I have recently come across a bound copy of the church magazines from 1889 to 1892. In this article I will share some items of interest that I found there – some that will describe situations that will be very familiar to the current congregation and some that are rather strange in modern terms.

The vicar for those years was the Rev. Cyril Hubbard, an old Etonian who the census tells us lived at the Rectory in Mount Pleasant with his wife, two children and four servants (!), and had been Rector since 1886. He seems to have been the driving force behind the magazine and wrote an article each month – a mix of devotional and news material. He was particularly concerned to increase the number of communicants, but also to repair and restore the tower and the chancel which were in a poor state of repair – more of this below. As ever, there were financial issues, and not infrequent requests for subscriptions to projects and for increased weekly offerings.  In the November 1892 magazine he both announced that he was leaving the parish and also named his successor who had been appointed by the Bishop of Lichfield – Rev Otho Steele from Hanley. He was to leave early in 1893, and Rev Steel took up the post very soon afterwards. It doesn’t happen like that these days!

There were also services on Wednesday evenings at 7.30 in church, and on Tuesday evenings at 7.30 in St. John’s St., and in Streethay. It is not clear where the latter were held – presumably in hired rooms?  Sunday Schools were held in the School at 9.30 and 2.30, and also in St John’s St. and occasionally Streethay at 2.30. There were a number of regular Monday meetings – a Clothing Club at the School from 12.00 to 1.00, three Mothers meetings at the Rectory, City Mill, and Birmingham Road Barracks at 2.00, and a Band of Hope Meeting (a young person’s temperance society) at 6.00 in the School. On Saints’ days there was a service of Mattins at 9.00. The Rev Hubbard and his congregation were not idle!

In addition to all the above there were occasional lectures, bible studies, concerts and so on. Of particular interest were the Smoking Concerts for men, where the entrance fee was 2d, for which they received 1d worth of tobacco and the rest being spent on the hired room and heating. Newspapers and board games were provided, and those who came entertained each other with song and rhymes (in a fog of tobacco smoke one assumes). The annual Vestry meeting took pace just after Easter, for the election of Churchwardens and presentation of their accounts; and the election of sidesmen for the parish and for the surrounding hamlets – Streethay, Fulfen, Tamhorn, Freeford, Statfold and Fisherwick. Sidesmen had a more representative role in that period than their current role as being welcomers into church. The churchwardens accounts for 1890 show a total income of £204 with £70 from St. Michael’s Trust, £52 from the offertory and £45 from burial and other fees; and an expenditure of £165 with £37 being spent on the organist and choir, £51 on the Sexton’s wages; £25 on the heating and cleaning; and £18 on “making a new carriage road to the church door”. There were special collections for charities such as “Waifs and Strays”, CMS, the clothing club et.c of £32 in total.

At the start of the period covered by the magazines, both the tower and the chancel were in a poor state of repair and it had become inadvisable to ring the bells except when strictly necessary. The tower had suffered from severe settlement problems, and by late 1889 there was a wide crack in the south wall that ran the entire height of the tower and part of the spire, and the western buttresses were also in a poor state. There were also problems with the north wall, and parapets. An appeal was launched to meet the £250 required for the work, which was successfully completed by September 1891.

The chancel had been extensively modified in the 1840s, when the roof was lowered, the walls plastered, a vaulted roof added, and all the windows (including the large east window) replaced by narrow lancet windows- in an effort to restore it to some (fictional) early English style. By 1889 it was in a very poor state of repair and work clearly needed doing. Rev. Hubbard largely financed this from his own resources.  The plaster was removed, a new oak ceiling added, and the east window restored to its past (and current) form. At that point there was not enough money to install stained glass, which was eventually incorporated a decade later. To the right of the altar a credence niche was created in the wall for the communion vessels. It was decorated with tiles found in a vault to the north of the altar that was entered by stairs beneath it – these tiles can still be seen.  The choir were moved into the chancel, a move which gave the Rev. Hubbard some anxiety as to whether they were too remote from the congregation to properly lead the singing, and he pleaded for the congregation to join in the singing psalms and hymns. The clergy reading desk was also moved into the chancel, which gave similar concerns, although it seems that the (unamplified of course) voice of Rev. Hubbard could still be heard.

The new Girl’s school was opened with a great fanfare in July 1889 – effectively the completion of the school in the form that many older residents of the parish will have known it. The new building was the part of the school next to Church Street and connected with the 1858 building with the tower to the south of it. At the opening, children’s games were played and after a short service of dedication the building was handed over by the Hon Alfred Percy Allsop, who had served on the school management committee for a number of years and had paid for the new building. The enthusiasm was somewhat damped within a few days by the sudden departure of the much-respected schoolmaster, Mr Lasseter, following the death of his wife and his own ill health. A former pupil teacher was drafted in to keep the school running while a new master was appointed. The school accounts for 1889 show an income of £479 with a government grant of £217, school pence (from families) of £130 and voluntary contributions of £53; and an expenditure of £493, with £404 spent on teachers’ salaries. There were 107 boys on the register, 92 girls and 60 infants (who were presumably also boys and girls).

At that time most of the burials in the churchyard were in the now overgrown area next to what we call the new churchyard, and these are recorded month by month in the magazine, in much the same way as now. A couple of articles also give details of the avenue that runs up to the church from the north gate. Mr Henry C Malden, in describing his research in the parish registers, informs us that the avenue was set with elm trees on February 26^th 1750 – on a “windy Tuesday”. In 1890, many of these were in poor condition and had, according to Mr Walden, felt the effects of many windy Tuesdays and seen their best days, and it was decided to replace every other one by quick growing lime trees. Of crab apples there is not a mention. Mr Malden ends his article with the words.

