The Chetwynd divorce trial that was a society sensation and scandal beyond Lichfield and Staffordshire in the 1860s

Longdon Hall, between Lichfield and Rugeley … at the centre of a sensational divorce case in 1864-1865 (Photograph: Longdon Hall School)

Patrick Comerford

With my recent return visits to Rugeley, Brereton, Stafford, Wolseley, Lichfield, Tamworth and other parts of Staffordshire, I have written about the Chetwynd family, the supposed murder by Dorothy Chetwynd of Sir Walter Smyth, the elderly husband who was three times her age, and the complete lack of historical evidence or primary sources for the stories in local lore of that murder or of Dorothy’s alleged execution by being burned at the stake.

Those stories of the Chetwynd family also led me to further genealogical and historical research into other family stories, and I came across stories of one branch of the Chetwynd family in Rugeley who were direct descendants of the Comberford family of Comberford Hall and the Moat House on Lichfield Street, Tamworth.

This branch of the Chetwynd family included another Dorothy Chetwynd who was a nun in Bruges, a 17th century; a 17th century MP for Stafford; and an 18th century MP for Lichfield who ran up heavy debts and whose funeral was delayed for weeks by his creditors.

Another branch of the Talbot family were given the title Earl Talbot, donated land for Saint Michael’s Church in Brereton, and gave their name to many places in the Rugeley area, including the Talbot Arms, associated with the ‘Poisoner of Rugeley’ William Palmer. After one Earl Tabot also became Earl of Shrewsbury, the pub became the Shrewsbury Arms, and is now known as ‘The Shrew’.

When I was writing about these stories of the Chetwynd and Talbot families, I referred to another marriage involving the Chetwynd and Talbot families that resulted in a sensational divorce case in 1865, and promised then to tell that story another evening.

William Henry Chetwynd (1811-1890) is remembered as one of the parties in the sensational Chetwynd v Chetwynd divorce case in 1864-1865, a case that highlighted Victorian attitudes to marriage, divorce, morals scandal, women’s rights and roles, children’s protection and family law.

William lived at Longdon Hall, halfway between Lichfield and Rugeley, where his income came from his family’s large landed estates and farms and from horse trading. The family estates were centred on Brocton Hall, their ancestral seat with 700 acres in Staffordshire, but also included Grendon Hall in Warwickshire, and the Bishton Hall estate inherited through the Sparrow family.

William was born on 17 September 1811 at Brocton Hall, Staffordshire, the family seat of the Chetwynd baronets. He was the second son of Sir George Chetwynd (1783-1850), 2nd baronet, and his wife Hannah Maria Sparrow of Bishton Hall, Staffordshire. Sir George succeeded to his father’s title and estates in 1824, and William Henry Chetwynd’s elder brother, Sir George Chetwynd (1809-1869), succeeded as the third baronet when their father died in 1850.

William Henry Chetwynd spent his childhood at Brocton Hall, which was largely rebuilt around 1815. He married the aristocratic Blanche Mary Talbot (1836-1898) at Saint George’s Church, Hanover Square, then a fashionable venue for society weddings in London, on 15 August 1854.

Blanche was born on 14 November 1836, a daughter of the Revd Hon Arthur Chetwynd-Talbot (1805-1884) and Harriet Elizabeth Frances Hervey-Aston (1815-1845) and a niece of Henry Chetwynd-Talbot, 18th Earl of Shrewsbury, and a granddaughter of Charles Talbot, 2nd Earl Talbot. She was baptised on 4 January 1837 in Ingestre by her father, who was the Rector of Ingestre, and later Rector of Church Eaton and a rural dean in the Diocese of Lichfield. Blanche and William were distantly related: a distant ancestor, Charles Talbot (1685-1737) had married Catherine Chetwynd, and inherited the estates of the Ingestre branch of the Chetwynd family.

William Henry Chetwynd and Blanche Mary Talbot were married in Saint George’s Church, Hanover Square, London, on 15 August 1854 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

At the time of their wedding, William was 42 and Blanche was 17, an age difference of 25 years. William later alleged that at the time of their marriage Blanche was two months pregnant by another man. He claimed in court during their divorce hearings that he knew this, but that he had gone ahead with the wedding regardless, claiming he had saved her from social disgrace.

Despite these repeated allegations, I have found no records of a child born within seven months of their marriage, although they were the parents of two children:

1, Florence Chetwynd (1856-1936), born in February 1856. She married her distant cousin Lord Berkeley Charles Sydney Paget, a son of Henry Paget 2nd Marquess Anglesey, on 5 June 1877.

2, Arthur Chetwynd (1857-1926), born on 22 July 1857, died on 15 August 1926.

As their relationship deteriorated , there were allegations of mutual infidelity, cruelty and financial mismanagement, exacerbated by Blanche’s secret decision to become a Roman Catholicism in 1862 and her independent dealings in horses and loans.

In December 1864, Blanche petitioned the Divorce Court for the dissolution of their marriage on grounds of her husband’s adultery with servants and cruelty, including claims that he forced her to perform menial tasks, used abusive language, and ill-treated animals and children in her presence.

William denied the charges and filed a recriminatory suit, accusing her of adultery with a prominent barrister Henry Matthews and a theology student named Nichols. The only evidence for these alleged infidelities were entries in her private diary revealing intimate feelings toward Matthews and criticisms of her husband.

Due to its complexity and the Christmas season, the trial lasted for many days, and because of its lurid details it attracted widespread press coverage. The evidence included anonymous insulting letters written by William Chetwynd and intercepted correspondence.

The judgment, delivered in Chetwynd v Chetwynd (1865), granted the divorce despite recrimination, finding William Chetwynd guilty of adultery and Blanche Chetwynd guilty of adultery based on the entries in her diary. In a landmark decision on child welfare, the court deemed both parents unfit and awarded custody of the children to third parties, reflecting shift in the Victorian era towards prioritising minors' moral protection over parental rights.

The divorce case heard how Blanche Chetwynd slept on the stairs or was forced to flee Longdon Hall

The case heard how early discord was reflected in petty arguments, such as a dispute in 1854 over Blanche's supposed tardiness at breakfast and another following her late return from a hunt at Beaudesert, where Chetwynd accused her of disrespecting him and suggested she find another place to live.

The rift to deepened by the late 1850s, with further financial pressures. Blanche was accumulating debts over £2,000 against William’s annual income of £1,200 through buying and selling horses at fairs, often borrowing from dealers at high interest rates secured by her family connections.

