A journey through Lent 2023 with Samuel Johnson (18)

Johnson’s opinion of English pubs … a sign outside the Queen’s Head in Queen Street, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

During Lent this year, I am taking time each morning to reflect on words from Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), the Lichfield-born lexicographer and writer who compiled the first authoritative English-language dictionary.

Many of us may have given up drinking during Lent on many occasions. But, despite his regular observance of Lent, Johnson was known for his fondness of inns and taverns, and I recalled yesterday how ‘Ye Olde Talbot’ in Uttoxeter is one of many English pubs that claim he was a frequent visitor.

Perhaps you have given up drinking alcohol during Lent. But Johnson’s remarks about public houses have been popular on notice boards and chalkboards in pubs in his home town, Lichfield, including the Hedgehog Vintage Inn and the Queen’s Head in Queen Street.

A quotation outside the Queen’s Head dates back to a visit to a pub by Johnson and his biographer, James Boswell. In his biography, Boswell records a visit to Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshirewith Johnson, after which they adjourned to ‘an excellent inn’ at Chapel House, either the George or the White Horse.

Chapel House, in Over Norton, is 12 miles beyond Shipston, on the Oxford Road, close to its junction with the road from Worcester.

In this ‘excellent inn,’ the conversation between Johnson and Boswell turned to a comparison of taverns in England and France. Johnson declared:

There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness has been produced as by a good tavern or inn.

Continued tomorrow

Yesterday’s reflection

A journey through Lent 2023 with Samuel Johnson (17)

The Johnson Memorial in the Market Place in Uttoxeter (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

During Lent this year, I am taking time each morning to reflect on words from Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), the Lichfield-born lexicographer and writer who compiled the first authoritative English-language dictionary.

In 1780, when he was in his 60s, Samuel Johnson did public penance in the Market Square in Uttoxter, Staffordshire, standing in the rain for a number of hours, bareheaded and without a hat.

The story is recalled in one of the panels at the base of Johnson’s statue in the Market Square in Lichfield. The architectural historian Sir Niklaus Pevsner has compared these bas-relief panels on the plinth with the work of Donatello.

Why did Johnson do this public act of penance?

Once, as a boy, he had refused to go and look after the bookstall his father ran in Uttoxeter. Later, on his last return visit to Lichfield, he left his friends and family early one morning and went back to Uttoxeter. When he got back to Lichfield late in the day, he apologised for his absence and told his host:

Madam, I beg your pardon for the abruptness of my departure from your house this morning, but I was constrained to it by my conscience. Fifty years ago, Madam, on this day, I committed a breach of filial piety, which has ever since lain heavy on my mind, and has not till this day been expiated. My father, you recollect, was a bookseller, and had long been in the habit of attending Uttoxeter market, and opening a stall for the sale of his books during that day. Confined to his bed by indisposition, he requested me, this time fifty years ago, to visit the market, and attend the stall in his place. But Madam, my pride prevented me from doing my duty, and I gave my father a refusal. To do away with this sin of disobedience, I this day went in a postchaise to Uttoxeter, and going into the market at the time of high business, uncovered my head, and stood with it bare an hour before the stall which my father had formerly used, exposed to the sneers of the standers-by and the inclemency of the weather, a penance by which I trust I have propitiated heaven for this only instance, I believe of contumacy towards my father.

‘Johnson’s Penance’ is remembered in a monument in the Market Square in Uttoxeter. It is so large, that inside accommodates a newspaper and ice cream kiosk. The act is also remembered every year in Uttoxeter as ‘Johnson’s Penance’ with a special ceremony. Nearby, Ye Olde Talbot boasts that Johnson must have been a regular visitor.

Ye Olde Talbot on Market Square, Uttoxeter, boasts that Samuel Johnson must have been a regular visitor (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

A journey through Lent 2016 with Samuel Johnson (18)

Johnson’s opinion of English pubs … a sign outside the Queen’s Head in Queen Street, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

During Lent this year, I am taking time each morning to reflect on words from Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), the Lichfield lexicographer and writer who compiled the first authoritative English-language dictionary.

Many of us may have given up drinking during Lent on many occasions. But, despite his regular observance of Lent, Johnson was known for his fondness of inns and taverns, and I recalled yesterday how ‘Ye Olde Talbot’ in Uttoxeter is one of many English pubs that claim he was a frequent visitor.

Perhaps you have given up drinking alcohol during Lent. But Johnson’s remarks about public houses are popular on notice boards and chalkboards in pubs in his home town, Lichfield, including the Hedgehog Vintage Inn and the the Queen’s Head in Queen Street.

This quotation outside the Queen’s Head dates back to a visit to a pub by Johnson and his biographer, James Boswell. In his biography, Boswell records a visit to Blenheim Palace with Johnson, after which they adjourned to “an excellent inn” at Chapel House, either the George or the White Horse.

Chapel House, in Over Norton, is 12 miles beyond Shipston, on the Oxford Road, close to its junction with the road from Worcester.