“Sooner or later, my readers, like them, will have seen their best days, and have their names added to the long list of those whose last home is in the old churchyard on the hill.”

And that seems a good place for me to stop as well!

The churchyard

The surviving grave monuments in St. Michael’s churchyard in Lichfield are mainly from the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with only a very few from the seventeenth century still in existence. In the main this is simply the result of natural decay – the lifetime of stone inscriptions in the graveyard seems to be of the order of 250 years. And over the course of the churchyard’s 1500 year existence, graves must have been dug over existing graves on many occasions. But there are a few graves that probably date from the seventeenth century and we will we will discuss these in this post.

Figure 1 Grave locations

The locations of the graves are shown on the map in figure 1 which shows the old churchyard, closed to new burials, and the new churchyard to the east that is still in use (although filling up rapidly). It can be seen that the graves we are considering are all, unsurprisingly, in the old churchyard and located quite close to the church. A study of the dates of all the graves in the old churchyard, suggest that most burials up to 1800 were in the area to the immediate north, west and south of the church, and the large areas to the east began to be used from around 1800. The churchwarden’s accounts indicate that the churchyard was let out for grazing and for taking a hay crop through to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, so this was presumably the main function of the eastern area before it was used for burials.

The Saddleback and Finney graves

Figure 2 The Saddleback grave

Returning to the graves, let us first let us consider those at the front (north) of the church. The first of this pair (A) is the unusual saddleback grave shown in figure 2 above. The inscription is very worn and the dedication of the monument can’t be read. This grave features in a nineteenth century drawing that is in the William Salt library and can be accessed from clicking the button above. That drawing gives the date of the grave as 1674, and with a little imagination this can be made out on the tomb itself. Apart from the date, it is the style of the grave that makes it so distinctive. It is a shame that the dedication is illegible.

Figure 3. The Finney grave

The dedication of the other grave to the north of the church (B) can however be distinguished (figure 3). This reads

Here lieth the body of Edward Finney the elder of this City Gente, who departed this life 1st May 1640 and the bodies of Michael, Thomas, John and Joyce, four of his children.

Pleasingly the historical records tell us a little more about Edward Finney. He was one of the bailiffs of the City of Lichfield in the 1620s and 1630s and was active in civic life. After his death he established a “bread dole” at St. Mary’s endowed with 1s. a month which still existed, as the Edward Finney Charity in 1715.

The Clarke grave

The third of the graves that we consider here has a particularly interesting history. This is the monument to William Clarke and his son, another William, two longed lived parish clerks. The Morning Chronicle of October 8^th 1822 reports as follows.

In St. Michael’s churchyard at Lichfield an ancient tomb stone was lately discovered which had been buried in the earth a great number of years.  Upon it are deeply cut the following inscriptions.

“Here lyes the body of WILLIAM CLARKE who was clarke of this church 51 years and buried March 5th 1525 aged 96. Here lies the body of William Clarke clarke of this church 71 years who died September 26th 1562 aged 86″.

The dates and longevity of those interred are remarkable. The Morning Chronicle notes that the elder William would have lived through the reigns of six monarchs, and the younger through the reigns of seven. The latter would have experienced the tumult of the Reformation and counter-Reformation that seems to have had a considerable effect on the fabric of St. Michaels. The inscriptions were still readable in the 1960s and 1980s when surveys of the churchyard monuments were carried out. It was also recorded in these surveys that the stone was “restored” in 1870. At the time of the earlier survey the monument was to the south of the church (C on the map) but was moved, probably more than once, in the churchyard re-ordering of the 1970s. Unfortunately it’s current location is unknown. There are one or two possibilities with very well worn inscriptions, and if I can make a positive identification I will edit this post and include a photo.

That is however not the end of the story. References to William Clarke can be found in the historical sources. In Harwood we read of a William Clarke who in 1662 gave Elias Ashmole information on monuments in the church that had been destroyed in the civil war and is described as having been  clerk to the parish for 65 years and his father had been clerk before him for 52 years. In the churchwarden’s accounts we read of a William Clarke (presumably the elder) being paid 8s for his year’s wages in 1580, and another William (presumably the younger) bring the custodian of church property in 1657. On the basis of these records, it thus seems to me likely that the death dates recorded in the Morning Chronicle, and “restored” in the 1870s were misreadings and were a century too early. If that were the case, the lives of the two William’s would have been even more interesting than supposed, with the elder being a small child in the initial iconoclasm of the Reformation, and living through the Counter Reformation, when the churchwarden’s accounts give a good description of the very catholic vestments and eucharistic tableware used in St. Michael’s. William the younger would have experienced the terrors of the Civil War, Commonwealth and Restoration.

The Miesson grave

Figure 4. The Miesson grave

It must be admitted that the final grave we consider here (at D on figure 1) can’t be shown to belong to the seventeenth century, but it certainly has the look of something that old, and as we will see if of some interest (figure 4). Up till recently, this was the fairly simple chest tomb of Elizabeth Miesson and William Miesson . Recently the tomb has collapsed, and the inscribed end pieces placed on top of the remains, with the broken lid to one side. These are not particularly easy to read, but do confirm the names. A web search on Ancestry reveals there were several folk with these names in Lichfield around 1650 to 1750. The memorial to Elizabeth indicates contains the name of the city, rather inelegantly spread over two lines, as LICH and FIELD i.e. with a spelling mistake. The tomb could well have been a source of some embarrassment!

