development plans were put forward for the site, including hotels and restaurants, but none of these came to anything.

The latest plan, approved in February 2017, was for the demolition of the building, the retention of the 1930s façade and the construction of 38 apartments and a shop unit.

Five years ago, in a feature in the Lichfield Gazette [August 2013], I wrote how The Economist had published a news story about the Louxor Palais du Cinema, north-west of the Gare du Nord in Paris, which was once one of the jewels of Egyptian-inspired art deco. It opened in 1921, boasting pillars, papyrus motifs and pharaohs’ heads – and with an auditorium that could seat almost 1,200 people.

In its report The Economist recalled that this was the heyday of silent movies of the sort that The Artist brought back to life. However, after World War II, the cinema fell on hard times, and the Louxor screened its last movie in 1983 before Pathé sold the building to a retail firm that had plans for a store. However, those plans never saw the light of day because the Louxor’s exotic façade had been listed for preservation. From 1987 on, the building stood empty.

Two pressure groups were formed in 2001 to regenerate the Louxor and to raise the tone of the neighbourhood. Paris City Hall bought the site, work began on restoring the Louxor to its original glory, and three years and €25 million later, the Louxor re-opened with Grandmaster, a Chinese martial-arts movie, as its first showing.

At the time, I thought this news must surely offer hope and inspiration to people in Lichfield who were campaigning to save the Regal Cinema.

The Regal Cinema opened in Lichfield on 18 July 1932 with Maisie Gay in The Old Man and Shirley Dale in The Beggar Student. It was designed by the Birmingham-based architect Harold Seymour Scott (1883-1946), who was also a director of the independent operating company.

Scott designed many cinemas in the Midlands in the Art Deco style in the 1920s and 1930s, including the Oak in Sell Oak and the Piccadilly in Sparkhill. But most of these have been demolished or destroyed in fires in recent years, and until last week the Regal in Lichfield was one of the few still standing.

Like the Louxor in Paris, the external and internal styles of the Regal were described as a ‘delicate’ Egyptian, Art Deco style. There was seating in the auditorium for 1,300 people, with 1,000 people in the stalls and another 300 in the circle. The proscenium was 40 ft wide, and the cinema also had its own café.

By November 1932, the cinema had been leased to the County Cinemas chain. It was taken over briefly by the Oscar Deutsch chain of Odeon Theatres Ltd in September 1939, but it was back in the hands of the original independent owners by around 1941.

In August 1943, it was taken over by the Associated British Cinemas (ABC), and this chain operated the Regal Cinema until July 1969. The Star Cinemas chain then took over. Part-time bingo was introduced on several nights a week, and on 10 July 1974 the Regal Cinema screened its final film, Bruce Lee in The Big Boss. The Regal then became the Star Bingo Club.

The building was sold in the late 1970s, and became a KwikSave supermarket, with a snooker club in the former café area.

By 2008, the building was ‘For Sale’ or ‘To Let’ for leisure use. Proposals to demolish the auditorium and to build a hotel on the site, retaining the Regal Cinema’s façade as the entrance, were put forward in February 2010.

Planning consent was granted for the partial demolition and new build of the premises to create a bar and restaurant and a 104-bedroom hotel, with associated facilities. However, in the years since then, no work was carried out on the proposed hotel, and the vacant building continued to deteriorate.

In 2012, Anna Coley had started a Facebook page, ‘Restore the Regal Cinema, Lichfield!’ Around the same time, Adam Bradley organised a petition for the restoration of the Regal Cinema ‘to its former glory.’ By the time the petition closed, it had been signed by more than 80 people.

At the time, Lichfield District Council pointed out that ‘planning permission has been granted for a new cinema as part of the new Friarsgate Scheme, which should satisfy the demand for a cinema in the local area.’

However, the Friarsgate Scheme collapsed last month. Nor was the argument ever simply about the need for a cinema for Lichfield and the surrounding catchment area. It was also about the conservation of a unique and beautiful building that has been part of Lichfield’s architectural heritage for almost a century.

Despite uncertainty about the future of the Regal, it was included by the historian and journalist Joss Musgrove-Knibb, editor of CityLife Lichfield as No 21 in her indispensable book, Lichfield in 50 Buildings (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Amberley, 2016), with a photograph by her husband, Carl Knibb.

If this was a Tudor-era cinema in Bore Street, a Georgian-era cinema in Bird Street, or a Victorian-era cinema in Beacon Street, the case for its preservation would have been quite clear. Why is art deco architecture less valued because it only dates from the 1930s?

