Preamble
Material in the following paragraphs is repeated from an earlier post as an introduction to Stephen Glynne and his church notes.
The Glynne Baronetcy dates back to 1661, with its main estate at Hawarden in Flintshire. The 8th Baronet, Sir Stephen Glynne (1780 to 1815) married Mary Griffin, daughter of Lord Braybrooke. After his early death, he was succeeded by his son Sir Stephen Richard Glynne, the 9th Baronet (1807-1874). I first came across him as the owner of the Oak Farm Iron Works in the Black Country, which was the subject of a spectacular financial crash. Glyne was saved from financial ruin by the efforts of his brother-in-law, the future Prime Minister William Gladstone, at very considerable expense to the latter.
More widely, Stephen Glynne is best known as a church antiquarian. Over the course of his adult lifetime he visited over 5000 churches in England and Wales, making notes, and in some cases sketches of their architecture, plans and furnishings. These notes can be found in 106 volumes now housed in the Gladstone Library at Hawarden. Only a small minority of these have been transcribed and published. Here we give a transcript of his notes for St. Michael’s in Lichfield. The history of the church is set out in detail in my four part ebook. The restoration of the early 1840s, which is of relevance to what follows, is described in Part 3. At that time the Lichfield Society for the Encouragement of Ecclesiastical Architecture were instrumental in the rebuilding of the church (and the chancel in particular) in the prevailing gothic fashion.
Stephen Glynne’s description of St. Michael’s, Lichfield
Stephen Glynne’s notes on St. Michael’s church in Lichfield are brief and mainly straightforward. They are oddly dated 1827 and 1849, but the description is clearly from a visit in 1849 after the extensive “restorations” of the early 1840s. There are a couple of entries on a blank facing page however that refer to the pre-restoration church and that might refer to an 1827 visit (given at the end of the transcript below).
The transcript
The church is conspicuously situated on the eminence called the Greenhill at the eastern extremity of the city within a very spacious cemetery commanding pleasing views of the Cathedral and surrounding county. The church is of the usual form with aisles and clerestory to the nave and a western tower with stone spire. But with the exception of the steeple, the whole church has been lately almost entirely renewed and in great measure rebuilt in tolerably good style. The steeple which is of red sandstone, appears to be a three ?? (1) of plain kind. The tower is embattled with corner buttresses, a string course under the belfry only. The belfry windows of two lights on the north and south is a long ??? slot -a questionable lancet on the west, but no west door. The spire is octagonal but not ribbed, having three horizontal bands and two tiers of spire lights, which are on the same sides. The north aisle, as rebuilt, has a low pitched roof and a battlement with three Perpendicular windows. The south aisle is wider and loftier with a high pitched roof and Perpendicular windows, varying in tracery. At the east end has been added a gabled chamber for receiving the Organ (2). The nave is of four bays, the arcades with pointed arches and octagon columns. The chancel has been wholly rebuilt in the Perpendicular style – its east window a triplet and on each side three single lancets. The chancel is groined, the ribs springing from shafts (3). The clerestory of the nave has a high pitched tiled roof and windows of two lights. The north porch is set in the western bay .
(4) The ancient chancel had a three ?? (1) east window, and the former chancel, as appears from a view in Shaw’s Staffordshire, had a quasi clerestory, an upper tier of windows. The whole of the former church was perpendicular.
Notes
1. This symbol can’t be read, but it is the same at both places where it occurs.
2. The description of the church matches what can be seen today, with one exception – the description of a gabled chamber for the organ. This clearly refers to a structure that was replaced by the current choir vestry in 1923 ad can be seen inthe foreground of the picture above.
3. The restored chancel was itself significantly altered in the late nineteenth century, with much of the work of the 1840 restorers removed or altered.
4. The text in this paragraph probably refers to an 1827 visit.
Engineering, history and ecclesiology 