In this “excellent inn,” the conversation between Johnson and Boswell turned to a comparison of taverns in England and France. Johnson declared:

There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness has been produced as by a good tavern or inn.

Continued tomorrow.

Yesterday’s reflection.

A journey through Lent 2016 with Samuel Johnson (17)

The Johnson Memorial in the Market Place in Uttoxeter (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

During Lent this year, I am taking time each morning to reflect on words from Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), the Lichfield lexicographer and writer who compiled the first authoritative English-language dictionary.

In 1780, when he was in his 60s, Samuel Johnson did public penance in the Market Square in Uttoxter, standing in the rain for a number of hours, bareheaded and without a hat.

The story is recalled in one of the panels at the base of Johnson’s statue in the Market Square in Lichfield. The architectural historian Sir Niklaus Pevsner has compared these bas-relief panels on the plinth with the work of Donatello.

Why did Johnson do this public act of penance?

Once, as a boy, he had refused to go and look after the bookstall his father ran in Uttoxeter. Later, on his last return visit to Lichfield, he left his friends and family early one morning and went back to Uttoxeter. When he got back to Lichfield late in the day, he apologised for his absence and told his host:

Madam, I beg your pardon for the abruptness of my departure from your house this morning, but I was constrained to it by my conscience. Fifty years ago, Madam, on this day, I committed a breach of filial piety, which has ever since lain heavy on my mind, and has not till this day been expiated. My father, you recollect, was a bookseller, and had long been in the habit of attending Uttoxeter market, and opening a stall for the sale of his books during that day. Confined to his bed by indisposition, he requested me, this time fifty years ago, to visit the market, and attend the stall in his place. But Madam, my pride prevented me from doing my duty, and I gave my father a refusal. To do away with this sin of disobedience, I this day went in a postchaise to Uttoxeter, and going into the market at the time of high business, uncovered my head, and stood with it bare an hour before the stall which my father had formerly used, exposed to the sneers of the standers-by and the inclemency of the weather, a penance by which I trust I have propitiated heaven for this only instance, I believe of contumacy towards my father.

‘Johnson’s Penance’ is remembered in a monument in the Market Square in Uttoxeter. It is so large, that inside accommodates a newspaper and ice cream kiosk. The act is also remembered every year in Uttoxeter as ‘Johnson’s Penance’ with a special ceremony. Nearby, Ye Olde Talbot boasts that Johnson must have been a regular visitor.

Ye Olde Talbot in Uttoxeter boasts that Johnson must have been a regular visitor (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Yesterday’s reflection.

Continued tomorrow.

The sad plight of Davidson House on Upper John Street, Lichfield

Davidson House, Upper John Street, once the home of one the finest of Lichfield’s architects, is now at risk (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford

On each visit to Lichfield, I try to visit a building of architectural interest that I have not yet written about. Last month, I visited Dr Milley’s Hospital on Beacon Street, the Cruck House on Stowe Street, the fine Georgian townhouse at No 20 Saint John Street, and the late Victorian Boat House at Stowe Pool.

This week, I visited Davidson House at 67 Upper Saint John Street, close to Saint John’s Hospital, where I was preaching on Wednesday evening.

According to the local history group, Lichfield Discovered, and the innovative local historian Kate Gomez, this house is part of Lichfield’s “at-risk” heritage. On the ground floor, the windows in this once elegant house are boarded up, the stonework is crumbling and there is a sad air of abandonment about the whole site.

It 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 of particular architectural interest today because it was once the home of the Lichfield architect Thomas Johnson, who lived here from 1834 until his death in 1853.

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, his 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 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 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.

In 1828 Johnson and Potter worked on the nave of Saint Mary’s Church (Church of England) in Uttoxeter. 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.

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 Law, 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 of Cheadle.

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

In 1842-1843, 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 in Lichfield. 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.

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

In 1846, Johnson completed his rebuilding of All Saints’ Church, Leigh, two miles off the A522 between Cheadle and Uttoxeter. Michael J 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. In 1835, she married her third husband, Richard Hinckley, a Lichfield solicitor and they lived in Beacon Place. Ellen had suffered tragic family losses: her first husband was the Revd William Robinson, and they had two daughters who died in childhood and are commemorated in the memorial known as Chantry’s ‘Sleeping Children’ in Lichfield Cathedral.

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.

At the same time, he designed the railway bridge crossing Upper Saint John Street which leads trains to and from Lichfield City Station, and which I described in the Lichfield Gazette in October 2013. 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.

The Corn Exchange in Conduit Street was designed by Thomas Johnson in a Tudor style (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

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.

When Thomas Johnson died in 1853, he was succeeded by his son, also Thomas Johnson, who died in 1865, and the work of the two sons is sometimes confused.

From 1938 to 1963, Davidson House housed the South Staffordshire Regimental Museum, named after Brigadier General Charles Steer Davidson, who donated the building to the regiment.