Rumours of mutual infidelities were supported by periods of separation and temporary relocation, including Blanche’s secretive departure from Longdon Hall. A pivotal escalation came in 1862, when Blanche became a Roman Catholic without her husband’s knowledge. She fled in distress to the home of the Revd James William Knight (1820-1878), Headmaster of Lichfield Grammar School (1859-1866).

Henry John Chetwynd-Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury and Earl Talbot … negotiations on behalf of the Talbot and Shrewsbury interests facilitated a brief reconciliation

Negotiations involving her family solicitor, Mr Nicholson, acting for the Talbot and Shrewsbury interests, facilitated a brief reconciliation, but trust was eroded once more by anonymous harassing letters, later shown to have been written by William. Blanche finally filed for divorce in late 1864 on grounds of her husband’s alleged adultery and cruelty. William countered with claims of his wife’s infidelity.

The case of Chetwynd v Chetwynd began in late 1864 in the Divorce Court, presided over by Sir James Wilde, and continued into February 1865. Evidence was heard over several days, drawing extensive media attention for their salacious details.

Blanche claimed her husband had been guilty of great cruelty, had taught their children to spit in her face and to call her foul names, had locked her out of the house or forced her to sleep on the stairs, threatened her with a horsewhip and a pitchfork, had been guilty of repeated acts of adultery with his female servants and had lived with the children’s governess, Helen Booth.

Servants who were called to court alleged William’s repeated adultery with female domestic staff at Longdon Hall, as well as acts of cruelty such as teaching the children to insult their mother and spit in her face, and locking her out of the house at night.

The witnesses who gave evidence on her behalf included the Revd James Knight, a family acquaintance and master of the Grammar School, Lichfield. He had known Blanche since she was a child and William since 1856. Knight recalled Blanche’s distressed state during visits to his home in 1863. She sought safety at night in Knight’s house in Lichfield before returning to Longdon Hall. But she returned to Lichfield to seek safety in Knight’s home a second time.

Detectives and hotel staff corroborated William’s extramarital liaisons, detailing a pattern of infidelity and domestic abuse.

William’s defence, was led by Sir Henry Hawkins, a prominent barrister and later a controversial judge. William sought to bar the divorce under the doctrine of recrimination. When he took the stand, he refuted allegations of violence, cruelty and neglect and claimed his wife had left home without notice for religious reasons and managed independent horse dealings that incurred debts exceeding his annual income.

He alleged Blanche was pregnant when they married, and that he was not the father of the child but that he ‘removed her from disgrace’. Excerpts from Blanche’s private diary were read into evidence, revealing her intimate feelings for Henry Matthews, a family friend. These including passages on unrequited love, passionate encounters, and moral turmoil, which Hawkins argued demonstrated her own adulterous intent.

Witnesses, including hotel proprietors, placed Blanche with Matthews, and separately with Nichols, in compromising situations, including sharing a bed at the Falcon Hotel in Birmingham in December 1863.

Cross-examinations highlighted inconsistencies in witness accounts, with William portraying himself as a victim of Blanche’s extravagance. He accused his wife of associating with what he saw as low company, including ‘horse dealers’ and ‘pig jobbers’ at fairs. Part of William’s evidence included claims that his wife had called him ‘Dear Old Billy.’ There was laughter in the court when lines were quoted from a ballad well-known in Staffordshire, ‘The Wednesbury Cock’ but that William had confused with Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians.

The co-respondent in William Chetwynd's counter-petition, Henry Matthews, was implicated through letters and diary entries suggesting improper intimacy, although there was no direct testimony from him.

Despite the mutual accusations, the court found Chetwynd’s adultery proven beyond doubt, while his recriminatory claims against his wife were deemed insufficient to bar relief, as her journal was evidence of intent but not of consummated acts.

On 25 February 1865, Sir James Wilde granted a decree nisi to Blanche, awarding costs against her husband, and ordering alimony payments to Blanche. The court also deemed both parents unfit and awarded custody of their children to third parties, reflecting emerging child welfare principle. They were put in the care of William’s elder brother, Sir George Chetwynd.

The Schoolmaster’s House (left) at the old Grammar School on Saint John Street, Lichfield … it is now the home Lichfield Discovered (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Following the case, William Henry Chetwynd returned to live at Longdon Hall, between Lichfield and Rugeley. There he lived a more secluded lifestyle without his children, and was a Deputy Lieutenant and Justice of the Peace for Staffordshire. He married a second wife, Mary Parkin, on 7 December 1875 at Saint George’s Church, Hanover Square, the same church where William and Blanche were married 21 years earlier. William died at Longdon Hall on 5 July 1890, aged 78, and was buried at Saint Michael and All Angels Church, Colwich, near Longdon Hall.

The Chetwynd case was an early instance where the Divorce Court exercised broad discretion in fault-based proceedings. The finding of mutual culpability led to a rare outcome where neither party was deemed the ‘innocent spouse’, resulting in the denial of custody to both parents and placing their children with third-party guardians, illustrating an emphasis on marital fault extending to parental rights.

The case also reflects the privileges afforded to the upper classes in accessing the divorce court, while families with limited resources often endured marital discord without formal dissolution because of financial barriers. The case highlights entrenched gender and class norms, with women’s private thoughts subject to more rigorous scrutiny and questioning than men’s actions, and reinforcing the patriarchal double standards of the time in family law.

Because of the development of a popular media and cheaper newspapers, the case acquired popular notoriety and was a greater source of gossip not just in Staffordshire, but across the world, compared, for example with another divorce case in the same part of Staffordshire a century earlier, involving Sir William Wolseley who married Ann Whitby in 1752, a sad story I recounted in recent weeks.

Brocton Hall, near Rugeley and Stafford … home to generations of the Chetwynd family of Rugeley

Whatever happened to the principal characters in the Chetwynd divorce drama?

William Chetwynd died at home in Longdon Hall, in 1890, and was buried nearby in Colwich. His property, including Longdon Hall, passed to the children of Blanche and William, Florence and Arthur. Arthur Chetwynd continued to live at Longdon Hall and to manage the estate; Lord Berkeley Paget died at Longdon Hall on 25 November 1913, and Florence died there on 26 May 1936. The family title and Brocton Hall were eventually inherited in 1938 by Arthur’s son, Sir Arthur Henry Talbot Chetwynd (1877-1972).

