Summary. Three explanations for the origin of Lichfield’s name are given. The site of the 7th-century church-cathedral was named Licetfelda which persisted to the 11th-century. By the 12th century the prefix Lich sometimes appeared and by the 16th-century Lych was widely used. By the 17th-century Lichfield was the established name.
The origin of the name Lichfield
has been explained with three convoluted interpretations. All three are
based on the topography of the area. Johnson conjectured whether Lichfield was
a toponym that began as an area-name and became a later settlement-name.[1]
The many derivations have been reviewed by Greenslade.[2]
1.
The colour of
trees
The name came from a
Celtic-Anglo-Saxon hybrid with Lich derived from the Celtic word Luitcoit meaning grey wood. The colour being
the predominant species or was it describing lichen-covered trees[3]. The
University of Nottingham ‘Key to English Place Names’ described Lichfield as a
grey wood using lēto as a British
prefix for grey and cē,d as primitive
Welsh for forest or wood coming together to give Lyccid. Six references were given[4]. It
was also suggested a grey wood description could be applied to Roman Letocetum
(Wall).[5]
This interpretation is odd for the
following reasons:
·
Lichfield
could not have been a Welsh settlement in the mid-seventh century[6]. It is
possible this etymological explanation applied to a settlement name before the
seventh century, but such a settlement has not been established.
·
Having the first part of the name meaning grey
wood and the second part being fields or pasture is conflicting.
·
The settlement was in a large open field
alongside a river and marsh and there was no wood. Around the flat valley could
have been a dense wood of probably pine trees on the sandy soil and this does
not sound like a grey area.
·
Lichfield starts as the Mercian ecclesiastical
centre of the sixth diocese initiated by Kings Wulfhere and then Æthelred so why give such an
ephemeral name as grey to a growing kingdom.
2.
A watery area
Antiquarians
emphasised the watery nature of the area; Litchfield in 1776 was
described as built in the middle of a bog.[7] They
connected Lich to the Old English words lǽce meaning leech,
lecce meaning water and lacu indicating a pool, pond or lake.[8]
Shaw[9]
claimed the cities name comes from its watery situation, and Saxon Liccian
signified water, or land with water.
Rawson, 1840,[10] emphasised the abundant pools and streams distinguishing Licetfeld and one of his drawings, dated 1300, shows this importance. 1 was named the upper pool, 2 was the middle pool and 3 Stowe pool, originally called Stowe Pool Waste Ground, 4 represented Stowe surrounded by a ditch. 5 was the Cathedral Close surrounded by a ditch. 6 was labelled St Marys and the Friary surrounded by water. 7 were pools in the bishop’s marsh.
This interpretation is odd because,
· Why have the first part of the name referring to water and the second part referring to fields or pasture. Duignan thought Lichfield meant a ‘boggy field’.
· It is impossible to connect etymologically lǽce to Lich. Sounding the same is not enough.
· The hostile kings of Mercia would not want their spiritual centre described as watery.
3.
An approved place to
build a cathedral-church.
King Wulfhere with Bishop Wilfrid
of Ripon fixed the site for a new church-cathedral on a sandstone bluff
overlooking a river and marshy area.[11] Bede
in his book on the history of the English people, 731, used an adjective to
describe the site, and that was Licitfelda, later spelt as Licetfelda.[12]
Licit, later Licet, meant approval for a Christian site in a field
to build a church-cathedral. It had
theological approval. See the posts, ‘Wulfhere and Wilfrid, and later Bede,
name Lichfield,’ also ‘Why Licitfelda was approved’, for a full
reasoning. From the 7th to the 11th-century Licetfelda was usually
Lichfield’s name. A charter in St Chad’s Gospels, S1462a, dated 1017-27 has
Bishop Leofgar with the older name Licitfelda.
The problem with this first
millennium explanation for the name does not accord for the change from Licet
to Lich. In the second millennium the name is recast; though exactly
when the soft-sounding Licet became the harsher Lich is
uncertain.
The
evolution of the name
In the 1086 Domesday Book, Lichfield was spelt
Lecefelle, Licefelle and Licefeld,[13]
and clearly the name was going through some kind of recasting.
Domesday spelling.