The blogger Brownhills Bob has pointed out that the Regal was the only Art Deco building left standing in Lichfield since the Robin Hood on the corner of Saint John Street and Frog Lane was demolished. It was also built in the 1930s, replacing an earlier pub dating back to the 1790s. In his book on The Old Pubs of Lichfield (2001/2007), John Shaw recalled the names changes it went through, including City Gate, City Frog and Funky Frog, before being demolished in October 2000 to make way for new apartments on the site.

Part of the Art Deco Burton building at 26 Market Street dates from about 1938, when the foundation stones were laid, but the ground floor has since been replaced with later shop-fronts.

Lichfield Film is the brainchild of Lucy Beth, who told the Lichfield People website: ‘The lack of cinema in Lichfield is something which is constantly discussed … Lichfield Film aims to bring a relaxed cinematic experience to the city.’

Two films – The Greatest Showman and Pretty Woman – are being screened at a pop-up, open-air cinema in Beacon Park next month [10 and 11 August 2018]. But, while the former Civic Hall frequently shows films and movies are occasionally billed as part of the Lichfield Festival, the city has remainedwithout a permanent cinema since the Regal closed.

Bringing back rich pickings from the bookshops in Lichfield

The fruits of browsing in the bookshops of Lichfield this week (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

When I was speaking at Lichfield Civic Society on Tuesday evening, I mentioned in an aside how missed the former Staffs Bookshop, which was my favourite second-hand bookshop in Lichfield until its demise a few years ago.

But before I left Lichfield, I spent time in the second-hand book sections in the Oxfam shop in Market Street, the antiquarian bookshelves in the Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum on the corner of Market Street and Breadmarket Street, opposite the Market Square, and in the new and second-hand book sections in the Cathedral Shop in the Cathedral Close.

If there is a downside to travelling on Ryanair between Birmingham and Dublin, it is not being able to bring back as many books as my eyes covet in my cabin baggage. But some of the books I brought back this week include the Staffordshire volume of the Domesday Book series published by Phillimore in the 1970s, an eccentric but delectable book on architecture by John Betjeman, a collection of poems by Odysseus Elytis, and a new book by Keith Ward challenging fundamentalist readings of the Gospels.

In the 1970s, Phillimore of Chichester published a series of books on the Domesday Book arranged by the ancient counties or shires, which had changed little until 1974. The series, edited by John Morris, aimed to make these fundamental sources for local history more widely available, giving the original text and a new translation.

The Domesday Book was a statistical survey of England in 1086, including a census of the population and productive resources, their value and who held them. It was unmatched in Europe for centuries. The Staffordshire volume, published in 1976, was edited from a draft translation prepared by Alison Hawkins and Alex Rumble.

Although Comberford is not recorded in the Domesday Book, there are interesting entries for Wigginton, the manor that then included Comberford, and, of course for Lichfield and Tamworth, as well as other places I have written about in recent years or that are linked to the Comberford family, including Wolseley, Weeford, Rugeley, Penkridge and Wednesbury.

Centuries later, the Comberford family would claim the lordship of the Staffordshire half of Tamworth, and I see that at the time of the Domesday Book the Manor of Wigetone or Wigginton included two hides, land for six ploughs, eight villagers, one slave, one smallholder and ‘4 burgesses in Tamworth.’ They had six ploughs between them, and a meadow six furlongs in length and two furlongs long.

The value of Wigginton before 1066 was 30 shillings, but at time of the Domesday Book it had risen to £4.

As I referred on Tuesday evening to John Betjeman’s assessment of the Wyatts of Weeford, it was interesting to pick up a a rare copy of his exotically titled Ghastly Good Taste, or, a depressing story of the Rise and Fall of English Architecture (London: Chapman and Hall, 1933).

Betjeman was passionate about architecture, ‘preferring all centuries to my own.’ This was his first prose work, and in it he vigorously defends his love of Victorian and Edwardian architecture, considered deeply unfashionable at the time. With savage humour, he attacks both notions of Modernism and unthinking antiquarianism.

A type of family tree of architecture drafted by Betjeman presents his chart of the growth of ‘Good Taste’, descending from Victorian Architecture through the ‘Mainly Domestic’ and the ‘Mainly Public’ to ‘the Deep Pit of Speculative Building.’ A quick glance gives an immediate impression of Betjeman’s contempt of ‘Sham Tudor Revival,’ Maida Vale, Garden Cities such as Bournville, Welwyn and Port Sunlight, Baptist churches and ‘large pseudo-classical offices’ and ‘pseudo-modern factories with Egyptian motives.’