Blanche never married again, and died on 15 July 1898. Her half-brother, Canon Arthur Henry Chetwynd-Talbot (1855-1927), was later a Prebendary of Lichfield, Provost of Denstone College, Uttoxeter, and the Rector of Edgmond, Newport, Shropshire. Her uncle, Henry John Chetwynd-Talbot (1803-1868), 3rd Earl Talbot, eventually succeeded as 18th Earl of Shrewsbury in 1856, and those titles have continued with his descendants. Those descendants included John George Chetwynd-Talbot (1914-1980), 21st Earl of Shrewsbury and 6th Earl Talbot. He sued for divorce in 1958, but Judge Charles A Collingwood refused the application in 1959, and he did not get a divorce until a subsequent case in 1963.

The Revd James William Knight, the kindly and concerned Master of Lichfield Grammar School who offered Blanche refuge on at least two occasions, was later Sub-Warden of Saint Paul’s College, Stony Stratford (1873-1875). He died on 26 August 1878, at Car-Colston Vicarage, Nottinghamshire. The Schoolmaster’s House at the old Grammar School on Saint John Street, Lichfield, where he lived is now home to the local history group Lichfield Discovered.

William Chetwynd’s counsel, Sir Henry Hawkins (1817-1907), later 1st Baron Brampton, became a controversial judge and was known as a severe ‘hanging judge’. His sisters included Susanna Hawkins who married William Comerford Casey of Cork and Liverpool. He was a cousin of the Revd Edwards Comerford Hawkins (1827-1906), of Saint Bride’s Church, Fleet Street, London, father of the writer Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins, author of The Prisoner of Zenda.

I have yet to identify the theology student or seminarian named as a theology student named simply as Nichols.

The co-respondent, Henry Matthews (1826-1913), was a prominent Roman Catholic and a Conservative politician. Matthews never took the stand at the Chetwynd case, and so it seems ironic that he made his name at the Bar for his examination of witnesses, especially Sir Charles Dilke in a sensational divorce case in 1885. He was MP for Dungarvan, Co Waterford (1868-1874), and later for Birmingham East (1886-1892), and he was the Home Secretary (1886-1892) throughout the Whitechapel Murders, some of which are attributed to Jack the Ripper. He was given the title of 1st Viscount Llandaff in 1895 and died unmarried in 1913 at the age of 87.

The intricate and puzzling details of the Chetwynd and Talbot family trees in Staffordshire and Wexford is a tangled web that continues to fascinate me. The story of how the Chetwynd-Talbot branch of the family in Rugeley and Brereton managed to convince their peers that they were the rightful heirs to the titles of Earl of Shrewsbury, Earl of Waterford and Earl of Wexford is another genealogical riddle that I hope to try to unravel or disentangle on another evening.

Henry Matthews (1826-1913), the co-respondent in William Chetwynd's counter-petition, later become Home Secretary and Viscount Llandaff … he never married

Further Reading:

HE Chetwynd-Stapylton, The Chetwynds of Ingestre, being a history of that family from a very early date (London: Longman & Green, 1892)

The memorial stone in Saint Mary’s Church, Ingestre, for Blanche’s uncle, Henry Chetwynd-Talbot (1803-1868), 18th Earl of Shrewsbury and 3rd Earl Talbot

Is nobody going to come to the rescue of Davidson House in Lichfield before it is lost?

Davidson House, Upper Saint John Street, once the home of one the finest of Lichfield’s architects, has been neglected for over a decade (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

As I was walking up Upper John Street in Lichfield last week, setting out in search of Borrowcop Hill and Borrowcop Gazebo, I stopped once again to look at the sad state of decay and neglect of Davidson House at 67 Upper Saint John Street. This Regency-era house, built ca 1810, is more than 200 years old. It faces a prominent corner at Davidson Road and is just a few metres south of Lichfield City train station, and north of both King Edward VI School and Holy Cross Church.

Back in 2015, I had written about the sad neglect of this fine house, which had once been a museum and, before that, the home of a distinguished Lichfield architect. But in the 10 years since then, the house has decayed even further and lost more of its key architectural features.

According to the local history group, Lichfield Discovered, and the local historian Kate Gomez, this house is part of Lichfield’s ‘at-risk’ heritage. Yet, despite its important place in the heritage of Lichfield, it looks forlorn and abandoned, and is rapidly becoming an eyesore on the landscape of Lichfield.

The windows in this once elegant house are boarded up, the stonework and façade are crumbling, and there is a sad air of abandonment about the whole site.

Davidson House was once the home of the Old Comrades Association of the South Staffordshire Regiment and the collection of the Regimental Museum from 1938 until 1963, when it moved to Whittington. But Davidson House is also of architectural interest because it was once the home of the Lichfield architect Thomas Johnson (1795-1865), who lived there for over 30 years, from 1834 until he died in 1865.

Thomas Johnson trained as a pupil of the Lichfield architect Joseph Potter (1756–1842) and was influenced by his method. Potter, who had a large practice in Staffordshire and the neighbouring counties in the late 18th and early 19th century, lived in Pipehill, south-west of Lichfield, but had his office in Saint John Street.

Apart from restorations to Lichfield Cathedral, Potter’s work included Newton’s College (1800-1802), the Causeway Bridge, Bird Street (1816), Freeford Hall, which he enlarged for William Dyott (1826-1827), and Holy Cross Church, Upper Saint John Street (1835), and his son designed the Guildhall (1846-1848).

By 1814, the Potter practice was run from a house on the north side of Saint John’s Hospital. Later it was continued by his son, Joseph Potter, who died in 1875.

Meanwhile, Thomas Johnson went on to work as a junior partner with the prolific Staffordshire architect James Trubshaw (1777-1853) of Little Haywood, near Colwich. Soon, Johnson married Trubshaw’s eldest daughter, Mary.

Johnson and Potter worked on the nave of Saint Mary’s Church (Church of England) in Uttoxeter in 1828. But a year later, in 1829, Johnson set up his own practice as an architect in Tamworth Street, Lichfield, and he continued to design churches, including the very large Saint James’s in Longton (1832-1834). By 1834, he was living in the house that later became Davidson House in Upper Saint John Street.

