DOMESTIC BUILDINGS
Fifty or more surviving houses in the city, in
addition to those in the Close, retain at least part
of their timber-framed structure. (fn. 1) They are
generally of two storeys or of two storeys with
attics. Most of the street fronts in the central
area, as in Market Street, Bore Street, Lombard
Street, and Greenhill, are jettied at each floor,
and the roof lines are of continuous gables with
ridges at the same level as that of the main roof.
The gables either rise from just above the jetty,
as at nos. 11 and 13 Market Street, or rest upon a
section of wall, as at no. 16 Market Street.
Where the framing is exposed the gables are
usually the area of most elaborate decoration, in
square panels with shaped braces. Several
houses have herring-bone studding to the first
floor, such as Lichfield House (the Tudor Café)
in Bore Street. (fn. 2) The survival of original framing to the ground floor is not common, but
where it occurs it is undecorated. The few
houses with close studding, such as those in
Vicars' Close (fn. 3) and no. 11 Lombard Street, or
with cruck framing, such as no. 11 Greenhill,
may be earlier than most of the box-framed
buildings, which are probably of the later 16th
and earlier 17th century. A number of that
period in Stowe Street were demolished in the
1960s. (fn. 4)
Despite its local availability there is no evidence for the widespread use of ashlar in domestic buildings. The fact that there were a few
specific references to stone houses in the late
Middle Ages and the 16th century is probably
itself an indication that they were exceptional. A
notable example was the house on the corner of
Beacon Street and Shaw Lane occupied by the
archdeacons of Chester. (fn. 5) The present distribution of timber-framed buildings suggests that
timber remained the usual walling material until
the late 17th century, when it was displaced by
brick. As early as around the end of the 15th
century brick was used for major work such as
St. John's hospital, nos. 23 and 24 the Close, a
house on the site of no. 19 the Close, and the
clerestory of St. Chad's church at Stowe. In
1670 it was used for Minors's School. (fn. 6) Its
general use for houses may have begun with the
building in 1682 of the house for the headmaster
of the grammar school, no. 45 St. John Street,
now part of the offices of Lichfield District
council. (fn. 7) Built of dark red brick, it is of two
storeys with attics and has bracketed eaves and a
hipped roof. The front is of four bays, and the
plan is roughly square, with the stairs at the
centre. The interior was rearranged in the 18th
century; original fittings, mostly plank-built
doors, survive only on the upper floors. The
Deanery (1707) is also of brick, but, like the
bishop's palace, a stone building of 1687, it
belongs more to the country-house tradition
than to town architecture.
The notable feature of Lichfield houses in the
earlier 18th century is the occurrence of baroque
elements in the decoration of the street façades.
The most elaborate is that of Donegal House in
Bore Street, which was built in 1730 for James
Robinson, a mercer, probably to the design of
Francis Smith of Warwick. (fn. 8) The front is of five
bays and three storeys on a basement, and the
ends are marked by pilasters which support a
heavily moulded cornice. The central doorway
has a segmental pediment on Tuscan columns
and supports the cill and architrave of the
central window on the first floor. The window
has a triangular pediment which similarly runs
into the architrave of the corresponding window
on the second floor. That has a shaped head
flanking a prominent keystone which runs into
the cornice. The other windows are without
architraves, but they have elaborately shaped
stone heads with tabled keystones; those on the
two upper floors also have aprons below the
cills. Several original panelled rooms and an
original staircase survive.
Elements of the Donegal House elevation
occur on several other houses but nowhere else
with such richness. Less elaborate shaped window heads are features of nos. 8–10 Bird Street,
no. 17 Bird Street, and no. 15 Market Street.
The use of stone architraves to emphasize the
central bay can be seen at nos. 37–39 Lombard
Street, no. 20 Beacon Street, and nos. 12–14
Conduit Street where the second-floor keystone
rises into a heavily moulded cornice. Concurrently there was a plainer style which continued
the late 17th-century tradition of plain fronts
with dentil cornices below steeply pitched roofs,
such as that at nos. 24–26 Bore Street.
After the mid 18th century the most fashionable element of Lichfield house fronts was the
venetian window, which was either centrally
placed over the entrance, as at no. 73 St. John
Street, or used to light the principal rooms on
the ground and first floors, as at no. 67 St. John
Street (Davidson House) and Darwin House in
Beacon Street. (fn. 9) The latter, dating from c. 1760,
has two other features which were common in
Lichfield at the time and may have continued for
the rest of the century, namely a string course
which continues the line of the first-floor cills
and a shallow cornice supported on curved
brackets. By the later 18th century roof pitches
were generally low, as a result of the use of slate
instead of tile, and even if not hidden by a
parapet they are hardly visible from the street.