The William Salt Library holds a significant number of mainly late eighteenth and early to mid nineteenth century drawings and paintings of St. Michael’s church in Lichfield that show the development of the church over that period when significant rebuilding took place. For copyright reasons these cannot be reproduced, so in this post I have listed them all in chronological order; given a link to the web page for each picture that opens in a separate tab; and reproduced the text describing each picture. The intention is to provide a convenient platform to understand the development of the church and churchyard throughout the period concerned.

In A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 14, Lichfield we read the following in the section devoted to St. Michael’s church in Lichfield.

At some date a silver-gilt chalice and paten of 1684 were acquired. They were sold with a pewter flagon and plates in 1852 to a Birmingham firm in part payment for a new set of plate. The chalice and paten of 1684 were bought the same year by St. Clement’s, Oxford.

Clearly this was later regretted and we read

… attempts in 1892 and 1923 to recover them for St. Michael’s were unsuccessful.

And there I might have left the matter, perhaps as a sort of parable on the foolishness of church wardens, and the futility of the pursuit of modernity, but for the all seeing eye of Google. A quick search of “chalice / St Clements / Oxford” let me to An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in the City of Oxford from 1929 in which I found the rather poor photograph of the 1684 chalice shown below. It is rather fuzzy, but I think the motif is clear enough – the winged archangel trampling over the devil at his feet. I can’t read the caption, so if any reader can enlighten me on this I would be grateful. The question arises as to where the chalice and its associated paten are now. To find the answer to this would I am afraid take more than a quick Google search. Perhaps one day….

Part 1 of this blog post can be found here.

Residence

The baptismal and burial registers allow the residence of the parents of the baptized child and those who have died to be identified, at least in broad terms. Neither measure can be regarded as an accurate measure of population, as the same couple may well figure more than once in the baptismal registers, and those who have died may not be long term residents of the parish. To investigate how this population is dispersed across the parish, we define the following districts.

Within the parish throughout the study period

• Greenhill – the dense urban area close to St Michael’s church that extended up Burton Old Road and Trent Valley Road as the century progressed, together with its rural hinterland, broadly covering the area of the current Boley Park Estate.
• St. Johns – based on the urban area around St. Johns Street (including, and south of St John’s Hospital) and the Birmingham Road, stretching south to the canal, with its rural hinterland in the Borrowcop and Berry Hill area. Note that the St. John’s and Greenhill as defined here did not have a direct road connection between their major centres for much of the study period, with journeys between them requiring a passage through St. Mary’s parish. 
• The Workhouse on Trent Valley Road (the later St. Michael’s hospital).
• The hamlet of Streethay to the north of the parish, including the development in the second half of the century of much railway activity around Trent Valley Station.
• The rural hamlets of Freeford and Fulfen to the east of the parish. 

The out of parish townships

• Burntwood, together with Edial and Woodhouses, which became a separate parish in 1820 with the opening of Christchurch, Burntwood.
• Wall, which became a separate parish in 1845 following the opening of St. John’s Church in 1843.
• Leamonsley to the west of the city which, with Pipe Hill, became the parish of Christchurch, Lichfield in 1848.

Out of parish districts

• The parish of St. Mary Lichfield, including the extra-parochial areas of The Close and The Friary.
• The parish of St. Chad, Lichfield
• Any other out of parish location outside Lichfield.

Figures 6 below shows the baptisms (on the left hand side) and burials (on the right hand side) for each of these three categories. These graphs show actual baptism numbers in (nominally) 20 year periods, rather than the number of baptisms per year. Note again that the first and last periods are somewhat shorter than 20 years.

Consider first the baptisms and burials in the different areas of the parish itself. For the former, the largest contributing area is Greenhill, with St. John’s the second largest. The situation is reversed for burials, perhaps indicating a rather younger population in the Greenhill area. The Workhouse baptisms and burials begin in the 1831 to 1850 period, as the Workhouse opened in 1840. In general the number of baptisms decrease with time, while the number of burials increase markedly, until in the period from 1891 to 1905 they are the single biggest number of burials. Both baptisms and burials increase over the century in Streethay, reflecting the growth of railway based activities there, whilst the figures fro the rural area of Freeford / Fulfen remain small and constant. 

The township baptisms and burials show a major fall after the chapels in the respective area are opened – 1820 for Burntwood, 1845 for Wall and 1848 for Leamonsley.  The baptism figures fall more dramatically than the funeral figures, suggesting that a number of township residents wished to be buried in family graves at St. Michael’s.

The out of parish baptisms and burials are interesting. There can be seen to be significant cross boundary baptisms of parishioners from St. Mary’s and St. Chad’s parish, presumably because of family or other historical connections. The number of burials for St. Mary’s parish was however very large, due to the fact that there was no graveyard there.  This imposed a considerable load on the clergy at St Michael’s (as will be seen below), In 1886 the Vicar of St. Mary’s agreed to conduct the funerals of his parishioners in St. Michael’s churchyard, but he stressed that by ancient custom it was the duty of St. Michael’s clergy to do this. A somewhat grudging agreement it would seem. From 1888 an annual collection was taken at St. Mary’s for the upkeep of the churchyard. Both these developments probably reflect a grievance extending over several decades that St. Michael’s clergy were providing unpaid services to St. Mary’s parish. The out of Lichfield category includes baptisms for families from the towns and villages surrounding the city, but also significant number from further afield – in particular from Birmingham and London – probably because of historic or family connections.

Figure 6. Baptism and burial statistics by areas of residence

Finally the registers reveal the existence of some interesting groups of people in the population for whom a more in-depth study might be appropriate – the soldiers from the Militia Barracks in the Sandford Street area; the canal workers and boatmen on the Lichfield and Hathersage Canal and the wharfs in the St. John’s area; a huge community of coachmakers, coachmen, horsemen etc. connected with the coach routes through the city, and, in the second half of the century the railway workers on the London North Western Railway through Trent Valley and the South Staffordshire Railway through Lichfield City. 