The portico of Davidson House and its Tuscan pillars have been removed or vandalised (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Around this time, Johnson fell under the influence of the Cambridge Camden Society, which was strongly influenced by AWN Pugin. The early members included Canon James Thomas Law (1790-1876), a prebendary and chancellor of Lichfield Cathedral and a former Master of Saint John’s Hospital (1821-1826).

Both Law and Johnson were founding members in 1841 of the Lichfield Society for the Encouragement of Ecclesiastical Architecture, and both were active committee members. Canon William Gresley (1801-1876) of Saint Mary’s, a leading Tractarian and former curate of Saint Chad’s, was the first chairman, and the committee met in Canon Law’s house in Market Street. Other committee members included the antiquarian and lawyer, William Salt of Stafford, and the Revd Richard Rawle (1812-1889), who was the Vicar of Tamworth in 1869-1872 and later the Bishop of Trinidad and Tobago (1872-1888).

Johnson also began working on the restoration of Saint Chad’s Church, Lichfield, in 1841, and he did further work there in 1848-1849.

He worked with the London-born architect Sydney Smirke, who also designed the Hinkley family home at Beacon Place, in the controversial restoration of Saint Michael’s Church, Lichfield, in 1842-1843. During that work, the original memorial stone commissioned by Samuel Johnson for his family was removed as Saint Michael’s was repaved, and much of the mediaeval fabric of the church was lost. But Johnson’s restoration work is a remarkable example of the strong influence of Pugin’s ideas on his work, and the historian of Staffordshire Gothic architecture, the Revd Michael J Fisher, says it is a surprisingly god example of Gothic for its time.

Johnson designed Saint Mary’s Church, Great Wyrley, two miles south of Cannock, in the Gothic style in 1844-1845.

Johnson completed his rebuilding of All Saints’ Church, Leigh, two miles off the A522 between Cheadle and Uttoxeter, in 1846. Michael Fisher, in his book Staffordshire and the Gothic Revival, describes this as ‘one of the most remarkable of Staffordshire’s Victorian churches’, and he laments that the importance of this church has not been fully recognised. This work was funded mainly by Richard Bagot of Blithfield, Bishop of Oxford and later Bishop of Bath and Wells, and a former rector of All Saints’.

The bishop’s son, the Revd Lewis Bagot, was the incumbent at the time of Johnson’s rebuilding, while the bishop’s nephew, the Revd Hervey Bagot was Rector of Blithfield and an active member of the Lichfield Society with Johnson. The chancel furnishings and floor tiles at Leigh have been attributed to Pugin and were donated by Herbert Minton, who also donated the reredos.

Johnson was also the architect for Christ Church, Lichfield, which was built in 1846-1847 on Christchurch Lane, just off Walsall Road. The church was designed in the Victorian Gothic Revival style and was built of sandstone quarried in Lichfield. It was consecrated on 26 October 1847 by the Bishop of Lichfield, John Lonsdale.

Christ Church was endowed by Ellen Jane Hinckley, daughter of John Chappel Woodhouse, Dean of Lichfield. She married her third husband, Richard Hinckley, a Lichfield solicitor, in 1835 and they lived in Beacon Place. Ellen had suffered tragic family losses: her first husband was the Revd William Robinson, and they were the parents of two daughters who died in childhood and are commemorated in the memorial known as Chantry’s ‘Sleeping Children’ in Lichfield Cathedral.

Thomas Johnson’s part of the old Grammar School now includes the council chambers of Lichfield District Council (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Johnson’s other works in Lichfield include a wing, school room and front wall built ca 1849 at the former Lichfield Grammar School on Saint John Street.

As I recalled in my posting on Borrowcop Hill yesterday, the school moved south to a site at Borrowcop Lane, off Upper Saint John Street in 1903. Johnson’s part of the old school now includes the council chambers of Lichfield District Council, while other parts of the school are being transformed by Lichfield Discovered since last February.

Johnson also designed the railway bridge crossing Upper Saint John Street which leads trains to and from Lichfield City Station, and which I once described in a feature in the Lichfield Gazette.

The bridge, close to Davidson House, was built in 1849 for the South Staffordshire Railway Company. In his design, Johnson tried to evoke a city gate, with battlements, heraldic decoration, and side towers containing multi-arched pedestrian ways. Bishop Lonsdale, who consecrated Christ Church a few years earlier, and the Bagot family are among the Lichfield notables he singled out for commemoration in the heraldic images on the bridge next to his home in Upper John Street, as well as a depiction of the 16th century seal of Lichfield, drawing on images of the three legendary kings said to have been slain in the third century and buried on Borrowcop Hill.

The Corn Exchange in Conduit Street was designed by Thomas Johnson in a Tudor style (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Corn Exchange in Conduit Street was designed by Johnson in a Tudor style. It was built by a company formed for the purpose and was opened in 1850. The arcaded ground floor was a market hall, and the upper floor, with an octagonal north end, housed the corn exchange. A savings bank in the same style was built at the Bore Street end of the building.

Thomas Johnson of Saint John Street was 70 when he died in 1865, and he was buried at Saint Michael’s on 11 May 1865. He left an estate of less than £5,000 and his will was proved on 18 August. He was succeeded by his son, also Thomas Johnson, and the work of the two sons is sometimes confused.

Davudson House takes its name from Brigadier General Charles Steer Davidson. He donated the building to he South Staffordshire Regimental Museum, which was located in the house from 1938 to 1963.

Davidson House is a three-storey, three-window range house built ca 1810. It is a brick building with ashlar dressings, a hipped slate roof with two large brick stacks, a gable facing, with a front to the left. There is an ashlar plinth, with sill bands and a top modillioned cornice with a blocking course.

The central entrance once had an architrave and an overlight to paired three-panel doors, and there was a porch with slender Tuscan columns. But both the doors, porch and Tuscan pillars have long disappeared through negligence or vandalism or have been purloined.

The bay window to the left had a cornice, while the windows had pilasters, friezes and cornices. A tripartite bay window had colonnettes and 8:12:8-pane sashes, but these too have now been lost. A similar window to the right had brick piers and a central open pediment.

There were two similar tripartite windows on the first floor and these had colonnettes and central open pediments. They flanked a window with an open pediment over a 12-pane sash. The second floor windows had architraves to six-pane sashes that can still be seen.

The worn steps and neglected railings at Davidson House on Upper Saint John Street, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The terrace to the right end has steps to the street level and there are plain iron railings, though these too are sadly neglected.