Figure 8:
The George Inn
Sophisticated neo-classical decoration is not
common in the city. It appears first at the
George hotel in Bird Street, which has been
described as one of the best late 18th-century
hotel buildings in the country. (fn. 10) It has a front of
three storeys and eleven bays. The five central
bays are rusticated on the ground floor, where
they incorporate the former carriage entrance,
and they have pilasters extending up the second
and third floors, marking the assembly room
within.
The simplest of styles was used for most
houses in the early 19th century. Cornices surviving from that period are shallow and
moulded; there are no architraves to the windows, most of which do not have a keystone; the
entrance is framed by a wooden doorcase which
usually has a plain fanlight. Stuccoed brickwork,
which was used at Westgate House in Beacon
Street probably in the later 18th century, was
occasionally used for architectural effect in the
early 19th century. Examples are the former
National Westminster Bank on the corner of
Bird Street and the Friary and no. 28 St. John
Street, now St. John's preparatory school,
which also has a ground-floor colonnade along
the street front. (fn. 11) Lichfield is unusual in having
no regency terraces; even a designed pair of
houses, such as nos. 48–50 Beacon Street, is
uncommon. The Gothic Revival of the 19th
century made little impact on the city's domestic
architecture. There is a terrace of cottages with
Gothic-style windows in Levetts Fields, built by
the mid 1830s, and Minster Cottage in Minster
Pool Walk is a small Gothic villa of the 1840s in
painted stucco with ornamental bargeboards. (fn. 12)
The multi-coloured brick style of the mid and
later 19th century, which was used in the Corn
Exchange of 1850, (fn. 13) was not adopted for
houses in Lichfield.
In the four main streets of the town centre
(Market Street, Bore Street, Wade Street, and
Frog Lane) it is noticeable that there is no
planned rear access to individual properties.
Many still have service passages, usually at the
side of the site and so leaving the maximum clear
frontage for the house or shop. A few passages
are wide enough for a cart, but most are sufficient only for a pedestrian.
COMMUNICATIONS
The Roman Ryknild Street ran through the
south-east part of the present city, where its line
is preserved by modern roads. (fn. 14) The name was
used in the mid 1270s and in 1442, but in the
14th and early 15th century the road was called
Stony Street. (fn. 15) Before the boundary changes of
1934 and 1980 much of the city boundary followed the line of the road. North-east of
Lichfield the line is followed by the Burton road
which was of importance by the 12th century as
part of the route between the south-west and the
north-east of the country. It was used in 1175
and 1181 by Henry II and on many occasions by
John and Henry III, all of them staying at
Lichfield. (fn. 16) It is indeed probable that Ryknild
Street continued to be important after the
Romano-British period and therefore influenced
the choice of Lichfield as the site for an episcopal seat in the later 7th century. (fn. 17) Further south
it crossed Watling Street near Wall.
The medieval route from London to Chester
and the north-west also ran through Lichfield,
bringing Henry III there many times. (fn. 18) It approached the city from the south over Longbridge, mentioned in the 14th century and presumably then a causeway across marshy ground
by Darnford brook. (fn. 19) In 1575 the city bailiffs
paid for two days' work at Longbridge 'to cast
down the way' in preparation for Elizabeth I's
visit to Lichfield. (fn. 20) Its course from the city's
southern boundary to the bridge was realigned
c. 1700. During a law suit of the 1740s Richard
Dyott of Freeford stated that originally the road
ran across 'low and loamy land' to the west and
was adequate so long as carriage was mainly by
packhorse. With the increase of inland trade,
'particularly the pot trade from Burslem in
Staffordshire and the manufactures between
Manchester and London and other places', the
road became 'cut and galled' by wheeled traffic.
It had a further disadvantage in that it 'went
with an elbow'. The adjoining Old field, which
was used for grazing sheep, was higher ground,
and 'people gradually left the old road and went
directly over the higher ground … and by degrees made that the common road'. (fn. 21)
In the north of the city the road followed
Beacon Street, described as the road to Stafford
in the later 13th century, (fn. 22) and Cross in Hand
Lane. It branched off to follow the lane running
along the north-west boundary which was still
known as Old London Road in 1835. The cross
with the hand which stood at the fork by the
15th century was probably a direction post. (fn. 23) In
1770 the course of the road was straightened to
avoid the hollow way in Cross in Hand Lane by
means of a new line to the east, the present
Stafford Road. (fn. 24)
In 1729 Lichfield became the hub of a system
of turnpike roads. A trust was established that
year to administer the Staffordshire section of
the London-Chester road, the Lichfield-Burton road, the Lichfield-Birmingham road as
far as Shenstone, and the Lichfield-Walsall road
as far as Muckley Corner on Watling Street. (fn. 25)
The road branching from the London-Chester
road and continuing to High Bridges at Handsacre in Armitage was also included. Originally
its route through the city followed Wheel Lane
and Grange Lane, but under an Act of 1783 the
route was changed to Stafford Road and Featherbed Lane on the north-western boundary. (fn. 26)
The Lichfield-Tamworth road was turnpiked in
1770. (fn. 27) The sections of the turnpike roads
through the city centre were exempted from the
jurisdiction of the turnpike trustees, who in
1757 declared them to be 'the streets within the
bar gates'. (fn. 28) The Lichfield Improvement Act of
1806 gave the improvement commissioners control of those streets and of the streets in the
suburbs; in 1833 the suburbs were defined by
the trustees as extending to the Wheel inn in
Beacon Street on the north, the Roman Catholic
chapel in St. John Street on the south, St.
