Outstanding Features

Only medieval cathedral with three spires, was once the only fortress cathedral with a surrounding moat and is now a Victorian Gothic Revival building. A significant pilgrimage centre from early times. Has the best-kept Early Medieval stonework sculpture in Europe. Has a very early Gospels. Cells off the Lady Chapel might have been for anchorites. The chapel has 16th-century hand-painted Flemish glasswork. There is an extraordinary foundation to the second cathedral, probably built by King Offa. Once had the most sumptuous shrine in medieval England. Suffered three Civil War sieges, including a heavy bombardment. Has associations with Kings Henry III and Richard II. Only one of two cathedrals located on the same site as the original church.

Dates.

DATES. First Bishop of Mercia in 656. First Bishop of Lichfield in 669. Pilgrimage began 672, 1353 years ago. 8th century shrine tower. Second cathedral, possibly 8th century. Gothic Cathedral built c. 1210 to c.1340. Civil War destruction, 1643-6. Extensive rebuild and repair, 1854-1908.

Monday, 25 November 2019

Medieval glass

Summary. All the original medieval glass was shattered and lost in the Civil War. It was thought some fragments were found and added to a window in St Michael’s Chapel, but they are more likely to be fragments from the 16th century Herkenrode collection.

    Medieval stained glass is coloured and painted glass dated 10th-century to the 16th-century. Only a small number of original stained windows has survived in England[1] and all the original cathedral glass windows were destroyed in the iconoclasm of the Civil War, 1643. Pikemen probably shattered the lower windows and musket and cannon balls the upper windows. It is thought fragments of early glass were kept and later placed in a window in St Michael’s Chapel within the south Transept. There are 12 small fragments surrounded by coloured glass.  

Window containing fragments of medieval glass, a little obscured by colours of the South Staffordshire regiment.

 

Some, possibly all,(2) are fragments left over from the Herkenrode collection, 1532–39. The top pair of fragments, a moon and sun, are possibly earlier (15th-century?),[3] though could have been part of a now missing Herkenrode crucifixion scene[4] representing the eclipse at the time of death.[5] There is a small roundel as part of a stained-glass window in the cathedral of St Steven, Bourges, France, dated 1210–15, showing a sun and moon above the arms of the cross. They symbolise the eclipse at the time of death and were a common motif in the 13th-century. There is a window at Hampton Court showing this motif.


Moon and Sun fragments.The moon fragment might have been repaired and altered.

 

Possible dove fragment.

 

Small clenched hand fragment.


Leaf fragment.


[1] The oldest remaining glass in its original place in England survives in Canterbury Cathedral where it was placed in 1184. It is the Tree of Jesse Window. There are more examples of original glass in Wells Cathedral, York Minster and Westminster Abbey.

(2) H. Snowden Ward, Lichfield and its Cathedral: a brief history and guide. (London: 1892), 51.

[3] H. and P. Scaife, The stained glass of Lichfield Cathedral, Cathedral publication (2009) describe the sun and moon fragments as medieval glass.

[4] I. Lecocq and Y. Vanden Bemden, The stained glass of Herkenrode Abbey, (Oxford: 2021), 342–3 suggested this could be the case. Unfortunately, the fragments were not analysed.

[5] There is a paradox. The Herkenrode glass is unusual in not having a crucifixion scene, so a sun and moon fragment either shows this scene was lost with only bits retained or the sun and moon is from elsewhere.

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