Analysis of Christian names

Both the baptismal and burial registers can be used to study how the Christian names of those in the parish varied over time. Whilst this might seem a somewhat trivial analysis, it does reveal something of changing attitudes and perceptions over time. From the baptismal registers, the information is directly available on a year-by-year basis. Extracting dated information from the burial registers is a little more tricky and requires the birth year to be calculated from the death year and the age at death. Even if the names are all related to the birth year, one might expect some differences – the baptismal registers will, in general, refer to those who were born in the Lichfield area, the burial registers will contain entries relating to those who were born elsewhere. Similarly the latter are more likely to indicate the preferred name of the deceased – be it first name, middle name or by-name. These points being made, details of the names over a period of around 180 years are given in table 1 for men and table 2 for women. Each table shows the following information, for the usual nominal twenty-year periods.

• The most popular ten names in that period and the percentage of the total number of register entries for each of these.
• The percentage of the total number of register entries that are accounted for by these top ten names. 
• The number of different names used in the period.

For both male and female names the following broad conclusions can be drawn.

• The most popular names remain pretty much the same over most of the period studied.
• For the earlier periods in the 18th century the top 10 names account for 80 to 90 % of all names. This figure falls throughout the 19^thcentury to around 60% for male names and 35% for female names.
• Over the same period the number of different names increases by a factor of four.
• Female names were always more variable than male names. 

The most popular male names (William, John and Thomas) each account for about 20% of all entries in the early periods, falling to around 6 to 12% in the late 19^thcentury. Similarly the most popular female names (Elizabeth, Mary and Sarah) account for around 15 to 20% of all entries in the earlier periods, falling to around just 3% in the late 19^thcentury. 

Two points arise from this study. The first is that the increasing number of names in use possibly reflects the movement from a very conservative society (at least in terms of names) to one with a wider outlook. Indeed, some of the minor names not shown in the table are quite outlandish and unconventional, particularly for the female names – for example Rosetta, Vanda and Pretoria. Secondly, in their conservatism the most popular names are very similar to those outlined in two other studies that I have carried out for the western region of the Black Country – for the parish of Kingswinfordin 1822 and 1840, and for the members of the Shut End Chapel in Pensnett from 1840 to 1890. The general population for these two studies was again composed of unskilled and skilled manual workers, and were thus similar o the population make up of St. Michael’s parish in the 19^thcentury.

Table 1. Analysis of male Christian names

Table 2. Analysis of female Christian names

Ministers and Church

Table 3 below shows the Perpetual Curates (Rectors from 1868) at St. Michael’s, their curates or assistants, and the chaplains of the Workhouse in the period we are considering, together with the absolute numbers of baptisms, marriages and funerals they carried out. The longevity of the ministers in charge is notable, with only three perpetual curates / rectors from 1813 to 1886.  The first of these, Edward Remington, was actually the brother of an earlier Perpetual Curate at St Michael’s and the son of another, the dynasty extending back to 1757. His early career included Perpetual Curacies at St Chad’s Lichfield and Pipe Ridware, before coming to St Michael’s in 1805. In 1820, he was, in addition to St. Michael’s, instituted as Curate at Burntwood, when Burntwood itself achieved parochial status. As Perpetual Curate of St. Michael’s he would already have had oversight of Burntwood, but it seems he was formally designated its first incumbent, at least for a short period until 1828. From 1829 to 1831 he was also Vicar at Wirksworth in Derbyshire. How he managed these two rather far-flung parishes is not clear, but doubtless he utilized the services of his curates. 

One of these curates was Thomas Gnossall Parr, who held that post at St. Michael’s from 1828 to Remington’s death in 1831. He was then appointed Perpetual Curate, a post he held for 37 years before becoming the first Rector in 1868, one year before his death. He was born in 1800, the son of another Thomas Gnossall Parr, a Lichfield solicitor, and remained umarried.  In 1861 he was living at the Parsonage House on Mount Pleasant with his sister Anne, and a single servant. The number of baptisms, marriages and funerals conducted by Remington and Gnossall Parr was eye-watering – the largest number in the table being the 3168 funerals conducted by the latter. Whist they were assisted by a string of curates, they still seems to have carried most of the load themselves. 

The first clergyman to be appointed Rector, James Sergeantson, was from Liverpool and educated at Trinity College in Cambridge. He was a rowing blue and part of the crew that lost the boat race in 1857 by 11 lengths. There have only been six larger losing margins in the 190 year history of the race, so I doubt it was an experience he relished. He served a curacy at Stoke before coming to St Michael’s. He was married to Elizabeth, a clergyman’s daughter and they had at least 5 children. In 1881 they lived at the Rectory, with a housekeeper, cook and two servants. He is recorded on a memorial in the church as being part of the team that rang a complete peal of Gransire Minor in 1876. He died in 1886. A memorial plaque in the chancel at St. Michael’s reads

To the glory of God and in loving memory of James Jordan Sergeantson M.A. for 17 years rector of this parish….. He fell asleep January 1^st1886 aged 50 years. 