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 neglect of this architectural gem in recent years.

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 to Davidson House (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

The central entrance has an architrave and an overlight to the paired three-panel doors, in an altered porch with slender Tuscan column to the right. The bay window to the left has a cornice.

The windows have pilasters, friezes and cornices. There was a tripartite bay window with colonnettes and 8:12:8-pane sashes, but these have now been lost. A similar window to the right had brick piers and a central open pediment. There are two similar tripartite windows to the first floor and these have colonnettes and central open pediments. They flank a window with an open pediment over a 12-pane sash. The second floor windows have architraves to six-pane sashes.

The steps to the street level at Upper John Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

The terrace to the right end has steps to the street level and there are plain iron railings to both.

The street façade at Davidson House, facing onto Upper John Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

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.

The service range at the rear of Davidson House (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Grealish hopes for a Villa cup win, but does Cameron know where he’s from?

David Cameron during a visit late last year to Uttoxeter … but are his family roots in Staffordshire or in Scotland (Photograph: Uttoxeter Advertiser)

Patrick Comerford

The re-elected British Prime Minister David Cameron once said: “On my mother’s side of the family, her mother was a Llewellyn, so Welsh. I’m a real mixture of Scottish, Welsh and English.”

But David Cameron also said once that he was an Aston Villa supporter … and then called on people to support West Ham.

Is David Cameron going to follow Aston Villa to the FA Cup Final? And is David Cameron truly “a real mixture of Scottish, Welsh and English”?

I was once told his grandmother was from Staffordshire. So was she Welsh or was she from Staffordshire?

Following the triumph of the Scottish National Party, how Scottish is he?

And, indeed, if he is “a real mixture of Scottish, Welsh and English,” does he have any Irish family connections?

I decided to find out.

David William Donald Cameron was born in the London Clinic, London, on 9 October 1966, the younger son of stockbroker Ian Donald Cameron (1932-2010) and his wife Mary Fleur (née Mount), a retired Justice of the Peace and a daughter of Sir William Mount, 2nd Baronet. His parents were married on 20 October 1962, and he has a brother, Alexander Cameron (born 1963), a barrister and QC, and two sisters, Tania Rachel (born 1965) and Clare Louise (born 1971).

The first start in tracing his family tree, and perhaps the easiest way to set out on in search of his true identity, is to trace the direct male line of descent.

David Cameron is a son of:

Ian Donald Cameron (1936-2010), who, according to different accounts he was born at Blairmore House, a country house near Huntly, Aberdeenshire, in 1936, or in London in 1932. He was born with both legs deformed and had repeated operations to correct them. In 1962 he married in Saint Nicholas’s Church, Wasing, Mary Fleur Mount. He was the senior partner in the stockbrokers Panmure Gordon & Co, a firm where many members of the Cameron family had held partnerships. He died near Toulon in France on 8 September 2010.

Ian Cameron was a son of:

Ewen Donald Cameron (1906-1930), born in Kensington in 1906. He too was a partner in the stockbrokers Panmure Gordon & Co. He married in Saint Mark’s Church, North Audley Street, London, in 1930 Enid Agnes Maud Levita, (1908-1993). He died in London in 1958.

Ewen Donald Cameron was a son of:

Ewen Allan Cameron (ca 1879-1937). He was born in Shanghai, China, around 1879, although the year is unclear. He too was a partner in Panmure Gordon stockbrokers and served on the Corporation of Foreign Bondholders, and the Committee for Chinese Bondholders, set up by the then-Governor of the Bank of England, Montagu Norman in 1935.

He married in Glass, Aberdeenshire, in 1905 Rachel Margaret Geddes. She was born in Chicago, Illinois, ca, 1880, although once again the date is unclear. Her father, Alexander Geddes, was a Chicago grain merchant, who returned to Scotland and built Blairmore House, Glass, where he died on 2 July 1902. Ewan Cameron died in Vienna, Austria, on 14 November 1937, and his widow died in Seaford on 19 May 1969.

Ewan Allan Cameron was a son of:

Sir Ewen Cameron (1841-1908). He was born in Invernessshire, and worked with a variety of Indian and Chinese banks in Calcutta, Shanghai and Hong Kong. He was the London head of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC), and he played a key role in arranging loans from the Rothschild family to Japan during the Russo-Japanese War. In 1878 in Norfolk he married Josephine Elizabeth Houchen from Shotford, Norfolk. He died in London in 1908.

Sir Ewen Cameron was the son of:

William Cameron (1806- ), a crofter. He was born in Abertarff, Croy and Dalcross, Invernessshire, but I have not found his date of death. He married Catherine Cameron in Glenmoriston, Invernessshire, in 1840.

William Cameron was the son of:

James Cameron (1776-1865), who was born and died in Croy and Dalcross, Invernessshire. He married Margaret Fletcher.