In William of Malmesbury’s ‘Gesta
Pontificum Anglorum,’ written early in the 12th-century it was spelt Lichefeld
(Lichefeldensis). Matthew Paris, c. 1200–1259, a chronicler for
St Albans Abbey wrote in a margin of his copy of the ‘Book of St Albans’
the name of Lichefeld and Lichfeld.[14]
Johnson[15]
stated, “Antiquarian speculation on the meaning of the name may even have been
partly responsible for the emergence in the 12th-century of the modern spelling
of the name.”
Matthew Paris gave one
explanation for the morphing of the name. He conjectured a fabled battle in the 3rd or 4th-century resulting in the
death of a thousand Christians was located at Lichfield. Lichfield was
now taken by Paris as once being the site of a field of corpses.[16]
Thus Liche, meaning corpse, was linked to a folklore story of
slaughtered Christians somewhere in the area, see the post, ‘Lichfield's
founding myth’.
Book of St Albans marginalia. Hoc apud Lichefeld evenit. Inde Lichfeld dicitur quasi campus cadaverum. Lich enim Anglice cadaver sive corpus mortui dicitur.
A manuscript fragment dealing
with the topography of Lichfield survived among the cathedral muniments in the
17th-century but has since been lost. It was almost certainly compiled in the
mid or late 13th-century, probably in Lichfield. It claimed the city was named in
Latin Lichfeldensis because once upon a time a battle had been fought
there.[17]
It appears that despite this association with a battle the uptake of Lich was
not universal and immediate. According to Duignan[18]
in the 12th-century, the variants of the name were Lechesfelde, Lichesfelde,
Lichefelde and Licheffeld. The royal clerks preferred Liche,
and the variants Lichesfeld and Licheffeld.[19]
A grant from King Richard I to Bishop Muschamp dated 1202 has Lichefeld.[20]
In the 13th-century it was Lychefelde and Lichefeld. A
cartulary of Tutbury Priory, 1253, has the name abbreviated to Lich. In
1301, five citizens gave some land to obtain rent and pay for maintenance of a
water conduit in Lychefeld. All the names could be harking to a corpse,
but that is uncertain.
In the Takamiya MS 62 of Bede’s Historia
Ecclesiastica, dated 1375‑1400,[21]
the spellings of Lindfsi, Lindfelth and Lythfeld are handwritten in the margin,
and this might still be a transitional time of spelling, or the writer was
uncertain of the name.
Marginalia in the Takamiya MS
Throughout this time of spelling
Lichfield in various ways, its association with death and corpses persisted. It
appears to be widely accepted by the 16th-century. In churchwarden’s accounts for 1544-7 the
prefix is Lych, as in Lychffeld, Lychffelde and Lychfeld.[22]
In the 16th-century editions of Foxe’s
‘Book of Martyrs’ the spellings were Lychefield, Lichefield and Lichfield.
Wiliiam Whitelocke’s 16th-century book, MS Ashmole 770, was titled Chronicon
Lichfeldensis ecclesiae. By the 17th and 18th-century the town’s name was
written Lichesfeld,[23]
Lichfeld,[24]
and Litchfield.[25],[26],[27] The
current spelling of the name was finally established in Samuel Johnson’s
dictionary, 1755. He defined Lichfield, as the field of the dead, a
city in Staffordshire, so named from martyred Christians.
City arms on c.1720 map showing martyred Christians.
Using Lich denoting death and recasting an Early Medieval name seems odd, but the story of slaughtered Christians and their burial somewhere in Lichfield was fervently believed for at least five medieval centuries. Some must have reasoned a gory ‘founding myth’ attracted visitors or raised sympathy for the resident Christians? Did martyrdom chime with outbreaks of the plague, loss from the great 1291 town fire, or the slaughter in the Civil War? Could be the early origin of the name and association with disliked bishops was a preferred re-interpretation by the dissident townspeople. Maybe it was another example of removing Saxon tropes and adding Norman. It is even possible the change from written Latin to spoken Middle English caused a poor translation and the recast name simply evolved. Whatever the mechanism it is clear the name has been recast, and perhaps it was recast several times.
Summary of the evolution of the name
[1]
D. Johnson, 'Lichfield and St Amphibalus: the story of a legend', South
Staffordshire Archaeological and Historical Society Transactions 1986--1987,
(1988), XXVIII,1.