Sergeantson was followed by Cyril Hubberd, an old Etonian who graduated from St. John’s College Cambridge, and served in parishes in the south of England before coming to St. Michael’s. In 1891 he lived at the Rectory with his wife Agnes, their two children, a cook, a nursemaid and two housemaids. In 1886 he secured an arrangement, albeit somewhat grudging, with the Vicar of Mary’s who agreed to conduct the St. Mary’s funerals, although more often than not, this resulted in the St. Mary’s curates carrying out the duty on his behalf. When Hubbard left St Michael’s in 1893, he moved to the south of England and out of parish ministry. Perhaps St. Michael’s was too much for him. He is however recorded as a Chaplain in various European cities in the 1900s.

The last of the 19^thcentury rectors was Otho Steele. He was born in the 1839, educated at Trinity College Dublin, and served in parishes in the east of England, Guernsey and Stoke before coming to St Michael’s in 1893. He remained there till 1913, and died in 1922. Again there is a memorial plaque in the chancel that reads as follows. 

To the glory of God and in pious memory of Otho William Steel, M.A. Rector of this parish from 1893 to 1913 who dies 25^thMay 1922 aged 83 years. 

The situation with regard to the Workhouse was interesting. The chaplains of the Workhouse conducted baptisms there, but these were recorded in the St. Michael’s register. However, up to the 1880s, all the funerals were conducted by St. Michael’s clergy. After that there seems to have been some overlap at that time with some of the curates at St. Michaels also acting as Workhouse Chaplains. 

Closing comments

The registers also indicate that a not-insignificant number of services were conducted by either visiting clergy (presumably at the family request) or by other clergy in the locality, to cover absence and holidays no doubt. The funerals of the residents at St. John’s hospital were usually conducted by the Master of the Hospital. In the early part of the century, the burials were actually in the grounds of St. John’s, with the burials registered in the St. Michael’s register, but later internments were in St. Michael’s graveyard. 

Table 3. Rectors, curates and chaplains

This post has presented what at first sight is a rather detailed technical examination of manuscripts. However it does reveal some quite fascinating details of the development of St. Michael’s parish over the 19^thcentury. It was basically the parish of the lower and middle classes of the area, with very few of those at the top of Lichfield society. We see clearly a significant decrease in childhood mortality in this group over that period, and the huge risk of childbirth to women is all too clearly seen. The rise of basic literacy can also be seen from the signatures in the marriage registers. The development of the different areas of the parish can be traced in terms of a growing population and a widening of residential areas, with the increasing numbers of those within the Workhouse a reminder that such growth does not benefit all level of society. The analysis of Christian names sees an essentially conservative use of a small sub-set of names develop into a much wider use of a wide range of names, perhaps reflecting the growing horizons of the population. In ecclesiastical terms, the effect of the outlying townships becoming parishes in their own right is apparent, and the interactions between the city centre parishes is very clear – as are the reasons for the disagreement over funerals and burials between St. Michael’s and St. Mary’s.

But there is much more that could be said of course about some of the many individuals who feature in the registers – for example Rev John Louis Petit, the curate from 1825 to 1828 and a noted landscape painter, James Law, the Chancellor of the diocese, whose Mausoleum still dominates the front of the churchyard (see below), John Brown, who sounded the trumpet at the charge of the Light Brigade, and many others from long term Lichfield families.

There is of course further work that could be done of this type. Perhaps the most obvious extension would be to do the same sort of analysis for the registers of St. Mary’s and St. Chad’s as the three churches obviously have significant interaction.  This would be quite possible as for the period covered in this blog the registers are again available in .rtf format that can be manipulated in spreadsheets. Maybe one day in the near future I will summon up the energy to do this. 

The second extension, that would require more work, would be the integration of the current work with other datasets – and in particular the census returns and the St Michael’s Monumental Inscriptions. Whilst the data is available, the actual task of correlation and assessment would be very significant. Maybe in a year or so. 

Finally the work could be extended to look at earlier time periods – but here the registers are not in the same convenient format, and to make them so, at least from the publically available databases would be a huge task. Maybe in another life.

Preamble

The most common modern use for parish registers for baptism, marriage and burial is in family history research – to trace the lives of individuals and families through the centuries. But they also form a rich historical resource that can be looked at in quite another way. Where detailed registers exist, they allow a picture to be built up of the wider societal context, by looking at the entries in the register as a whole rather than individually, and considering details of birth and death statistics over time; the professions and trades of those bringing children to baptism and their places of residence.

In this post we take such a wide look at the parish registers for St, Michael’s parish in Lichfield during the 19^thcentury.  These have been conveniently produced by Midland Ancestors as .rtf files, and can thus, with some manipulation, be imported in EXCEL and interrogated in a number of different ways. We begin by briefly describing the registers and the nature of St. Michael’s parish in the 19^thcentury, then move on to consider statistics of baptisms and burials. The registers also give details of where the individuals lived and their trades or professions, and thus give us a snapshot of Lichfield society in the period. The marriage registers allow the level of literacy to be determined, from an analysis of those who signed the registers, and those who simply made their mark.  The registers also allow a survey of names to be carried out, which shows how the popularity of different Christian names varied over the century. Finally the registers cast some light on the ministers who performed the services, and on the nature of church practice. 

The information presented here will mainly be in the form of simple graphs and tables. Not everyone will be comfortable with such a presentation, but the material to some extent demands it. I will however attempt to describe the information shown on these figures in a more qualitative way, and try to draw out what they can tell us about church and parish in the 19^thcentury. 

St Michael’s parish and the registers

Figure 1. The red solid line indicates the boundary of St. Michael’s parish around 1820. The red dotted line indicates the extra-parochial portion of Freeford township. St Michael’s church is indicated by the red cross. The green, blue and purple lines and crosses indicate the boundaries of St Chad’s parish, St Mary’s parish and the Cathedral Close and their churches respectively. The extra parochial area of the Friary is not shown.