Michael's lich gates on the east, and the brook in
Queen Street on the west. (fn. 29) The Lichfield part
of the London-Chester road was disturnpiked
in 1870, along with Featherbed Lane. The
Shenstone road was disturnpiked in 1875, the
Burton and Muckley Corner roads in 1879, and
the Tamworth road in 1882. (fn. 30)
A tollhouse had been established by the early
1730s on the corner of Beacon Street and Wheel
Lane with gates across each road. (fn. 31) People coming into the city from a short distance outside
objected to having to pay tolls there, and in 1766
an attempt was made to replace the house and
gates with two others on the city boundary. (fn. 32) The
attempt was unsuccessful, but in 1782 the gates
were removed and replaced by others further
north outside the city. (fn. 33)
The bridge in Bird Street was at first too
narrow for coaches, which had to go round by
Bore Street, Lombard Street, Stowe Street, and
Gaia Lane. The bridge was widened by the
Conduit Lands trustees in the late 1760s so that
coaches could use Bird Street. (fn. 34) It remained
unsatisfactory, and the approach along Bird
Street was still narrow. The 1806 Act empowered the improvement commissioners to rebuild
the bridge. They lacked the funds to do so, and
in 1815 another Act established a special commission to rebuild it. (fn. 35) Work began in 1816 to the
design of Joseph Potter the elder and was
finished in 1817. To raise the necessary money a
tollgate was erected near the junction of Beacon
Street and Gaia Lane; it was still in use in 1824. (fn. 36)
In addition Bird Street was widened. (fn. 37)
Other road improvements were carried out
under an Act of 1832. (fn. 38) On the Muckley Corner
road Queen Street (so named by 1841) and its
Walsall Road extension were built to bypass the
curve along Lower Sandford Street and through
Leomansley; one aim was to make access to the
city easier for coal carts. (fn. 39) On the Burton road
Trent Valley Road and its continuation into
Streethay replaced the route along Burton Old
Road and part of the former Ryknild Street. (fn. 40)
Several relief roads have been built in the 20th
century. (fn. 41)
Lichfield was a post town on the route between London and Ireland by the later 1570s. (fn. 42)
It was on the route of coaches between London
and Chester in the late 1650s. (fn. 43) James Rixam,
who was junior bailiff in 1656–7, operated as a
carrier between Lichfield and London in 1662,
and in 1681 William Old ran a service to
London and back every three weeks. (fn. 44) The main
coaching inns were the Swan and the George,
both in Bird Street. The Swan existed as an inn
by 1362, although the present building dates
from the late 18th century; the London coach
called there by 1662. It was closed as an hotel in
1988. (fn. 45) The George existed by 1498, and it too is
a late 18th-century building. (fn. 46)
In the earlier 1790s the three principal inns
were the George, the Swan, and the Talbot on
the corner of Bird Street and Bore Street. Converted from a private house between 1760 and
1772, the Talbot, unlike the other two, catered
only 'for gentlemen on horseback'. The
London-Chester and London-Liverpool mail
coaches passed through in each direction every
day. Another coach between London and Liverpool also passed through daily in each direction,
while the Royal Chester coach from London
called every other weekday and returned on the
following days. There was a coach running from
Birmingham to Sheffield and back six days a
week, and another from Birmingham to Manchester and back three days a week. A waggon
left for London from the Goat's Head in Breadmarket Street every Monday. (fn. 47)
In the mid 1830s Lichfield was still much
frequented by travellers, both on the route between London and Liverpool (rather than
Chester) and on that between Birmingham and
the West Riding of Yorkshire. The coaching
inns were the George, the Swan, the Talbot, the
Old Crown in Bore Street, in existence by 1722,
and the King's Head in Bird Street, known as
such by 1694 but in existence as the Antelope by
1495 and later called the Bush. Carriers operated from the King's Head, the Goat's Head, the
Turk's Head in Sandford Street, the Scales in
Market Street, the Dolphin and the Woolpack,
both in Bore Street, and the Coach and Horses
and the Lord Nelson, both in St. John Street. (fn. 48)
The railways put at end to Lichfield's longdistance coaches, even before there was a railway through the city. The last such coach
through Lichfield, the Chester mail, was discontinued in 1838. Instead coaches were introduced
that year running to the railway station at Stafford and to the unfinished London-Birmingham
line at Denbigh Hall near Bletchley (Bucks.). (fn. 49)