James Cameron was the son of:

Alexander Cameron, the earliest of David Cameron’s direct ancestors in the male line that I can find. I have found no dates for his life events.

So the Cameron family can be traced back about 250 years, or perhaps a little more. The family is Scottish ancestry, with humble beginnings at crofters. But many of the Cameron ancestors lived and died in a variety of places, including London, Calcutta, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Vienna, Chicago and Toulon, so the “real mixture of Scottish” ancestry is quite diluted.

Marchington describes itself as “an idyllic English village”

So what about his supposed Staffordshire roots? Or that “real mixture” of Welsh ancestors through his mother and grandmother?

David Cameron’s mother, Mary Fleur Mount (born 22 October 1934) is the daughter of Sir William Mount (1904-1993) of Wasing Place in Berkshire and his wife Elizabeth Nance Llewellyn (1904-1997).

But Lady Mount, despite the Welsh ring to her maiden surname, Llewellyn, was born not in Wales but in Marchington, a small, attractive village near the banks of the River Dove in East Staffordshire, south-east of Uttoxeter and north-west of Burton upon Trent.

The village has a small shop, a school, two churches, two pubs and a population of about 1,100. The village website says: “In many ways it is an idyllic English village.”

Uttoxeter is a Staffordshire market town in the heart of England (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Those roots in Uttoxeter may have come to mind last November when Cameron visited the headquarters of JCB in Rocester, near Uttoxeter. This was his sixth visit to the Tory-held constituency and, according to a report in the Uttoxeter Advertiser, he used that visit to make yet another speech on curbing immigration … which would not have been god news to his ancestors who moved to England from India, China and Germany.

Her father was born in Somerset, and in fact, I had to go back to Cameron’s great-great-grandfather before I could find a Welsh-born Llewellyn ancestor, Lieut-Col Evan Henry Llewellyn, a Tory MP for Somerset and a landowner who was born in Llangafelach, Glamorganshire, in 1847. But his father was from Devon, and this Welsh-born ancestor spent most of his life in Somerset, apart from his spells in the army in Africa.

So Welsh ancestry is probably thinner and more difficult to find than Scottish-born ancestors.

Claiming he is Scottish or Welsh is as absurd as Cameron claiming he is Chinese, or Austrian, or American … or royal for that matter.

Yes, David Cameron is also descended from royalty. Through his paternal grandmother, Enid Agnes Maud Levita, he is a lineal descendant of King William IV and his mistress Dorothea Jordan. This illegitimate line consists of five generations of women starting with Elizabeth Hay, Countess of Erroll, who was born Elizabeth FitzClarence, the sixth of ten children of King William IV and Dorothea Jordan (1761-1816).

The only Irish ancestry I have found for David Cameron, so far, is through this descent from Dorothea Jordan. She was the king’s mistress and constant companion for 20 years while he was the Duke of Clarence, and together they had 10 illegitimate children, all of whom were given the surname FitzClarence; their eldest son was given the title of Earl of Munster.

She was born Dorothea, Dorothy or Dora Bland in Waterford on 22 November 1761. Her father was the son of Nathaniel Bland (1695/96-1760) from Killarney, Co Kerry, Vicar General of Ardfert and Aghadoe, and Judge of the Prerogative Court of Dublin.

Despite this illegitimate label, this particular line of ancestry means David Cameron is a fifth cousin twice removed of Queen Elizabeth II). But then he is also an eighth cousin of Boris Johnson the Mayor of London and Jo Johnson, Conservative MP for Orpington, and a more distant cousin of George Osborne.

He is also a descendant of Jewish bankers and Yiddish scholars. Cameron’s great-great-grandfather, Emile Levita, was a German Jewish financier and a direct descendant of the Renaissance scholar Elia Levita, the author of Bovo-Bukh, the first secular work ever published in Yiddish.

Emile Levita became a British citizen in 1871 and was the director of the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China which became Standard Chartered Bank in 1969.

Last month David Cameron accidentally switched his football allegiances from Aston Villa to West Ham (Photograph: PA/ITV Central)

And what about the family links to Aston Villa?

Cameron has long claimed he is a supporter of Aston Villa, but last month he confused Aston Villa with West Ham in the course of an election campaign speech.

How could he forget? Cameron is the nephew of Sir William ‘Bill’ Dugdale (1922-2014), former Chairman of Aston Villa Football Club (1975-1982), and whose second wife was a sister of Cameron’s mother. Some reports say he was a distant cousin of Rose Dugdale, but I have not been able to confirm this kinship. When he died last year, the Tamworth Herald recalled his many exploits, his role in Aston Villa, and reported his Warwickshire homes included Merevale Hall, near Tamworth, and Blyth Hall near Coleshill, south of Tamworth.

The Aston Villa player Jack Grealish has yet to choose whether he wants to play for England or the Republic of Ireland. His grandparents are from Galway and Dublin, but he was born in Solihull, so it is understandable that this 19-year-old still has to work on his identity.