The street façade has similar details. You can see a high plinth, tripartite windows to ground and first floors, and the plinth to the ground floor has brick piers. At the rear there is a two-storey gabled service range. The right return has a cogged brick cornice and varied fenestration, and at one time the windows inside had shutters, although this is impossible to verify today.

In recent years, Davidson House was divided into offices. But given its past association with one of Lichfield’s architectural giants, it is sad to consider the continuing neglect of this architectural gem.

Without immediate intervention and attention, this part of Lichfield’s architectural heritage is in danger of being beyond restoration and may be lost forever.

The windows of Davidson House are boarded up (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Borrowcop Gazebo and my search for the legends and legendary graves on the highest hill in Lichfield

Borrowcop Gazebo stands at the top of Borrowcop Hill, the highest point in Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

After an afternoon walk along Cross Hand in Lane on the northern fringes of Lichfield a few days ago, I decided to cross to the other side of Lichfield and to search for Borrowcop Hill and the Borrowcop Gazebo. The hill at around 113 metres AOD (above sea level) is the highest point in Lichfield and is shrouded in myth and legend.

I have known Lichfield for 50 or 60 years, to the point that I have felt at home there almost all my life. But this was my first time ever to search for Borrowcop Hill, even though when I first stayed in Lichfield in my teens it was nearby on Birmingham Road.

I knew even then about the legends and the myths surrounding Borrowcop Hill and about its history too. But, somehow, I had never visited the hill or searched for the gazebo. I thought I knew where they were, so I was surprised how difficult it was to find Borrowcop Hill last Friday afternoon, hidden in behind the houses off King’s Hill Road and Borrowcop Lane, both reached from Upper Saint John Street.

Things would have been easier had I gone up King’s Hill Road and found the narrow lane behind King Edward VI School. Instead, I ended up walking aimlessly in the summer heat up and down along Borrowcop Lane and could find no signs pointing to the hill. I might never have found either the hill or the gazebo but for the Google Maps app on my ’phone. Eventually I found a narrow, almost secret, lane off Hillside, running between the back gardens of houses and the school grounds.

Is it any wonder that the gazebo has been described as ‘one of Lichfield’s little know gems’? Yet its hilltop location offers views on clear days across Lichfield and out towards the Black Country and Charnwood Forest.

Borrowcop Gazebo is hidden among the trees at the top of Borrowcop Hill (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Local legend in Lichfield has it that three British kings were slain on there by the Romans in the year 288 and that they were buried in a ‘barrow’ on the hilltop. Other variations of the story say it is the traditional site of the graves of three Christian kings who were killed in battle with King Penda in 288.

In its earliest written forms, the name Borrowcop appears as ‘Burwey’ or ‘Burwhay’, incorporating the Old English element burh, suggesting a fortified place or that there may have been an Anglo-Saxon fortification on the site, according to David Horovitz in his study of Staffordshire placenames.

A Historic Character Assessment or Extensive Urban Survey of Lichfield for Staffordshire County Council in 2011 said excavations carried out by antiquarians on Borrowcop Hill in earlier centuries allegedly recovered burnt bone from the mound. However, more recent archaeological investigations have so far failed to recover any evidence for human activity’.

Although most historians now accept the story is a myth without historical foundation, it inspired for the City Seal adopted by Lichfield in 1549. The city seal became part of a large relief on the façade of the Guildhall, but it was later moved first to the Museum Gardens and then to the herbaceous borders in Beacon Park.

The legend of slain kings buried on Borrowcop Hill was perpetuated in the Lichfield City Seal, still seen on the railway bridge on Saint John Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

A version of the seal is among the heraldic symbols decorating the railway bridge on Saint John Street, close to Lichfield City station, and the three golden crowns of the legendary kings were later incorporated into the emblems of Saxon Hill Academy.

The gazebo was built on the hill in 1804-1805, paid for by public subscription. Before that, buildings on the site included a late 17th century structure called the Temple, built in 1694, the ‘Temple’ of 1694, a summer-house, an arbour in the 1720s, an ‘observation turret’ and a gun store, probably built ca 1750.

There are accounts of Erasmus Darwin recovering bits of burnt bone on the hill in the 18th century. At times of celebrations and at times of threatened invasion, beacons were lit on top of the hill.

In a talk organised by Lichfield Discovered in 2014 on Philip Larkin’s connections with Lichfield, Peter Young, the former Town Clerk of Lichfield, said that Larkin wrote three poems when he was staying with relatives at Cherry Orchard in 1940-1941. Young suggested the arched field in ‘Christmas 1940’ refers to Borrowcop Hill.

When 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 that time in Lichfield, he wrote three poems: ‘Christmas 1940’, ‘Out in the lane I pause’ and ‘Ghosts’.

Writing about ‘Christmas 1940’, Larkin told Jim Sutton: ‘I scribbled this in a coma at about 11.45 p.m. last night. The only thing is that its impulse is not purely negative – except for the last 2 lines, where I break off into mumblings of dotage.’

This poem was never published during Larkin’s own lifetime. It was first published in 1992 in Selected Letters of Philip Larkin, 1940-1985, edited by Anthony Thwaite (p 8). It was included in 2005 by AT Tolley in Philip Larkin: Early Poems and Juvenalia (p 135), and more recently it is included by Archie Burnett in Philip Larkin: The Complete Poems (p 171).

The Gazebo was in poor condition by 1963. John Sanders, then Principal of the School of Art and chair of a Lichfield Study Group for the preservation of buildings of interest, announced the group’s intention to enter a Civic Trust ‘improvement competition,’ hoping for a grant of £450.

Meanwhile, the grammar school, which dates from 1495, had moved to the area from Saint John Street in 1903, and it merged with the adjacent King’s Hill secondary modern school in 1971 to become King Edward VI School. Another school in the area, evocatively named Saxon Hill, opened in 1979.

Borrowcop Gazebo was restored in 1985 thanks to the persistence of Derrick Duval (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The gazebo is a square pavilion built of brick with two round arches no each side, a pyramidal tile roof and a ball finial on roof. The arches have square brick piers and pilasters, and narrow imposts on the proud brick arches. Inside, there is a spine wall with a on bench to each side and embossed-tile paving, and renewed roof timbers.

The condition of the gazebo was a cause of concern once again in 1981, when Derrick Duval, an architect who was then a newly elected city councillor (1980-1995), pushed for its restoration. He was the Mayor of Lichfield in 1982, I stayed in his home on Dam Street two or three times around 2009-2011, and he died on 16 December 2022.