In 1841 there were omnibuses to Birmingham,
Rugeley, and Tamworth, and although in 1844
there were still coaches to Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Stafford, and Uttoxeter, by 1850 there
were only omnibuses. One ran to Birmingham,
and the others ran from the George and the
Swan to Lichfield's two railway stations. (fn. 50) The
Birmingham omnibus ceased running c. 1870,
and by 1912 the George omnibus served City
station and that from the Swan Trent Valley
station. (fn. 51)
The first Lichfield motor bus, running to
Whittington, was introduced in 1913 by Jones &
Co., a firm of motor-car hirers in Bird Street. By
1916 there was a service to Tamworth from
Market Square, and in the earlier 1920s motor
buses ran from Lichfield to many parts of the
county. (fn. 52) A service was introduced between
Lichfield and Walsall in 1927 and one between
Lichfield and Hanley in 1931. (fn. 53) The omnibus
from the Swan ceased to operate in 1923, and
that from the George evidently stopped running
soon afterwards. (fn. 54) Buses were transferred from
Market Square to a bus station in the Friary
opened in 1952 as a temporary measure; the
Walsall buses continued to use a terminus out
side City station. (fn. 55) A permanent station was
opened in the new stretch of Birmingham Road
opposite the station c. 1964. (fn. 56)
In 1759 a canal was proposed from Minster
Pool or Stowe Pool to the Trent at Weston
(Derb.), but the scheme came to nothing. (fn. 57) In the
1760s and 1770s there were two other schemes,
also unsuccessful, for canals via Lichfield linking
Birmingham and the Black Country with the
Trent and Mersey Canal, completed in 1777. (fn. 58)
There was, however, a wharf on the Trent and
Mersey at King's Bromley which served the city,
and the opening of the canal greatly reduced the
cost of carriage between Manchester and Lichfield. (fn. 59) The stretch of the Coventry Canal east of
the city was completed in 1788, and by 1817 there
was a wharf on the Burton road on the StreethayWhittington boundary. (fn. 60) The Wyrley and Essington Canal, opened from the Birmingham
Canal near Wolverhampton to the Coventry
Canal at Huddlesford in Whittington in 1797, ran
through the south side of the city. By 1799 cheap
coal was being sold at a wharf provided by the
corporation. (fn. 61) In 1817 it was stated that an
average of 606 boats a year were unloading
10,302 tons of goods at the six or more wharfs in
the city; the two busiest were those on either side
of London Road. (fn. 62) The Lichfield stretch of the
canal was closed in 1954, but for many years
previously it had been used only by maintenance
boats. Part of it was filled in soon after its
closure. (fn. 63)
The Trent Valley Railway from Stafford to
the Birmingham-London line at Rugby was
opened along the north-east boundary of the city
in 1847, with a station and station master's
house north of the Burton road on the Streethay
side of the boundary. The railway's distance
from the city centre seems to have been the
result of geographical considerations rather than
local opposition. (fn. 64) In 1849 the South Staffordshire Railway from Walsall to the Midland
Railway at Wychnor, in Tatenhill, was opened
through Lichfield. It had a station, City, east of
St. John Street and another, Trent Valley Junction, near the point in Streethay where it crossed
the Trent Valley Railway. (fn. 65) City station was
rebuilt in 1884 when the line from Birmingham
to Sutton Coldfield was extended to join the
South Staffordshire line at Lichfield. (fn. 66) The
bridge by which the railway crosses St. John
Street dates from 1849. It was designed by
Thomas Johnson of Lichfield to evoke a city
gate, with battlements, heraldic decoration, and
side towers containing multi-arched pedestrian
ways. It was extensively altered when the track
was widened for the line from Birmingham; the
pedestrian ways were removed in 1969. (fn. 67)
The two stations in Streethay were replaced
in 1871 by a single Trent Valley station where
the lines cross. Low Level and High Level
platforms served the Trent Valley and the South
Staffordshire lines respectively. (fn. 68) The Trent
Valley station of 1847 was retained as the station
master's house; it was demolished in 1971. (fn. 69)
The High Level was closed in 1965; its buildings had been burnt down some years before and
had not been replaced. The Low Level buildings were demolished in 1969 and rebuilt on a
modest scale. (fn. 70) The line to Walsall was closed
for passengers in 1965 and for freight in 1984,
although it continued to serve an oil depot at
Brownhills. (fn. 71) In 1988 the Trent Valley High
Level platforms were reopened for passengers
and the service between Birmingham and Lichfield City was extended there. (fn. 72)