But David Cameron’s Scottish and English roots have done nothing to help preserve the union between Scotland and England, his Welsh roots and Irish roots seem to have little impact on his politics either, and the German, French and Austrian connections through his immediate ancestors have nothing to help him keep Britain in the EU, and his Indian and Chinese connections in his ancestry seem to have played little part in shaping his attitude to immigration.

At least Jack Grealish will be hoping for a Villa win in the FA Cup Final. But what about David Cameron? Does he know where he’s from?

White roses and rampant lions … a link with Pugin in encaustic tiles

Lines of lions ... a row of encaustic tiles in the south aisle, Christ Cathedral, Dublin, each with an image of rampant lion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford

Holy Week has been a busy culmination to Lent this year. I have been in Christ Church Cathedral regularly though the week, taking part in the Palm Sunday Eucharist [29 March 2015], the Chrism Eucharist on Maundy Thursday [2 April 2015], and last night’s Easter Eve Eucharist, when I assisted at the administration of the Holy Communion.

I also presided at the Maundy Eucharist in All Saints’ Church, Grangegorman, and led the ‘Seven Last Words’ service there on Good Friday [3 April 2015]. On one day this past week, I was at four services in three different places. I am back in Christ Church Cathedral this morning [5 April 2015] for the Easter Eucharist.

White cinquefoils in the sanctuary (above) and the south ambulatory (below), in Christ Church Cathedral … are they a play on the White Rose of the House of York? (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Twice during the past week, I noticed two rows of tiles, almost hidden in the north and south sides of the sanctuary, each with five white cinquefoils or roses. The only other place this design or theme appears is one part of the south ambulatory.

Prompted by the recent funeral of Richard III in Leicester Cathedral 10 days ago [26 March 2015], I wondered whether these Victorian tiles are a humorous play on a Yorkist theme associated with the cathedral: the 10-year-old Yorkist pretender Lambert Simnel was crowned in Christ Church Cathedral as King Edward VI on 24 May 1487.

The story of that coronation is told by Dr John Ashdown-Hill in The Dublin King, which was launched in Christ Church Cathedral about two months ago [12 February 2015]. He was one of the team that discovered Richard III’s body in a car park in Leicester three years ago [August 2012], and in this new book he explores the story Lambert Simnel.

However, he refuses to use the name Lambert Simnel for the Dublin King and believes there is convincing evidence that he was the legitimate Yorkist heir to the throne of Richard III. He suggests that he was neither Lambert Simnel nor one of the ‘Princes in the Tower’ but perhaps Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick and son of George, Duke of Clarence, the brother of Richard III.

It would be interesting to explore the story behind those ‘York Rose’ tiles in the sanctuary and the south ambulatory, but there are no references to them in Joanna Wren’s delightful little book, Floor Tiles, a guide to the medieval and 19th century floor tiles of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.

Because of their almost-hidden location, these 19th century ‘York Rose’ tiles receive little attention. Instead, the tiles that catch the imaginations of most visitors are those with the circular panels decorated with the paired pilgrim foxes, representing the mediaeval friars of the cathedral, and the geometric and floral designs.

Lions in the sanctuary ... encaustic tiles by Craven Dunnill on the south side of the High Altar in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

The majority of the floor tiles are 19th century copies of mediaeval floor tiles found during restoration of Christ Church by George Edmund Street in the 1870s. They were made by Craven Dunnill and Co of Shropshire, who also worked on commissions for Chester Cathedral and Bangor Cathedral in Wales.

The manufacture and use of encaustic tiles like these was an integral part of a revival of Gothic architecture and art, particularly where the design of a cathedral or church was inspired or influenced by AWN Pugin (1812-1852).

Joanna Wren discusses many of the patterns and designs in the tiles made by Craven Dunnill, and how most of the Victorian tiles are copies of mediaeval ones, some of them are original designs.

She points out that both the lion and fleur-de-lis designs were “probably taken from heraldry. They were used on the tiles simply as decoration, however, without any special meaning.”

However, it seems to me that the lions rampant, which can be seen on tiles throughout the cathedral, particularly on the south side of the high altar, are not based on designs found in the cathedral’s mediaeval tiles during Street’s restoration, but on a design that was introduced or reintroduced by Pugin in the early 19th century.

Lions in formation ... lions rampant can be found on tiles throughout Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Pugin made drawings for tiles during his many journeys on the night train from London to Staffordshire while he was engaged in restoring and rebuilding Alton Towers. The lion rampant, rather than the talbot, was the primary heraldic symbol of the Talbot family, Earls of Shrewsbury and proprietors of Alton Towers.

The tiles Pugin designed were manufactured by Minton & Co of Stoke-on-Trent in north Staffordshire ca 1842-1844. In the 1840s, Pugin developed a creative partnership with Herbert Minton (1793-1858), a pottery manufacturer in Stoke-on-Trent.