Derrick’s dream for the gazebo was eventually achieved in 1985 through the Government’s Community Programme. Borrowcop Gazebo is now owned and maintained by Lichfield City Council.

Borrowcop Hill was once the venue for a Good Friday fair after the more sombre services in the cathedral. The hill was a place for walks and other entertainment, and until the late 20th century children enjoyed tobogganing and skiing down the slopes in the snow at winter.

The urban survey of Lichfield in 2011 pointed out the potential for archaeological deposits to survive at Borrowcop Hill and associated with the line of the Roman Road.

But, as I found on Friday afternoon, it is no longer possible to walk across fields from Cherry Orchard to Borrowcop, as Philip Larkin must have done 85 years ago. Now high railings have enclosed the school field and access to the Gazebo today is only possible along an enclosed, marrow footpath between King’s Hill Road and facing Minor’s Hill.

A hidden narrow pathway off King’s Hill Road leading to Borrowcop Hill (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Christmas 1940, by Philip Larkin

‘High on arched field I stand
Alone: the night is full of stars:
Enormous over tree and farm
The night extends,
And looks down equally to all on earth.

‘So I return their look; and laugh
To see as them my living stars
Flung from east to west across
A windless gulf?

– So much to say that I have never said,
Or ever could.’

‘High on arched field I stand / Alone’ (Philip Larkin) … a lone carved owl perched on books beneath the gazebo on Borrowcop Hill (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Moat House in Lichfield, and mulling over links with the Moat House on Lichfield Street, Tamworth

Moat House at the north end of Bird Street, Lichfield … its name recalls the story of the mediaeval moat around the Cathedral Close (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

I once suggested bringing together the two main local history groups in Lichfield and Tamworth – Lichfield Discovered and the Tamworth and District Society – for shared walking tours of Lichfield Street in Tamworth and Tamworth Street in Lichfield.

Nothing has come of these proposals – yet. But each time I pass the Moat House on Beacon Street in Lichfield, close to Lichfield Cathedral, as I did earlier this thing, I cannot but fail to impishly think of linking it with the Moat House, the former Comberford family home on Lichfield Street in Tamworth.

Moat House and Langton House are two neighbouring Georgian houses at the north end of Bird Street, Lichfield, between the Garden of Remembrance and the entrance to the Cathedral Close. They face the site of the former childhood home of David Garrick, close to the former museum and library. Both are reminders in their names alone of the moat that protected the cathedral in the Middle Ages and of the bishops who built and maintained it.

The Cathedral Close in Lichfield is almost an island onto itself, covering 16 acres and surrounded by a ditch on three sides, with and Minister Pool on the fourth, south side.

According to a 14th century Lichfield chronicler, Roger de Clinton, Bishop of Lichfield (1129-1148), surrounded the Cathedral Close in the early 12th century with a ditch and he fortified the castle or castrum of Lichfield. His work may have included building a wall and gates, strengthening the Cathedral Close.

About a century later, Walter Langton, one of his successors as Bishop of Lichfield (1296-1321), built a new palace in the north-east corner of the Cathedral Close, and he converted a canonical house in the north-west corner into a common residence for the vicars choral.

However, there is no evidence that the ditch around the Close was ever filled with water, and it was dry at the end of the 16th century.

The names of both the Moat House and Langton House, a pair of semi-detached houses on the east side at the north end of Bird Street, recall the work of these two bishops.

Moat House was built on Bird Street in the mid-18th century, probably around 1750, by Thomas Ames, a Lichfield-based builder, in the south-west part of the Close ditch.

Moat House is a Grade II listed building, along with the attached wall to the left and an outbuilding to the rear.

The house is built in the Georgian style in brick with, ashlar dressings, a hipped tile roof and brick stacks. It has a double-depth plan, two storeys with an attic, a four-window range, and a top cornice.

The segmental-headed entrance to the left of centre has a doorcase with an architrave and consoled pediment, with an enriched radial-bar fanlight over a six-panel door.

The windows have sills and rubbed brick flat arches with keys over 12-pane sashes, and there are hipped dormers with casements. The left return has two brick platt bands. There is a 20th century wing to the left of the segmental-headed window with a pegged cross-casement that has leaded glazing.

The rear of Moat House has two coped gables and an attached small gabled outbuilding to the right. There are varied window arrangements, including a 19th century canted bay window.

It is worth looking for the two 18th century rainwater heads with downspouts., and for the stone-coped wall to the left with its a segmental-headed entrance with a plank door.

In the early 19th century, this house was home to Henry Chinn, a lawyer who founded a long-lived legal practice in Lichfield. Henry Chinn was articled as a clerk to William Jackson, a proctor, in 1798. Later that year, he transferred to George Hand of Beacon Place. Hand died childless in 1806, and Chinn continued the practice, admitting his son Thomas in 1816.

The Chinns used Langton House, the house next door to Moat House in Beacon Street, as their offices. The practice survived in the family until the death of Alan Chinn in 1919.

Today, Moat House is divided into offices that are inter-connected with Langton House, on the south side. Like Moat House, Langton House was built in the mid-18th century, probably around 1775, and is also a Grade II building. It was built in the Georgian style as a three-storey house, with a double-depth plan, a four-window range and a top cornice. It is built in brick with ashlar dressings, and it has a hipped tile roof with brick stacks.

There is a segmental-headed entrance to the right of the centre that has a doorcase with an architrave and a consoled pediment, and a radial-bar fanlight over paired three-panel doors. The windows have sills and rubbed brick flat arches over 12-pane sashes, and six-pane sashes on the second floor.

The three-window right return has similar windows over a single-storey wing, with a 12-pane sash window and a plastered return with an end stack. At the rear of the house there is an interesting round-headed stair window.

Although these neighbouring houses now form one block of inter-connected offices, they are a reminder of the once elegant Georgian townhouses that were built as family homes in Lichfield in the 18th century.

Langton House was built in the mid-18th century, probably around 1775, and is also a Grade II building (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

‘Under an oak, in stormy weather, I joined this rogue and whore together’: Jonathan Swift’s wedding in Lichfield

Comberford Hall glimpsed from the train between Tamworth and Lichfield on a foggy morning yesterday … where was the oak tree near Lichfield where Dean Jonathan Swift conducted a wedding? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

When I travel on the train between Tamworth and Lichfield, I take familial pleasure in stretching my neck to catch a swift glance of Comberford Hall, in the rich rolling green Staffordshire countryside, surrounding by mature, spreading trees.

