St. Michael on Greenhill, Lichfield – a history; the ebook

The word “church” of course primarily refers to a gathered body of Christian believers. Nonetheless in popular usage it has come to refer to the building in which such a body of
believers meet. And some such places have very long histories of their own. One such is the church of St. Michael on Greenhill in Lichfield. This is a very ancient worship site and has probably been the focus of some type of ritual activity for the last 1500 years. The church itself is less ancient, first appearing in the historical record in the twelfth century but it has an interesting story to tell. Here we tell that story in four parts – the first from the Romans to the Reformation; the second from the Reformation to the end of the eighteenth century; the third for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries up to 1945; and the fourth tells the stories of some of those buried in the church’s large graveyard.

The links below will take the reader to downloadable pdfs for each part of the ebook, suitable for most ebook readers. Each of the first three pdfs has a common implicit structure. Firstly the development of the parish in the period under consideration is set out, and then the church and churchyard are considered. It then describes as far as is possible, the nature of the worship that would have been offered within the church at that time, before moving on to discuss the laity and the clergy of the period. The final part is somewhat different and tells the stories of some of those who are buried in the churchyard

One important source of information has been the numerous late eighteenth and nineteenth century pictures of St. Michael’s held by the William Salt library in Stafford. These cannot be directly reproduced for obvious copyright reasons. To enable these pictures to be compared to each other, I have listed them chronologically in a blog post, with links to the specific William Salt web pages. This can be accessed through the button below.

This history extends only to 1900, and thus does not cover the modern period, where the sources are much more extensive and require detailed investigation. I may, in some future decade, get round to looking at this period. But for the reader who is interested in how the church and churchyard look today, there are a number of “virtual” tours on the church web site that will be of interest. These actually contain a small number of the William Salt pictures noted above, that are reproduced under license.

Finally, it is almost certain that there will be inaccuracies and typos in parts of what I have written. If a particularly erudite reader picks any of these out, then please let me know by email (bakercj54@gmail.com) and I will do my best to correct them.