The second cathedral has to be Early Medieval.

Summary.  Size, dimensions, shape, and structure of a foundation found under the choir floor in 1854 point to it being Early Medieval.

In 1851, plans were made for an extensive restoration of the cathedral including the installation of a heating system.  In the course of the work foundations for two earlier buildings were revealed. A detailed survey of the foundation walls was made by the stonemason John Hamlet with assistance given by James Rawson a local physician and George Clarke, the clerk of works to George Gilbert Scott the architect for the restoration. A large drawing showed a well-defined, large choir foundation wall continuous with an apsidal ending. Abutted, but not attached, to this apsidal ending was a rectangular chapel.^[1] Revd Robert Willis, 1800–75, an authority on church architecture, visited the Cathedral for two days in August 1859.^[2] He saw the foundations resting on the sandstone bedrock 1.5‑2.1 m (5–7 ft) below the pavement of the side aisles of the current cathedral, took measurements, made observations, and published his interpretation in 1861.^[3] 

 Foundation of the choir-apse and abutting rectangular chamber superimposed on the plan of the current cathedral.

 Robert Willis

 

Choir 1860 with its floor uncovered.

 

Willis’s drawing of the choir-apse foundation with dimensions. The foundation was internally 15.9 m (52 ft 3 in.) wide and 21.4 m (70 ft 1.5 in.) long. The outer boundary of its lateral walls ‘seemed to lie’ in contact with the bench table of the side aisles of the current cathedral.^[4] Both the north and south walls measured 1.7 m (5 ft 8.5 in.) in width which gave a total span for the choir-apse of 19.4 m (63 ft 8 in.). Willis measured the foundation height as c. 1.8 m (6 ft).

   

      The remarkable size of the choir-apse foundation was too great to have sustained a roof without internal pillars, so Willis imagined it had an inner apse of pier arches supporting the roof. Willis found ‘no architectural detail’ to fix a date of build for the foundation and concluded it was of ‘uncertain date,’ Despite this he called it a Norman church, presumably reasoning such a large choir-apse in stone would be extraordinary for an Early Medieval building; there was nothing comparable. In the 1990s, part of the foundation was seen again and its exceptional size merited the labels ‘massive’ and ‘a great apse’. Rodwell fixed a start of build in 1085 and described it as Norman Romanesque in style.^[5] Willis had conjectured the inner columns were wood, but Rodwell saw them as drum columns, 1.5 m in diameter. Roofing material has not been found apart from small amounts of Roman brick and tile,^[6] which could have come from the first 7th-century cathedral.^[7]

 

Photograph taken 1994 of the foundation in the north choir aisle.

          The foundation was in a basilical shape with the perfectly semi-circular apse having the same width of the side walls. There is no other foundation of a cathedral in Britain like this, but Early Medieval cathedrals, 8th and 9th-century are similar. See the post, ‘The incomparable apse of the second cathedral.’

 

The nature of the foundation was atypical, being well mortared, buff-cream, dense, and described as like concrete. During the 1856 installation of heating ducts, men had to force a way through concrete of ‘unusual hardness’.^[8] Willis noted the wall had rough masonry in courses about 150 mm (6 in.) high. He thought the external face ‘appeared intended to receive a coat of plaster’. Rodwell described the lower levels as layers of mortared rubble. The upper layers were faced with rough ashlar behind which was a poured concrete core, of such strength that it was assiduously avoided by grave-diggers of all periods. It was an immensely strong monolithic construction comprising lime mortar and rubble poured into a trench.^[9] It was like a section of an apse uncovered at Rochester, part of an early 7th-century church.^[10]  The use of rubble in the foundation resembles Clapham’s description of the early 9th-century crypt at Wing church, Buckinghamshire, in which the whole structure was built of the rudest rubble masonry with barrel vaulting in the same material.^[11] Examination of the foundations at Deerhurst found they all contained 5ft or more of coursed rubble laid in trenches with good mortar. Similarly, the walls at Brixworth contained random rubble.^[12] It needs noting there was no mention of uniform, dressed stone, typical of post 10th-century Anglo-Norman buildings.^[13]

 

A very simple radiocarbon dating of the mortar would give resolution for the date of the cathedral. The foundation is a mere 300 mm below the floor of the choir aisle floor. Extracting two samples should be straightforward and having them dated would cost around £2.5K (2022 costing). Not only would the dating improve the history of the cathedral, but it would generate interest in the cathedral. Annual visitor numbers to Leicester Cathedral after finding the skeleton of King Richard II increased from 30K to 160K. If the second cathedral was built by Offa, it adds knowledge of a king who changed England.

 

[1] John Hamlet’s ‘General plan shewing the position of old foundation as discovered during progress of excavations for hot air flues’ is held in the Staffordshire Record Office LD 289/16. The drawing has a few revisions with pen overlaying pencil. Willis’s notes are kept in Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS 5042, with the title ‘Architectural drawings and notes of Lichfield Cathedral 1861‑64’. Willis saw only the south east part of the apse. The greatest amount of the foundation wall was observed by Rawson and Hamlet in 1856 and 1860. Map reference for the apse is SK1159 0978 and the chamber is SK1157 0977.

[2]  A. R. Dufty, ‘Lichfield Cathedral’ in The Archaeol. J., 120 Report of the Summer Meeting of the Royal Archaeological Institute at Keele in 1963 (1963), 294.4

[3] R. Willis, ‘On foundations of early buildings recently discovered in Lichfield Cathedral’ The Archaeol. J. (1861) 18, 1–24. Willis visited the Cathedral in 1849 to examine window tracery. In 1854, he was invited to forward a drawing for the restoration of the choir area. Before publication Willis gave a lecture reported in The Gentleman’s Magazine, March 1861, vol 210, 296‑300.

[4] ‘Seemed to lie’ was Willis’s phrase. The gap between the lateral wall and cathedral wall is estimated to be

 c. 180 mm (7 in.). Hamlet’s drawing showed the bottom of the foundation was wider than the top.

[5] Fragments of moulded masonry identified as Romanesque were found Rodwell 1992a, 29; R. K. Morris, ‘The lapidary collections of Lichfield Cathedral’, in J. Maddison ed., 13th Medieval Archaeology and Architecture at Lichfield (Leeds: The British Archaeological Association 1993), 101–108; Rodwell 1994, 29.

[6] Rodwell 1992a, 28

[7] Hamlet noted on his drawing a clay pit that contained a quantity of molten lead. Was this for the roof?

[8] J. G. Lonsdale, Recollections of work done in and upon Lichfield Cathedral from 1856—1894 (Lichfield 1895), 6.

[9] W. Rodwell, ‘An interim report on archaeological excavations in the south quire aisle of Lichfield Cathedral’, (Unpub. report held in Lichfield Cathedral Library 1992b), 4; W. Rodwell, J. Hawkes, E. Howe and R. Cramp, ‘The Lichfield Angel: A spectacular Anglo-Saxon painted sculpture.’ The Antiquaries Journal (2008), 88, 51 note 24.

[10] G. M. Livett, ‘Foundations of the Saxon Cathedral Church at Rochester’ Archaeologia Cantiana (1889) 18, 264.

[11] A.W. Clapham, English Romanesque architecture (Oxford 1930), 156.

[12] H. M. Taylor, Anglo-Saxon architecture: vol III (Cambridge 1978), 761 and 964.

[13] H. M. Taylor and J. Taylor, Anglo-Saxon architecture: vols I and II (Cambridge 1965), 7 and 1978, 756.