The formation of parishes came relatively late in the Lichfield area, where the ecclesiastical organization was, until the seventeenth century, largely based on the Cathedral Prebendial system, with the Prebends appointing vicars who took responsibility for the three city centre churches. It was eventually divided into three parishes – St. Mary’s covering the city centre, St. Chad’s to the north-west and St. Michaels to the south west, south east and south (figure 1). There were three extra-parochial areas – the Cathedral Close, the area around the old Friary and part of the township of Freeford. Of the three parishes, St. Michael’s is the largest. The church itself and its large graveyard on Greenhill is just to the east of the boundary with St. Mary’s parish. In the early part of the 19th century, the parish contained the land immediately to the east and south of the city centre, and large areas further to the south and east containing a number of smaller townships – Wall to the south, Burntwood in the south west, Streethay in the north east, and Freeford and Fulfen to the east. In addition there were a number of detached portions – at Fisherwick and Haselour to the east for example. Thus, whilst the registers mainly concentrate on those who live close to the church in the more densely populated area on the eastern edge of the city, they also contain entries for a more dispersed rural population. As the 19^thcentury progressed, some of the outlying townships became parishes in their own right – Burntwood in 1820 and Wall in 1845 and after those dates their inhabitants largely disappear from the St. Michael’s registers. Similarly a large area to the west of the city around the hamlet of Leamonsley formed Christchurch parish in1848. 

There are however further complications. St. Mary’s parish that encompasses the city centre has no graveyard, and used that at Greenhill. Thus the St. Michael’s burial register also contains many entries from St. Mary’ parish.  There also seems to have been a leakage across parish boundaries in baptism and marriage, with parishioners of St. Mary’s and St. Chad’s using St. Michael’s– and no doubt vice versa. The other complicating factor was the existence of the Lichfield Union Workhouse in St. Michael’s parish from 1840 onwards, which housed paupers from a wide area around Lichfield. As these were mainly men, care needs to be taken in any analysis, as the Workhouse entries in the registers can skew the statistics significantly if they are not allowed properly for. 

Before considering the detailed statistics from the registers, it is instructive to look at the general social make up of the parish in the 19^thcentury. The baptismal registers contain brief descriptions of the occupation of the one who brings the child for baptism, usually the father. A statistical analysis of this information is, to say the least, difficult, so I will confine myself to only broad comments here. In total there are 6885 baptisms recorded. The number of families represented will be significantly less than this of course. But for these baptisms 2100 give an occupation as “Labourer” and around 650 are economically inactive (most often “Single Women” in the Workhouse or “Spinsters”). Thus around 2750 are at the lowest levels of the society of 19^thcentury Lichfield. At the other end of the scale, there are around 35 baptisms of children of those who might be described as “Professional” – bankers, solicitors, architects etc.; 29 from the Ecclesiastical Establishment; and 40 who describe themselves as “Gentlemen”. In between there is a wide range of trades and occupations present of differing levels of skill, from low skilled gardeners and bricklayers to the highly skilled clockmakers, cordwainers and coach builders. Basically it seems that St Michael’s in the 19^th century was a church for the workers and middle class artisans and tradesmen of the city – and certainly it attracted few at the higher end of the social scale to bring their children for baptism.  This is in accord with the various monuments and inscriptions within the church, few of which date from the 19^th century, with most from the 18^th and 20^th centuries, indicating that for this period the upper reaches of Lichfield society looked elsewhere.

Population Statistics

Figure 2 shows the basic statistics from the baptismal register for the period between 1813 and 1905. Here the data is shown in nominally 20 year bands, with the first (1813-1830) and the last (1891-1905) being somewhat shorter. This variability in period can be allowed for to some extent by considering the number of baptisms / year in each band.  It can be seen that there were around 70 baptisms a year across the period, with that figure remaining relatively stable. The expected rise in baptism numbers due to population growth thus seems to have been balanced by the number of baptisms taking place in the new chapels at Burntwood, Wall and Christchurch, and also no doubt by an increase in the number of baptisms in non-conformist churches. The percentage of females was baptized was close to 50% throughout the period as would be expected, which at least shows the inhabitants of the parish in the 19^thcentury did not practice female infanticide. Finally it can be seen that that the number of illegitimate children baptised is around 5 to 10% of the whole. This graph may not be wholly accurate however, as illegitimacy was recorded in different ways over the century, or not recorded at all, so some cases may have been missed, but any errors will be small.

Figure 2. Baptism statistics for number of baptisms / year, percentage of baptised females and the percentage of illegitimate children

Figures 3 show the marriage statistics . This data is given over a longer period than for the baptismal reisters, as the .rtf transcription extends back further into the 18^thcentury. The number of marriages per year peaks at something over 40 marriages per year between 1811 and 1830. The register also provides an indication of the level of literacy amongst those getting married. The right hand figure gives the proportion of weddings where bride and groom both signed the register, just one of them signed, or neither signed. Very broadly, up to the middle of the nineteenth century, there were around a third of marriages where neither couple could sign their name, a third of marriages where one of them could (most often the groom) and around a third where both signed. After that time, the proportion of weddings where both signed increased rapidly, no doubt due to the establishment of the National Schools in the area, and by the start of the 20^th century both partners almost always signed.

Figure 3. Marriage statistics, showing number of marriages per year and the percentage of participants signing the register.

