THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF
LICHFIELD
A DESCRIPTION OF ITS FABRIC
AND A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE
EPISCOPAL SEE

BY
A. B. CLIFTON

WITH FORTY ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON, GEORGE BELL & SONS, 1900

First published February 1898
Second Edition revised February 1900

W. H. WHITE AND CO., LTD.
RIVERSIDE PRESS, EDINBURGH

GENERAL PREFACE

This series of monographs has been planned to supply visitors to the great English Cathedrals with accurate and well illustrated guide-books at a popular price. The aim of each writer has been to produce a work compiled with sufficient knowledge and scholarship to be of value to the student of Archaeology and History, and yet not too technical in language for the use of an ordinary visitor or tourist.

To specify all the authorities which have been made use of in each case would be difficult and tedious in this place. But amongst the general sources of information which have been almost invariably found useful are:—(1) the great county histories, the value of which, especially in questions of genealogy and local records, is generally recognised; (2) the numerous papers by experts which appear from time to time in the Transactions of the Antiquarian and Archaeological Societies; (3) the important documents made accessible in the series issued by the Master of the Rolls; (4) the well-known works of Britton and Willis on the English Cathedrals; and (5) the very excellent series of Handbooks to the Cathedrals originated by the late Mr John Murray; to which the reader may in most cases be referred for fuller detail, especially in reference to the histories of the respective sees.

Gleeson White,
Edward E. F. Strange,
Editors of the Series.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

Concerning any old Cathedral the mass of information is very great, and the authorities to be consulted many; and perhaps the almost total absence—as in this case—of a documentary history of the building of the fabric, makes for a larger bulk of pamphlets and of communications to the antiquarian journals. Whether or no theory be wiser than fact, it is certainly more voluminous. Besides the books and papers mentioned in their place, I have especially to express my indebtedness to the work on Lichfield by the Rev. William Beresford, one of the "Diocesan Histories" Series, and to the "Handbook of Lichfield Cathedral" by the late John Hewitt, the well-known antiquarian. I have also to thank Mr R. R. Redmayne of Lichfield for much valuable information, as also Mr C. Harradine, the Principal Verger, whose interest in and knowledge of the Cathedral are well known in Lichfield; and the Photochrom Co. Ltd., Messrs S. B. Bolas & Co., and Mr F. G. M. Beaumont, for the excellent photographs they have allowed me to reproduce.

A. B. Clifton.

CONTENTS