[2]
M. W. Greenslade (ed.), 'Lichfield: The place and street names, population and
boundaries ', in A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 14,
Lichfield, (London, 1990), 37-42.
[3]
D. Horovitz, D. A survey and analysis of the place names of Staffordshire. Unpub.
PH.D. thesis University of Nottingham, (2003), 27. A grey-brown wood was first
suggested by A. L. F. Rivet and C. Smith, The place-names of Roman Britain (Princeton:
1979), 386–387.
[4]
V. Watts, Cambridge dictionary of English place-names (Cambridge: 2007), 372; R. Coates, A. Breeze and D. Horovitz, Celtic
voices. English places: Studies of the Celtic impact on place names in England (
Donington: 2000), 335; E. Ekwall, The concise Oxford dictionary of
English place-names (Oxford: 1960), 297: K. Cameron, A dictionary of Lincolnshire
place-names (Nottingham: English place-name Society:1998), 223, 275: A. D. Mills,
A dictionary of English place-names (Oxford: 1991), 298 and M. Gelling, Signposts
to the past (Bognor Regis: 2010), 57, 100–1.
[5]
J. Gould, 'Caer Lwytgoed: its significance in early medieval documents', Transactions
of South Staffordshire Archaeological and Historical Society, 1991-1992, (1993),
33, 7–8.
[6]
W. H. Duignan, Notes on Staffordshire Place Names (Oxford: 1902).91.
[7]
W. Stukeley, W, Itinerarium Curiosum: or an account of the antiquities and
remarkable curiosities in nature and art observed in travels through Great
Britain (London: 1776), 61.
[8]
T. Harwood, The history and antiquities of the church and city of Lichfield (London:
1806), 2.
[9]
S. Shaw, ‘The history and antiquities of Staffordshire. Compiled from the
manuscripts of Huntbach, Loxdale, Bishop Lyttelton. ‘(1798), vol. 1, 231.
[10]
J. Rawson, An Inquiry into the History And Influence of the Lichfield Waters
(Lichfield: 1840)
[11]
Described in the biography of Bishop Wilfrid written by a monk at Ripon called
Stephanus and published 712–3. Title was Victa Sancti Wilfridi I. Episcopi
Eboracensis. It has been translated by B. Colgrave The life of Bishop
Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus (Cambridge: 1985).
[12]
J. McClure and R. Collins, Bede. The Ecclesiastical history of the
English People, (Oxford, 2008). Book IV, Ch. 3, 174. The edition of McClure
and Collins is based on the translation by Bertram Colgrave for the Oxford
Medieval Texts first published in 1969. Bede listed
this work as Historiam ecclesiasticam nostræ insulæ ac gentis in libris V, which
translates to The ecclesiastical history of our island and nation in five
books.
[13]
Folio 247r Domesday Book, National Archives reference E 31/2/2/1932.
[14]
Matthew's interest in etymologies occurs on fol. 25v, digital image 57 of the
Book of St Albans in the library of Trinity College Dublin.
[15]
D. Johnson, (1988), 28, 1. See note 1
[16]
See note 1, D. Johnson (1988),5.
[17]
Ibid D. Johnson, (1988), 28, 6. The fragment was
first printed, apparently from the original MS., by Sir William Dugdale, Monastic
on Anglicanum, iii (1673 ed.), 219. The transcript contains demonstrable errors
elsewhere and is evidently not by Dugdale.
[18]
W. H. Duignan, (1902), 91. See note 6.
[19]
Ibid D. Johnson (1988), 2. See note 1.
[20]
Magnum Registrum Album 223.
[21]
Kept in the Beinicke Library, Yale University. The name is on 48r page, digital
image 99.
[22]
Yoxall Churchwardens’ Accounts, 1541–55 Staffordshire Record Office, D. (W.)
1851/1/13/20.
[23]
H. Wharton, Anglia Sacra. Volume 1 (London: 1691).
[24]
R. Plot, The Natural History of Staffordshire (Oxford: 1686)
[25]
W. Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum (1673). Volume 6, part 3, 1238. See
note 13.
[26]
W. Stukeley, (1776), see note 7.
[27]
T. Cox, Survey of the ancient and present state of Great Britain. (London:
1738).