Figure 4 shows the analysis of the burial statistics, excluding the Workhouse entries. The number of burials / year increases through the century, reflecting the increase in population. In the breakdown of burials by age group, the large infant mortality rate is clear, although burials in the 0 to 10 age group decrease from 36% of all burials to 25% over the 19^th century. This same trend of reducing mortality is shown in the 11 to 20 and 21 to 30 age groups. The number of burials then increases with age, with a peak in the 71 to 80 age range, with a sharp fall off for the oldest age ranges. The percentage of female burials against age range rises from around 50% for the lowest age range, then increases to around 55% for the 11 to 20 and 21 to 30 age ranges, reflecting deaths during childbirth. There is a trough at just over 40% in the 51 to 60 age range as male mortality peaks, with a rise to around 60% in the highest age ranges, which simply reflects the greater longevity of women if they survive infancy and childbirth.

Figure 4. Burial statistics, excluding Workhouse data, showing number burials / year, burials by age range and percentage of female burials

Figure 5 shows similar figures for Workhouse burials. It can be seen that the number of burials per year is between 10 and 20 – a significant proportion of the whole. The burials by age show the same form as for the general population, although the child mortality rate remains at around 35% throughout the century rather than falling. The percentage of female burials by age do not show the same trend as for the general population, although this might possibly be because the sample size is smaller and any trend masked by statistical variation. 

Figure 5. Burial statistics, for Workhouse data, showing number burials / year, burials by age range and percentage of female burials

Part 2 of this blog post can be found here.

Introduction

The historical importance of St. Michael’s church in Lichfield has been made clear in other articles and posts on this site – see here and here. Now. in the near future new church rooms will be built behind the church, and no doubt archaeological work will be required to investigate the site of the new build. I thus thought it would be appropriate to gather together historical and archaeological material concerning St Michael’s, to inform both those involved in the coming work and the congregation of St. Michael’s in general (of which, it will become apparent, I am a member). Thus in what follows I will present the results of a number of investigations by various authors – the first that considers St. Michael’s in the context of the early church in Lichfield; the second which considers the local topography around the church and churchyard; and the third which considers the results of previous archaeological digs.  I won’t present any information on the development of the ecclesiastical parish, building or churchyard, except in passing. These are well enough covered in the guidebooks that are available in the church,  the Victoria County History (1990) and in the work of Trevor James (1998). 

A Romano-British diocese?

Bassett (1992) considers a number of ancient churches in the Midlands, and discusses how they might have evolved over the period of late antiquity after the departure of the Roman armies. Amongst those he discusses is St Michael’s. Based on material from a very wide range of sources, he comes to the conclusion that a good case could be made for St Michael’s being the centre of a British ecclesiastical diocese that predates the Augustinian mission in 596AD. His reconstruction of the possible extent of this diocese is shown in Figure 1 below. It can be seen to be very extensive indeed, occupying land in the area between the Tame and the Trent. Indeed an argument can be made that it also extended east of the Tame, as the townships of Haselour and Statfold have historical links with St. Michael’s. James (1998) has arrived at a similar conclusion as regards the size of the ancient parish of St. Michaels, although he doesn’t speculate on its episcopal nature. Basset’s arguments are complex and in places compelling, but I must admit to not being entirely convinced by them. Many of the points he makes would be just as applicable to a large secular land unit as to an ecclesiastical unit. There is also a basic assumption that St. Michael’s has been a parochial church for much of its existence, whereas the historical record, for example as outlined in Victoria County History (1990), suggest that the parochial system was only formalised within the last few centuries with much of the earlier pastoral work being focussed on the cathedral prebends. But the thought that St. Michael’s was an episcopal see is an attractive one to a member of the current congregation. In particular I like the implicit suggestion in Basset that the Cathedral, St. Mary’s and St Chad’s parishes were all created out of the much larger St. Michael’s parish – and thus later arrivals on the Lichfield ecclesiastical scene. 

Figure 1. The Romano-British diocese of St. Michael’s as reconstructed by Basset   

(This is a simplified version of the map in Basset (1992) and shows 19^thcentury townships and parishes. The parish of Lichfield St Chad includes the Cathedral and Lichfield St. Mary. The parish of Lichfield St Michael includes the townships of Streethay, Fulfen and Freeford.)

Lichfield topography

In an earlier paper Basset (1981) discusses the development of the city of Lichfield and its environs. In an extremely detailed topographical study of the area he studied the relationship between field boundaries and roads and trackways shown on tithe maps. He was able to show that some trackways conformed to the field boundaries, and were thus presumably in place before the field system was laid out, whereas some roads cut across the field boundaries and thus can be conjectured to post-date the establishment of the field system. The point of most significance to emerge from this map is that Ryknield Street cut across a number of pre-existing field boundaries, which thus implies that the field system was set out in very early Roman times, or more probably because of its extent, in the Bronze and Iron Age periods. Figure 2 shows the major trackways and roads that were identified as conforming with field boundaries, and which can thus be taken as of pre-Roman origin. The modern day names of these roads are given in the key to help with identification. It can be seen that Lichfield was far from being an underdeveloped area at the start of the Roman era, with a number of trackways converging on the area. 

Whilst the map of figure 2 is interesting in a general sense to all who know the area, of particular relevance in the current context are those in the vicinity of St. Michael’s church. Note that the church is shown in purple to reflect its potential episcopal nature! Road B on the map follows the current lines of Darnford Lane, Boley Cottage Lane and Frenchman’s Walk. Within Boley Park its course has been built over, but the general line has been preserved between the end of Boley Cottage Lane and Frenchman’s Walk by Broadlands Rise, a connecting jennel, and Oakhurst.  Road C follows the lines of Cappers Lane and Burton Old Road. Around St. Michael’s its course is no longer directly visible – this will be seen to be of relevance in what follows. Note that Sturgeon’s Hill / Rotten Row does not appear on the map – this clearly cuts across field boundaries and postdates the laying out of the field network. 