The early products by Thomas Minton (1765-1836) were standard domestic tableware in blue transfer printed or painted earthenware, including the Willow pattern. His son Herbert developed the process of making encaustic tiles, and together Minton and Pugin went beyond a mere revival of mediaeval patterns to develop finely-finished multi-coloured tiles with intricate designs and with a higher degree of accuracy than anything produced in the Middle Ages.

The Alton Towers tiles were made for Pugin by Minton in Staffordshire 30 years – a whole generation – before Craven and Dunnill made the Christ Church tiles for Street (Photograph: Victoria and Albert Museum)

An interesting example of these Pugin-designed, Minton-manufactured tiles with a symbol of a lion rampant is seen in a red earthenware tile with inlaid decoration that is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

The Alton Towers tiles were made for Pugin by Minton in Staffordshire 30 years – a whole generation – before Craven Dunnill made the Christ Church tiles for Street.

Pugin’s working relationship with Herbert Minton resulted in the designing and making of some the best church tiles of the Victorian era. He was using Minton tiles as early as 1840 for the Hardman’s Hospital Chapel in Birmingham. By 1844, Minton was making more colourful encaustics probably at Pugin’s instigation.

The Talbot family’s rampant lions on the doors of Pugin’s Saint Giles’s Church in Cheadle (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

One of Pugin’s greatest achievements in the design and use of colourful church tiles can be found at Saint Giles in Cheadle, built for Lord Shrewsbury and opened in 1846. Michael Fisher, in his book on Saint Giles’, describes it as “Perfect Cheadle.”

The polychromatic effects of the encaustic floor tiles in Cheadle blend perfectly with the colourful wall and ceiling decorations and the stained glass windows.

Minton went on to supply tiles to other architects working in the Gothic Revival style, and so encaustic tiles are often known as Pugin tiles, irrespective of who their designer is.

Pugin’s use of encaustic tiles was followed by the other leading architects of the Gothic revival, including: Sir George Gilbert Scott, William Butterfield (Westminster Abbey, All Saints’ Church, Margaret Street and Keble College, Oxford), George Edmund Street (Christ Church Cathedral), William Burges (Saint Finn Barre’s Cathedral, Cork) and John Pollard Seddon (Llandaff Cathedral).

The fine Minton tiles in the choir in Lichfield Cathedral were inspired by the medieval ones found in the choir foundations and still seen in the Cathedral Library.

Today, more than half the churches in Britain are paved at least in part with 19th century decorative encaustic tiles and they are often the most notable features in a church.

Dancing lions ... tiles in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Many visitors to Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, ask whether the rampant lion is a symbol of the English royal family; few realise that was a heraldic symbol of the Talbot family, and that through Pugin’s influence it became a popular and unquestioned heraldic theme in the encaustic tiles made for many Gothic revival churches throughout these islands from the mid-19th century on.

The Talbot arms displayed on Ye Olde Talbot in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A day in the Heart of England

Uttoxeter in the heart of England (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2010)

Patrick Comerford

My search for Pugin churches in mid-Staffordshire yesterday took me through some beautiful countryside. Lichfield is about as far in-land as you can get in England, so my bus journeys through the heart of England made for a day that was very different day from my usual weekend beach walks in Dublin.

It’s only about 30 km from Lichfield to Uttoxeter and another 12 km from there to Cheadle. But the buses passed through the villages and communities of Elmhurst, Armitage, Handsacre, over the Trent and Mersey Canal, through Hill Ridware, Blithbury, and Abbots Bromley, by the shores of Blithfield Reservoir, Bagot’s Bromley, Newton Hurst, Dapple Heath, Upper Booth and Lower Booth, over the River Blithe to the Blythe, and on past beautiful views down onto Kingstone Wood and Bagot Forrest, through Kingstone and Blount’s Green into Uttoxeter. And from there it was on to Cheadle through Beamhurst, Fole, Checkley, Lower Tean, Upper Tean, Teanford and Mobberley.

Many of these villages have thatched cottages, timber-framed houses, village greens, and historic churches. There was little traffic on the narrow, tree-lined side roads, apart from the adults on horses, children on ponies and the occasional pair of cyclists. The rolling countryside has large dairy farms and fields full of grazing cattle, as well as horses and sheep.

The Abbots Bromley Horn Dance Day is a colourful event that has been taking place at the end of August or beginning of September each year since 1262. The interesting buildings in the village include the half-timbered Church House, the Goat’s Head Inn, which local people say is the original town hall, and the Butter Cross, in the middle of the triangular village green, which some say dates back to the 13th or 14th centuries, although others say it is a 17th century building. One house in the village is actually called Toad Hall.

Abbots Bromley has a history that dates back to 942, when the manor of “Bromleage” was given to Wulfsige the Black, and Abbas Bromley is recorded in the Domesday Book in 1086-1087 as Brunlege.

For many Irish people, Uttoxeter is merely a name on racing card or in the sports pages of newspapers, or it is a place to pass through on the way to Alton Towers. Most people pronounce the name as “you-tox-eat-er,” but local people call it “ut-cheat-er.”