I wondered as passed Comberford Hall on a foggy morning yesterday about a curious account by Dean Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) of a visit to Lichfield almost 300 years ago, when he recalls a clandestine wedding he conducted while he was sheltering from the rain beneath the branches of a spreading tree.

Local lore now associates the story with the name of Shire Oak, near Walsall. But I sometimes wonder whether Swift might instead have conducted that hasty wedding near Lichfield, beneath a spreading oak tree between Tamworth and Lichfield.

Or, as he was travelling on from Lichfield to Chester, could Swift’s wedding have taken place beneath one of the spreading trees along Cross in Hand, on the north-west fringes of Lichfield, once the opening stage of the ancient pilgrim route between Lichfield and Chester, a journey of 142 km (88 miles)?

The last oak of Shire Oak remembered in the pub signs at the Shire Oak, on the corner of Lichfield Street and Chester Street, near Walsall (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Jonathan Swift never married, despite persistent speculation about whether he secretly married Esther Johnson (‘Stella’) in 1716. He also had an interesting relationship with Esther Vanhomrigh (‘Vanessa’), but they never married either, and she died in 1723.

Three years later, in March 1726, the Dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral travelled from Dublin to London to deliver the manuscript of Gulliver’s Travels to his publisher, Benjamin Motte. Motte recognised a best-seller but also realised this was an anti-Whig satire and risked prosecution. Swift may have had the manuscript copied so his handwriting could not be used as evidence in any prosecution.

Motte grudgingly gave Swift only £200, and cut, edited or altered many passages and added other material. He used five printing houses to speed production and to avoid piracy, and the first edition of Gulliver’s Travels was published in two volumes on 28 October 1726. By then Swift was back in Dublin. On the return journey, he travelled on foot or on horse from London back to Chester.

Swift later recounted how he stopped near Lichfield on that return journey and sought shelter from what he described as ‘a summer tempest’ under a large oak by the road. I imagine a Swift looking diminutive beneath the Lichfield oak, like Gulliver in Brobdingnag, the land of giants.

While he was there, a man and a pregnant woman joined him, also seeking shelter from the rain under the same spreading tree. Swift recalled the incident later in a letter to his friend Alexander Pope, and how he engaged the pair in conversation. He found they were on their way to Lichfield to be married, but it was obvious the woman was heavily pregnant and that little time was left for a wedding to take place. Every drop of rain was the loss of yet another fretful moment.

The dean realised no time should be lost. He proposed to save the couple the rest of their journey to Lichfield and offered to marry them there and then. His offer was gladly accepted, the ceremony was performed and as the rains cleared and the skies brightened, the newly-weds were about to set off home. But as they were about to leave, the groom realised they needed a certificate to convince their families that they had been married legally and had a church wedding.

When he asked the dean for paper confirmation of the nuptial legalities, Swift pulled out some crumpled paper and a pen, and wrote wittily:

Under an oak, in stormy weather,
I joined this rogue and whore together;
And none but he who rules the thunder
Can put this rogue and whore asunder.

The monument to Jonathan Swift in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

From Lichfield, Swift travelled on to Chester, and from there to Holyhead to board a boat back to Dublin. His Thoughts on various subjects, also published in 1726, Swift mused again on marriage: ‘Matrimony has many children; Repentance, Discord, Poverty, Jealousy, Sickness, Spleen, Loathing, &c.’

Swift was back in England one more time in 1727, and again stayed with Alexander Pope. The visit was cut short when Swift received the news that Esther Johnson was dying and rushed back home to be with her. She died on 28 January 1728, though Swift was not present at her death and was too ill to attend her funeral in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. He died on 19 October 1745.

The Shire Oak area near Walsall is named after an ancient tree that was said to have been the sole survivor of the original Walsall Wood. The oak stood on the London to Chester road, marking the boundary between Walsall and Shenstone. Local legend there says that this was the oak where Swift had sheltered and had married the couple on their way to Lichfield. All that now remains of that oak is a piece preserved with a plaque at Shire Oak School

The Shire Oak public house stands at the corner of Lichfield Road and Chester Road in Walsall. The Royal Oak off Chester Road closed in 2015 and was abandoned.

The Shire Oak public house stands at the corner of Lichfield Road and Chester Road in Walsall (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Of course, there other oaks and spreading trees near Lichfield with literary credentials. The local history group Lichfield Discovered has asked whether a spectacular ancient oak tree on Cannock Chase, west of Lichfield, inspired JRR Tolkien.

Tolkien spent time at military camps on the Chase during World War I. When he was in Lichfield in September 1915, he met three close schoolfriends at the George Hotel on Bird Street – a gathering that may have inspired his writing about young hobbits contemplating heading off to war.

Lichfield Discovered has also suggested that the ancient oak tree on Cannock Chase inspired the Ents, tree-like creatures led by Treebeard who fought alongside the forces of good in The Lord of the Rings.

In his poem Ghosts, written in Lichfield on 19 December 1940, Philip Larkin (1922-1985) may be referring to the ghost story of the White Lady at the Swan on Bird Street. Larkin refers to Beacon Park when he says ‘this corner of the park was haunted’, and he refers to people in Lichfield who recounted being touched by something

Like a slim wind with an accusing hand –
Cold as this tree I touch.

Trees also feature in Christmas 1940, a poem written by Larkin that same night:

‘High on arched field I stand
Alone: the night is full of stars:
Enormous over tree and farm
The night extends,
And looks down equally to all on earth.

‘So I return their look; and laugh
To see as them my living stars
Flung from east to west across
A windless gulf?

– So much to say that I have never said,
Or ever could.’

The trees along Cross in Hand Lane prompted an exchange with the poet and songwriter Frank Callery (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The morning fog was a mere memory yesterday afternoon when I went for a walk along Cross Hand Lane behind the Hedgehog after the mid-day Eucharist in Lichfield Cathedral. When I was in Tamworth and Lichfield about this time in February last year, I posted photographs on Facebook taken that day of both Comberford Hall and of the spreading trees along Cross in Hand Lane. In reply, the Dublin-born poet and songwriter Frank Callery, who now lives in Kilkenny, shared with me his song ‘The Lichfield Oak’, which he describes as ‘a mock Traditional / Folk song in search of a singer’:

The Lichfield Oak by Frank Callery:

O the Lichfield Oak was tall and grand,
For centuries it made its stand;
And many folk who passed that way
Admired its shade by night and day!