Still in place at the back of the copy I bought is its one illustration, a 40-inch long drawing by Peter Fleetwood-Hesketh, an exquisite work of draughtsmanship depicting ‘The Street of Taste or the March of English art down the ages.’ A note adds with almost schoolboy-humour: ‘A close and comparative study of lamp posts, traffic and advertisements in this chart will enlighten the reader still further.’

I should not have been surprised in Lichfield to come across Odysseus Elytis, Selected Poems, chosen and introduced by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard (Penguin 1981).

Two years before this edition was published, Odysseus Elytis (1911-1996) received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1979, and this collection is drawn from all periods of his long and distinguished career, marked by his concerns for freedom and creativeness.

Odysseus Elytis was born in Iraklion in Crete and lived in exile in Paris during the colonels’ regime in Greece. His landmark work, Axion Esti (Το Άξιον Εστί, 1959), inspired by the Greek Orthodox liturgy, was set to music by Mikis Theodorakis as an oratorio, and became an anthem against injustice and for resistance sung by all Greeks. He died in Athens in 1996.

The Revd Keith Ward is an Anglican priest, a former Dean of Trinity Hall, Cambridge (1975-1983), a former Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford (1991-2004) and now a Professorial Research Fellow at Heythrop College, London. He has 40 or more books to his name, and Love is His Meaning: understanding the teaching of Jesus (London: SPCK) was published last year (2017).

The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has said that Keith Ward ‘makes complex matters readily accessible.’

In this book, he explores the different figures of speech and images used by Jesus and finds they are all ways of expressing and evoking the self-giving love of God, manifested supremely in the life of Christ.

Putting aside what he regards as literalist, authoritarian, legalistic, judgmental and divisive presentations of Jesus’ teaching, Keith Ward argues that what remains is the Gospel of a divine love – a love stronger than death and the only power he believes can and will redeem our disordered world.

And of course, in the bookshops in Lichfield, I also picked up the current edition of the colourful monthly magazine CityLife In Lichfield, edited by Joss Musgrove Knibb.

The latest edition includes reports on ‘Consequence of War,’ the current exhibition in Lichfield Cathedral, a glimpse inside the ‘hidden spaces’ of the Tudor of Lichfield, and a photo-feature on ‘A Window on the Past’ and the local history and Facebook group, ‘You’re probably from Lichfield, Staffs if …’ – as well as mentioning my lecture last Tuesday on the Wyatts of Weeford.

A lecture in Lichfield on the Wyatt family

The current edition of the monthly magazine CityLife In Lichfield [April 2018] includes the following listing on page 49 in the guide to what’s on in Lichfield this month:

Tuesday 24th April
Lichfield Civic Society Meeting 7.45 p.m. Speaker Patrick Comerford on The Wyatt Family of Weeford. The Lichfield Room, Wade Street Church Community Hall, Frog Lane, Lichfield, WS13 6HS. Admission is free to members and students. Non-members are always welcome, £3 at the door.

Philip Larkin’s place in Poets’ Corner and in the life of Lichfield

33 Cherry Orchard, Lichfield … the Larkin family moved here in 1940 during the Coventry Blitz (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

21 Tamworth Street, Lichfield … a former a home of the Larkin family once stood on the site of the Whippet Inn (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The poet Philip Larkin was honoured in Westminster Abbey last year [2 December 2016] when his name was added to Poets’ Corner. Andrew Motion has described Philip Larkin (1922-1985) as ‘one of the two or three most important British poets of the last part of the 20th century,’ and Clive James says: ‘Philip Larkin really was the greatest poet of his time.’

Professor Lisa Jardine, Professor of Renaissance Studies at University College, London, who died recently, famously dismissed Larkin as a ‘casual, habitual racist and an easy misogynist’. However, the Dean of Westminster Abbey, the Very Revd Dr John Hall, decided it is ‘the right time’ to honour Larkin, and more recent academic thought, and study of his letters, has suggested that his outdated opinions were often tongue in cheek, and in reality the life he led and his actions did not suggest a man who harboured bigoted opinions. The jury is of course still out.

The stone includes words from one of his best-known poems, An Arundel Tomb (1964): our almost instinct almost true What will survive of us is love.

Peter Young, the former Town Clerk of Lichfield, has spoken on many occasions – to Lichfield Discovered (2014), to Lichfield Speakers’ Corner Group (2012), and to Lichfield Civic Society (2008) – about Larkin and his associations with Lichfield. Peter has joked that Larkin once said of Lichfield: ‘God this place is dull.’ But the three poems he wrote in Lichfield are anything but dull and form an important part of his collected works.