Figure 2. Ancient roads and trackways in Lichfield (from Basset, 1981)

A – Walsall Road, Christchurch Lane, Gaia Lane; B – Darnford Lane, Boley Cottage Lane, Frenchman’s Walk; C – Cappers Lane, Burton Old Road; D – Valley Lane, Wissage Road, Curborough Road / Nethrstowe; E – Grange Lane; F – Cross in Hand Lane, Beacon Street; G – Fosseway Lane, Fosseway, Shortbutts Lane, Tamworth Road 

Figure 3. Roads in the vicinity of St. Michael’s

(Road identifiers the same as in figure 2. H – Sturgeon’s Hill / Rotten Row, S – Stowe Gate, T – Tamworth Gate. The edge of the burgh is given by the brown line)

Basset also looked in detail at the development of the city. In short, the city was a planned development, laid out by Bishop Roger de Clinton around 1125 to 1150 Figure 3a shows the roads around St Michael’s around 1050AD, with the same identification letters as in figure 2. Figure 2b shows the road layout inferred by Basset in 1150AD after the Burgh was laid out. It can be seen that a new road has developed from Road C (Burton Old Road) and heads to the Tamworth Gate (denoted by T). The old road continues to the Stowe Gate (S). By 1250AD the situation has changed somewhat. The old road to the Stowe Gate no longer exists (although it can even now still be traced by the lines of back gardens along part of its course. Road H (Sturgeons Hill / Rotten Row) has appeared and converges on the Tamworth gate and the diverted road C. At the gate there was an open area that was used as a market, and which ultimately became the cattle market. The diverted section of road C was eventually to become part of Trent Valley Road / Church St. at the bottom of St. Michael’s graveyard. The important point to appreciate is that over the course of this development, the area around St. Michael’s graveyard became increasingly constrained, both by Road H and by the diversion of Road C and the market area. It is quite possible that the size of the graveyard was actually reduced by these constraints. 

Archaeology

There have been two archaeological excavations at St Michael’s in recent decades. The first was by Gould and Gould (1976) who cut a trench in he bank between the old and the new churchyard to see if there was any evidence of a churchyard enclosure, as is often found around ancient churches. There wasn’t. You win some and you lose some.

The second excavation was carried out in 1978 on the site of the new choir vestry (Wilson, 1981).  A sketch of the excavation is given in figure 4. This was rather more profitable in terms of the archaeology as follows. 

• A single post pit, filled with sandstone fragments in the bottom layer.
• 49 complete or partial skeletons, mostly buried in the Christian manner with head to the west (so they would face their maker at the resurrection). There were two exceptions. Skeleton 21 was buried with its feet to the west, in a manner that would be suggestive of a priestly burial (so he would face his flock at the resurrection). The expected chalice and paten were not found, possibly because this skeleton was at the edge of the excavated area and it head was outside the area. Murphy’s law and all that. Alternatively Wilson suggests he simply could have been buried the wrong way round. Skeleton 58 was a crouched burial. Such burials are known from Palaeolithic times. In a Christian context they are most often dated from the Anglo-Saxon period. No independent carbon dating was possible. In addition skeletons 2 and 8 were of a woman and a small child – who possibly died during childbirth.
• Five flint flakes from the Mesolithic period but in a secondary context; large quantities of building material from earlier churches, including 300 fragments of glazed medieval roof tiles; a range of different types of decorated floor tile; a sherd of Roman pottery; a halfpenny from the reign of George III and a silver penny from the reign of Richard II. 

There thus seems to be some evidence of very early use of the Greenhill site, but precise dating was not possible.

Figure 4. The 1978 excavation

(There of excavation covers the area of the current choir vestry. Brown lines indicate burials with skull to the west. Red lines indicate specific skeletons discussed in the text. Green indicates the posthole.) 

A personal postscript

There is a further quasi-archaeological point of personal interest. In 1822 one John Baker and his wife Anne (nee Woodfield) were buried in the churchyard at the location shown in figure 5. They were my great-great-great grandparents. I can find out little about them other than that they were very prolific in producing children (11 can be traced). They were one of the few of my ancestors to be able to afford a gravestone. St. Michael’s monumental inscriptions records the inscription as 

2022 John Baker 17/9/1822 also Ann Baker

So it was probably not a terribly large gravestone. It has of course been moved as the churchyard has been tidied over the recent decades and I don’t know its location. If anyone comes across it at any stage please let me know! Further fascinating details of my family tree, the members of which were almost exclusively miners, ironworkers or agricultural labourers, can be found here.

Figure 5. Location of John and Ann Baker’s grave

References

Basset S (1981) “Medieval Lichfield: A topographical Review”, Transactions of the South Staffordshire Archaeological and Historical Society, XXII, 93-121

Basset S (1992) “Church and diocese in the West Midlands; the transition from British to Anglo-Saxon control”, Pastoral Care Before the Parish p. 13-40

Gould D, Gould J (1976) “St Michael’s churchyard, Lichfield, Staffs”, Transactions of the South Staffordshire Archaeological and Historical Society

James T (1998) “The development of the parish of St-Michael-on-Greenhill over 1500 years”, St Michael’s papers number 1, PCC of St Michael’s, Lichfield

Victoria County History (1990) ‘Lichfield: Churches’, in A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 14, Lichfield, ed. M W Greenslade (London, 1990), 134-155. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/staffs/vol14/pp134-155

Wilson P (1981) “Investigations in St Michael’s and St Mary’s churches, Lichfield”, Transactions of the South Staffordshire Archaeological and Historical Society, XXII,