But then Uttoxeter has had 79 spellings since it was first mentioned in the Domesday Book as “Wotocheshede.”

As I strolled through the town on Saturday afternoon, the High Street was closed because of the market. Two years ago, Uttoxeter celebrated the 700th anniversary of the 1308 Market Charter, which sets out the terms of the markets on Saturdays, Wednesdays and festivals.

The Johnson Memorial in the Market Place in Uttoxeter (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2010)

The most famous event in the history of Uttoxeter was the penance of Samuel Johnson. The Lichfield writer’s father ran a bookstall in Uttoxeter market, and young Samuel once refused to help out on the stall. When he was older, Dr Johnson repented and stood in the rain without a hat as a penance for failing to help his father. This sad but moving event is commemorated by the Johnson Memorial in the Market Place.

Another writer, Mary Howitt, the Quaker author of the poem The Spider and the Fly, lived in Uttoxeter for much of her life. Howitt Crescent, off Johnson Road, is named after her, and other writers commemorated in street names here include George Eliot.

Saint Mary’s Church in Balance Street was Pugin’s first church design. A number of windows in Saint Mary’s Church recall the Bamford family. One member of this family, Joseph Cyril Bamford (JCB), gave his name to the JCB Empire, but started out with a small business in a small garage in the town. JCB is still the main employer in the town, alongside Fox’s Biscuits.

Cheadle too is a market, town with Anglo-Saxon roots, and the High Street was closed on Saturday for a market. When I arrived in the afternoon to photograph Saint Giles’s Church, Pugin’s most famous building, it was joyfully full for a First Communion.

Ye Olde Talbot on a sunny day in Uttoxeter (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2010)

In all these towns and villages, Pugin’s patrons, the Talbot family, the Earls of Shrewsbury, have left their mark, in pub names and signs, street names, and even the Talbot First School in Kingstone.

Unlike poor Dr Johnson, I found it was still a sunny afternoon when I got back to Uttoxeter. Opposite the Johnson Memorial stands Ye Olde Talbot, one of the few timber-framed buildings to survive a 17th century fire in the town. It is a charming old timber-framed building, and I sat in the sunshine, sipping a glass of wine in the warm sunshine before catching the bus back to Lichfield.

After such a beautiful day in the countryside and in the small towns of rural Staffordshire, it was a joy at Choral Evensong in Lichfield Cathedral to find the appointed Psalms of the day were Psalms 65, 66 and 67, including these lines:

Thou visitest the earth and blesses it: then makes it very plenteous
the river of God is full of water: thou preparest their corn, for so thou providest the earth.
(Psalm 65: 9-10)

say unto God, o how wonderful art thou in thy works ...
For all the world shall worship thee.
(Psalm 66: 2-3)

I was back in the cathedral this morning for the Sung Eucharist, when the Dean, the Very Revd Adrian Dorber, presided, the Chancellor, Canon Pete Wilcox, preached, and the setting was the Missa Brevis by Kodaly.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Director of Spiritual Formation, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

Travels in ‘Pugin-Land’

Lichfield Cathedral in the sun before Choral Evensong today ... Pugin declared the fabric had been mutilated by “this monster of architectural depravity, this pest of Cathedral architecture” (Photograph: Patrick Comerford,2010)

Patrick Comerford

I am staying in Lichfield this weekend, and decided today to catch local buses to Uttoxeter and Cheadle and to go in search of some of Pugin’s architectural legacy in this part of England.

My great-grandfather and grandfather both worked as stuccordores on the churches built by the great English Gothic architect, AWN Pugin, and buildings designed by successors. Having lived and worked in both Lichfield and Co Wexford, I am amused that Pugin’s legacy is to be found mainly in Staffordshire and in Co Wexford.

Saint Giles’s Church and its 200 ft spire dominate the Staffordshire market town of Chealde (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2010)

Britain’s distinguished architectural historian, the late Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, once described Staffordshire as “Pugin-land” after visiting Cheadle, the market town dominated by Saint Giles’s Church and its 200 ft spire. He wrote: “Nowhere can one study and understand Pugin better than in Staffordshire – not only his forms and features but his mind, and not only his churches but his secular architecture as well.”

Pugin-Land is a description that inspired the title of the Revd Michael Fisher’s book on Pugin, Lord Shrewsbury and the Gothic revival in Staffordshire. But in many ways Co Wexford could be described easily as Ireland’s own “Pugin-Land,” for nowhere else in Ireland can one study and understand Pugin better than in Co Wexford, where the landscape is speckled with some of the finest examples of his imagination and creativity, each an effort to recreate in Ireland the ideal English Gothic parish churches or cathedrals.