The Larkin family’s links with Lichfield date back to 1757, and many generations of the family are buried in the churchyard at Saint Michael’s Church. Some Larkin families lived at No 49 Tamworth Street and at No 21 Tamworth Street, beside the former Regal Cinema and now the site of the Whippet Inn. Philip Larkin was born in Coventry, the only son and younger child of Eva Larkin and her husband, Sydney Larkin (1884-1948), who was from Lichfield. In October 1940, during the Coventry blitz, Eva and Sydney moved with their family to No 33 Cherry Orchard, Lichfield, the family home of an aunt and uncle. The house was too small for all the Larkins, however, and Philip Larkin moved out to another house in Cherry Orchard where he had a room to himself.

The sign of the Swan on Bird Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The George Hotel, Lichfield ... a favoured drinking place for Philip Larkin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

When Philip Larkin returned to Lichfield from Oxford for a Christmas holiday in 1940-1941, he regularly walked from Cherry Orchard into the centre of Lichfield to drink in the George and the Swan. During this time in Lichfield, he wrote three poems: Christmas 1940, Out in the lane I pause and Ghosts.

In Out in the lane I pause, the poet is standing alone under a starless sky beside a railway bridge. From his invisible vantage point, he contemplates the futures of the ‘Girls and their soldiers from the town’ whose steps he can hear on the steep road towards the shops, and the war-time disappointments to come.

The footbridge over the railway line near Levett’s Fields (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The railway bridge at Upper Saint John Street … was this Larkin’s bridge? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Is this the narrow bridge over the railway line at Rotten Row, or the footbridge at Levett’s Fields? Larkin does not say he is standing under the bridge, although if he is unseen, then it is more likely that this is the railway bridge at Upper Saint John Street, close to the west end of Cherry Orchard. He would have passed under this bridge on his way to the George Hotel and the Swan on Bird Street.

Larkin wrote this poem on the nights of 18 and 19 December 1940, and included it in a letter to his school friend, James Ballard Sutton (1921-1997), on 20 December, along with two other poems, Christmas 1940 and Ghosts, written in Lichfield on the night of 19 December 1940.

Peter Young has suggested that Larkin may have referred to the Gazebo on Borrowcrop Hill in Christmas 1940, and that in Ghosts he is referring to the ghost story of the White Lady at the Swan on Bird Street, once the oldest pub in Lichfield.

Although he sent these three poems to his friend Jim Sutton, Larkin’s Lichfield poems were never published in his own lifetime. They were first published in 1992 in Selected Letters of Philip Larkin, 1940-1985, edited by Anthony Thwaite. They were included in 2005 by AT Tolley in Philip Larkin: Early Poems and Juvenalia, and more recently they were included by Archie Burnett in Philip Larkin: The Complete Poems (2014).

In 1977, the ashes of Philip Larkin’s mother, Eva, were buried in Saint Michael’s Churchyard, and although the poet is buried at Cottingham, near Hull, both Eva and Sydney Larkin are named on tablets among the raised stones in Saint Michael’s. Despite his well-known line in ‘This Be The Verse’ about parents – They f**k you up, your mum and dad’ – the poet visited the graves regularly, he witnessed his mother’s ashes being buried there in 1977, and he once asked for a plan of the churchyard. He died in 1985.

‘If only that so many dead lie round’ … members of the Larkin family are buried at Saint Michael’s Churchyard, Lichfield, and Philip Larkin’s parents are named on tablets (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The narrow bridge over the railway line near Saint Michael’s Churchyard in Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

No 49 Tamworth Street, Lichfield … once a home of the Larkin family (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford has strong family links with Lichfield, and returns regularly. A former journalist, he is an Anglican priest living in Ireland and is a theology professor.

Bibliography and Sources:

Archie Burnett (ed), Philip Larkin: The Complete Poems (2012/2014); Lorna Bushell, ‘Philip Larkin,’ report of Peter Young’s address to Lichfield Civic Society, May 2008; ‘Town clerk hanging up his wig after 28 years in key role at heart of city,’ news report, Lichfield Mercury, 21 August 2015; Anthony Thwaite (ed), Philip Larkin: Collected Poems (1988/2003); AT Tolley (ed), Philip Larkin: Early Poems and Juvenilia (2005).

This two-page feature is published in ‘Citylife In Lichfield,’ March 2017 (No 13), pp 38-39.