Inclement weather being the scene,
For shelter, there reposed the Dean;
From Chester came an urgent pair
And with the Dean they sheltered there!

The woman, she was big with child,
She told the Dean, in accents mild,
‘In Lichfield soon we must be wed
Before my bundle’s brought to bed!’

‘Ah!’ says the Dean, ‘No time be lost!
I’ll wed you here without the cost!
And save a journey too, no doubt,
When stops the rain, just turn about!’

‘But what about the ‘Cert’? they cried,
‘ ’Tis requisite — they’ll think we’ve lied!’
From out his pocket came the pen,
And this is what he wrote for them:

Chorus:

‘Under an oak, in stormy weather,
I joined this rogue and wench together,
And none but he who rules the thunder,
Can put this wench and rogue asunder.’

The Lichfield Oak was strong and straight
A Parson might officiate
For those who wished to jump the broom —
The high road for a honeymoon!

And if a cert be requisite
The Parson’s word is law and writ,
To prove the couple truly wed
And give them licence for the bed.

But the Dean being straighter nor the Oak
His holy writ contained no joke,
With crumpled paper and with pen
He made them ‘man and wife’, Amen!

Chorus:

‘Under an oak, in stormy weather,
I joined this rogue and wench together,
And none but he who rules the thunder,
Can put this wench and rogue asunder.
Can put this wench and rogue asunder!’

Spreading trees offer shelter on Cross Hand in Lane in Lichfield, along the old pilgrim road to Chester (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Lichfield Oak © Frank Callery, 23 July 2021.

A Victorian clock inspired by Lichfield Cathedral remains on display in the old grammar school

The Cathedral Clock in the style of Lichfield Cathedral by Charles Thorneloe (1805-1885), on display in the old grammar school (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

The ‘house warmer’ hosted by Lichfield Discovered in the Old Grammar School, Saint John Street, last week was a joyful celebration and was an opportunity to meet many old friends. But it was also an opportunity to visit the premises of Lichfield District Council, and to see many of the historic exhibits on display.

One of the (literally) striking exhibits is labelled as a ‘Golden Clock for a Great Exhibition’. The Cathedral Clock is a cased striking clock made in the style of Lichfield Cathedral by Charles Thorneloe (1805-1885) of Tamworth Street and later of Bore Street for the Great Exhibition in London in 1851.

The Victorian clock is a reminder of the artistic craft work in Lichfield almost 200 years ago. It was described in the exhibition catalogue as a ‘Gothic Skeleton Clock which strikes quarters and goes 32 days. Lichfield Cathedral.’

The Great Exhibition in the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park attracted 13,000 exhibitors from around the world. It was a celebration of Victorian progress and invention, showcasing the finest technologies from around the world, and was divided into over 30 different classes of objects, ranging from mining and minerals to the latest weaponry.

Charles Thorneloe was exhibitor number 43 among the 739 exhibitors who made up Class 10, Philosophical, Musical, Horological, and Surgical Instruments. He was a well-respected clockmaker and watchmaker based at Tamworth Street and later on Bore Street. His ornate striking clock at the Great Exhibition was designed in the shape of Lichfield Cathedral and displayed his skills as both a metal worker and a clockmaker.

There are records of watchmakers working in Lichfield since at least in 1741, and by 1818 there were five watch and clockmakers, including William Vale in Bore Street, still working in 1841. Edmund Vale was a brass founder employing 15 men and five boys in 1861 and was one of five clockmakers in Lichfield in 1864.

The Thorneloe family in Lichfield can be traced for more 300 years back to Richard Thorneloe and his wife Mary Bell. They had moved from Lancashire by 1705, when their first son, Richard Thorneloe (1705-1749), the ancestor of this family, was born in Lichfield.

Richard Thorneloe’s son, William Thorneloe (1733-1810), was born in Lichfield in 1733 and married Mary Bailes in Saint Michael’s Church, Lichfield, in 1770. Their son, Thomas Thorneloe (1771-1846), was born in Lichfield in 1771. He married Ann Knight (1769-1827) in Coventry in 1797, and they were the parents of seven children, four sons and three daughters, including Charles Thorneloe, who was born in Lichfield in September 1805 and was baptised in Saint Chad’s Church on 8 October 1805.

Charles Thorneloe married Sarah Saunders (1797-1861) in Saint Mary’s Church, Lichfield, on 15 September 1831. By 1834, he was in business as a brass founder and clockmaker in Tamworth Street. He designed and manufactured clocks for over 30 years, and also served as a mentor to clockmakers.

After displaying his skills to the world at the Crystal Palace, Thorneloe returned to Lichfield with his clock. He continued to work at Tamworth Street as a clockmaker and watchmaker, but later moved the business to 25 Bore Street. He was the Mayor of Lichfield in 1861, the year his wife Sarah died.

Charles Thorneloe died on 21 December 1885. Although his siblings had children, whose descendants continued to live in Lichfield in the 20th century, Charles had no children. His business was taken over by John Salloway, who had worked as an apprentice clockmaker to Thorneloe in Tamworth Street from 1861.

John Salloway died in 1900, leaving the business to his brother William Salloway and wife Harriet Salloway. Harriet continued to run the shop and shifted the focus to jewellery and silver. Following a distinguished military career, William’s son, Frank Salloway took over the business in 1922 and eventually passed the baton on to his son John Salloway.

John and Mary Salloway were the parents of Nigel Salloway, who joined the company full time in 1984 and became the fourth generation of the family to run the firm. Salloways traded as a family-run business in Lichfield until 2018, when plans were announced to close shop.

When Nigel Salloway decided to retire, he told the local media that none of his three children wanted to take over the business. ‘Salloway has been a part of my life, man and boy. It’s going to be a very sad day when we finally close the doors,’ he said at the time.’

Meanwhile, Thorneloe’s striking clock designed in the shape of Lichfield Cathedral for the Great Exhibition was acquired by Lichfield District Council in 1983, and was put on display in the District Council House. It continues to impress people to this day, and it is a reminder of one of Lichfield’s finest craftsmen.

The old grammar school is the new home of Lichfield Discovered (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Lichfield Discovered gets a new home in the old grammar school thanks to district council

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)