It is as though Saint Aidan’s Cathedral in Enniscorthy stands proudly at the centre of this wonderland, and radiating from it are some of Pugin’s most delightful creations – the Chapel of Saint Peter’s College, Wexford and seven or eight other churches, chapels or convents: the Church of the Assumption in Bree; Saint James’s Church, Ramsgrange; the Church of Saint Michael the Archangel in Gorey and the neighbouring Loreto Convent; Saint Mary’s Church, Tagoat; Saint Alphonsus’s Church, Barntown; and the Power chapel in Edermine and the Cliffe chapel at Bellevue, which may have been built after according to plans drawn by the Gothic master himself.

Saint Mary’s , Uttoxeter ... Pugin followed a similar design in his Gothic revival churches in Co Wexford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford (2010)

These churches were so influential on church building and design that they set a remarkable standard for ecclesiastical architecture, decoration and style. The architectural influence that is shared by Co Wexford and Staffordshire is interesting, so that Saint James’s, Ramsgrange, for example, is like several contemporary but much smaller churches designed by Pugin, such as Saint Mary’s, Uttoxeter, and Saint Augustine’s, Solihull, both of which he also designed in 1838.

Here in Lichfield it is interesting to discover that Pugin’s first visit to Staffordshire was in the autumn of 1834, when he stayed in Lichfield during an extensive architectural tour of the Midlands and the West Country “in search of the picturesque and the beautiful.”

Pugin’s stay in Lichfield was memorable for two reasons. First of all, he arrived late at night, and in the dark he crept unwittingly into the wrong bedroom. Aware of something soft and warm in the bed, he found it to be “the thigh of a female occupant already turned in.”

There were loud screams and shouts. Chambermaids came rushing in with lighted candles. Pugin had some difficulty in convincing everyone that he had made a genuine mistake.

But Pugin was in for another unpleasant shock when he visited Lichfield Cathedral the next day. Taken aback by James Wyatt’s the refurbishment of the cathedral thirty years earlier by James Wyatt (1746-1813), he declared: “Yes – this monster of architectural depravity, this pest of Cathedral architecture, has been here. need I say more.” And then, referring to the Lichfield architect, Joseph Potter (1756-1842), he said: “The man I am sorry to say – who executes the repairs of the building was a pupil of the Wretch himself and has imbibed all the vicious propensities of his accursed tutor without one spark of even practical ability to atone for his misdeeds.”

He found the fabric of the cathedral had been mutilated by “the Wretch” – and he also described Lichfield as “a dull place – without anything remarkable.” Interestingly, Potter preceded Pugin as the architect of Oscott College.

The interior of the Church of the Holy Cross, Upper John Street, Lichfield, today ... the screen and furnishings designed by Pugin in 1841 are no longer here (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2010)

Pugin revisited Lichfield in 1837. After staying briefly at Wolseley Park with Sir Charles Wolseley, a recent convert to Roman Catholicism, Pugin returned to Lichfield. There Joseph Potter had built the Roman Catholic Church of the Holy Cross, and Pugin would add a screen and other furnishings in 1841 ... although they have long disappeared.

Later, the West Doors of Lichfield Cathedral would inspire Pugin’s design for the doors of Saint Chad’s Roman Catholic Cathedral in Birmingham.

The Great West Doors of Lichfield Cathedral ... they inspired Pugin’s design for the doors of Saint Chad’s Roman Catholic Cathedral in Birmingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2010)

But it is interesting that it was only after this second visit to Lichfield that Pugin arrived for the first time at Alton Towers, the home of the Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury, on 31 August 1837, staying there for the next four days.

Lord Shrewsbury’s Irish titles included Earl of Wexford; Lady Shrewsbury was Maria Theresa Talbot, was the daughter of William Talbot of Castle Talbot, Co Wexford, and the favourite niece of John Hyacinth Talbot MP, of Ballytrent, Co Wexford.

The visit changed Pugin’s career for ever, and transformed the ecclesiastical landscape of both Staffordshire and Co Wexford. Lord Shrewsbury’s influence led to Pugin rebuilding Alton Towers and designing great works of architecture including Saint Giles’s, Cheadle, and Saint Mary’s, Uttoxeter. The patronage of Lady Shrewsbury’s uncle brought Pugin to Wexford the following year.

Pugin’s interior, including his rood screen, remain largely intact in Saint Giles’s Church, Cheadle (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2010)

Pugin died when he was only 40 in 1852; Lord Shrewsbury died later that year. But church architecture and church decoration would never be the same again – in England or in Ireland.

As I sat in the choir stalls of Lichfield Cathedral at Choral Evensong this evening, I realised that had Pugin lived long enough to return to Lichfield, he would have appreciated the results of the restoration work carried out from 1857 onwards by George Gilbert Scott (1811-1878). Indeed, he would have been delighted to see the undoing of Wyatt’s misdeeds, the restoration of the Lady Chapel, the High Altar replaced and correctly furnished, the stonework and statuary of the cathedral restored in true Gothic style,” and the Minton tiles in the choir, designed according to the principles he had once laid down.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Director of Spiritual Formation, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin