12th-century Lichfield.

 Abstract.  Medieval Lichfield would have been surrounded with a perimeter barrier, probably a ditch and bank like at Tamworth. Piped water was taken from a distant well and sent to the bishop’s palace, 1140-70. A ditch is thought to have surrounded the small town and at entrances were gates with crosses. Pilgrims were welcomed and many visited.

 Ditch or Vallum

It is likely the early hamlet of Lichfield (Licitfelda) in the 7th to 9th centuries had some kind of vallum surrounding and protecting the settlement. If it was a ditch and bank it would keep in livestock and stop entrance by wolves and foxes. If it was an earth rampart, it might have resembled the imagined bank, ditch and palisade fencing reconstructed from excavations around Tamworth when made a burh or burg, c. 913. 

Imagined enclosure at Tamworth (originally called Tomeworthig). 

             Between 1129 and 1135, there is some evidence of a ditch around the coalescing town being dug. This was at the beginning of Roger de Clinton’s episcopate, 1129-48, and plaques around the town attribute the town ditch to him.[1] Archaeology showed it was 5 m wide and 2.6 m deep in the section named Castle ditch. Various ditches have been found crossing Sandford Street and they vary from 10 m wide down to 4 m wide and 2 m deep. The line for this west end of the ditch is unclear. Within the ditch has been found a large collection of rubbish, including slag from the Sandford Street area showing this community was engaged in metalworking. A 10 m wide, deep ditch and containing some water would be defensive; it chimes with the fortification of the Close. In 1956 OS field workers[2] mapped a ditch cut around the Close between 1299 and 1312.[3]^{, [4]}

 

Imagined stone wall around the cathedral in 12th and 13th century. Note the separate bell tower. The Bishop’s Palace is against the east wall. There is no west gate since the causeway over the pool has still to be built.

     The purpose of a ditch, together with town gates, was more likely to prevent traders entering the town and avoid paying a goods tax at the gate. Tax money that would have ended in the coffers of Bishop Clinton. Enclosing the town also gave an exclusivity to resident traders. Additionally, it kept out beggars and criminals. The ditch was likely to have been the responsibility of leaders of the town, sometimes now called a manor or borough. An enclosed manor entitled the residents to have a greater right of citizenship which meant security, responsibility and freedom. They now became burgesses.

 

Plaques giving a version of gates and ditches.

 

Pipe

Between 1140 and 1170, two springs of water at Manor of Pipe (now the Maple Hayes estate) were bought from William Bell of Pipe and the water conveyed through lead pipes, 1½ inches diameter (38 mm) and nicknamed Moses, the 1.4 miles (2.3 k) to the Cathedral Close.[5] It was one of the first medieval piped-water system in Britain. It happened either at the end of the episcopate of Bishop Clinton, or more likely in the time of the following Bishop Durdent since he was at Canterbury when a conduit for water-supply was laid. The original line of the pipe is unknown, but probably entered the close near the north-west corner. This line was later changed and the pipe entered through the Beacon Street west gate. The pipe ended at the stone cross cistern in the north-west corner of the open space in front of the cathedral. In 1786, this was replaced by a cistern and pump and the upper remains of the pump can still be seen. Perhaps the reason to pipe this water was the water near the cathedral had become polluted, possibly from contamination from tanneries and metalworking particularly around Sandford Street. The system was finally abandoned in 1969 after around 800 years of use. The conduit-head still stands in Pipe Park, but no early pipe is known.

Lichfield with new streets, piped water, gates and ditch. It shows prosperity.

Conduit-head in the north-west corner of the Close.

 

Crosses

At the Culstubbe Street gate (St John’s Street) stood two crosses known as Bishop Durdent and Bishop Pucelle, and it might be the gates came later. There were crosses at the other gates and this must have signified to pilgrims they had arrived at Lichfield. The crosses deteriorated with time, or disappeared when knocked down by parliamentarian forces in the Civil War.

 

Streets

If the Cathedral Close was now fortified, it must have been necessary to clear away dwellings close to the previous palisade ditch. Bishop Clinton might have needed to accommodate his soldiers and this necessitated the commandeering of dwellings. So where did the occupants go? Was this the spur to add five or six streets on an east-west axis and at least four streets on a north-south alignment on wet ground south of the cathedral? It was the formation of an early grid-town[6] and has always been ascribed to Clinton’s benevolent plan for Lichfield. It might also have been a consequence of making a garrisoned close. It certainly came towards the end of his episcopate and followed on with the next bishop. Oddly, the new streets were on a low-lying area wet and easily flooded, so why build there and not on higher ground near Gaia or at Borrowcop. It has been noted the new town was roughly equidistant from the communities in the Close, at Sandford and Greenhill.[7]

 

Some accounts have Clinton founding the pilgrim’s house of St John the Baptist in 1135, but the earliest record is a grant given in 1208; an inconsistency mentioned by Harwood.[8] The purpose of the house was to accommodate travellers, especially pilgrims, who arrived when the gates were closed. Its position outside the town enclosure is seen in its current name of St John the Baptist without the Barrs. In 1495, it became an alms-house and hospital providing care, priory, school and home for men.[9]

 

St John the Baptist without the Barrs. Drawing from Lomax 1819

Drawing from Stebbing Shaw 1798 [10]

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[1] Clinton also fortified Coventry as part of the siege during the Anarchy. A ditch 1.58 m deep and 7.5 m wide has been excavated at the cathedral site in Coventry.

[2] OS Antiquity Notes, Staffordshire SMR).

[3] T. H. Turner and J. H. Parker, Some account of domestic architecture in England (vols. I-III, 1851-9), 404.

[4] J. Gould, ‘Lichfield: archaeology and development’. (WEMRAC: 1976).

[5] J. Gould, ‘The twelfth-century water-supply to Lichfield Close’, Antiquaries J, (1976), 56, 1, 73–78.

[6] J. Blair, Building Anglo-Saxon England. (Princeton and Oxford: 2018) thought grids of 12th and 13th century towns were based on irregular parallelograms and conjectured they might have triangulated with ropes which would give poor measuring out. Grids of 40 feet and 41.25 feet have been identified in the street layout.

[7] C. C. Taylor, ‘The origins of Lichfield, Staffordshire’, South Staffordshire Archaeological and Historical Society transaction. (1969), 10, 43–52.

[8] T. Harwood, The history and antiquities of the church and city of Lichfield. (London: 1806).

[9] Clinton has also been linked with the founding of a small Benedictine nunnery at Farewell.

[10] S. Shaw, The history and antiquities of Staffordshire, Volume 1. ( London: 1798).