A compilation of some of my blog posts from the past few years about St Michael’s church in Lichfield.
Saddlebacks and serendipity. A brief post that identifies the occupant of the notable Saddleback grave in St. Michael’s churchyard (3rd January 2025)
The changing face of death. A blog post introducing a statistical analysis of the interment records and monuments of St Michael’s churchyard in Lichfield from 1813 to 2012, looking at the changes in funerary patterns over that period. (February 24th 2023)
The St. Michael Chalice of 1684. A very brief blog post with a photograph of a 1684 communion chalice from St Michael’s Lichfield, sold in the 1850s to pay for something more modern. (December 30th 2020)
Some summer reading – a compilation of a few of my blog posts about the history of Lichfield.
Lichfield – a pre-conversion pagan cultic centre? A post that considers the early history of the city of Lichfield, and argues that it might have been a place of cultic significance before the Christian era. Some of this is very speculative, but may be of interest
“That way madness lies” – the search for solar alignments in Lichfield The city of Lichfield lies on a rough midwinter solar alignment with the Bronze Age site at Catholme. This post investigates this further to see if this alignment is intentional or merely accidental. (April 12th 2020)
Lichfield’s First Station Master. A post that looks at the career of Lichfield’s first Station Master and church warden of St. Michael’s, William Durrad. (January 15th 2021)
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 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.
I have been a collector of old bus and railway timetables for many years, with no particular end in view, other than to put them in boxes for some unspecified future use. However, the assembled timetables seem to be too good a resource not to make use of in some way, and I used some of them to compile a recent post on the development of public transport in Oakham in Rutland. This went down surprisingly well with readers, which shows there are some very odd folk out there. But the reception has encouraged me to press ahead with a series of posts that will use my stash of timetables to look at the development of public transport services in particular places or on particular routes. This particular post will consider the development of the Cross City railway line that runs from Lichfield in the north, through Birmingham, to Redditch and Bromsgrove in the south. There is an excellent Wikipedia article that describes the history of the line, and there is little point in reproducing that, and in this post I will concentrate on the development of the timetable on the line from the early 1960s (when it didn’t exist as one route) through to the present. It will be seen that it is in some sense a story of ambition that has never been quite fulfilled because of operational issues.
In what follows we will track this timetable development through the use of timetable extracts – usually for the weekday morning post peak period, but sometimes for other parts of the day where the (lack of) availability of information makes that necessary. This shows the broad outline of the timetable, but cannot of course capture the full detail.
September 1962 to June 1963
North
South
We first of all consider the situation in the early 1960s. Extracts from the timetables for the routes that were ultimately to form part of the Cross City line are shown above, for the early afternoon weekday period (taken from the London Midland Region timetable for September 1962). It can be seen that there is broadly a half hourly service from Lichfield city to Birmingham New Street. Connections are provided to Lichfield Trent Valley (where the current Cross city line crosses the West Coast Main Line) by a Burton on Trent – Lichfield – Walsall service, with occasional through services from Trent Valley to Birmingham. Some trains started and terminated at Four Oaks, but there was no regular pattern. South of New Street, the service to Redditch was somewhat sporadic, with some trains extending to Evesham and Ashchurch for Tewksbury. Note that trains did not at that stage call at Five Ways (which was closed) or University (which didn’t exist).
September 1964 to June 1965
North
South
By 1964, the first wave of the Beeching cuts had taken place and the timetables above (again from the London Midland Region timetable) such trains as there were to Redditch from New Street terminated there. North of New Street, the service to Lichfield varied between a thirty minute and an hourly frequency, with hourly trains starting at Four Oaks. Again, there were connections to Lichfield Trent Valley from Lichfield City on the Walsall to Burton service.
May 1969 to May 1970
North
South
The May 1969 timetable (from the London Midland Region timetable downloaded from Timetable World) shows a more regular service on the north end of the route, with an hourly service from Lichfield City and a thirty minute service from Four Oaks to New Street. South of New Street the trains to Redditch were again somewhat sporadic, with one, two or three hour intervals between them.
May 1978
The Cross City line opened in something like its current form in 1978. The graphic above (a screenshot from a rather fuzzy ebay photo) shows that it was marketed as a service between Longbridge and Four Oaks, with a fifteen minute interval service between the stations. There were in fact hourly trains to Lichfield City that were not referred to in the timetable shown, and sporadic trains to Redditch in the south. The route was operated at this stage by Class 116 DMUs. Five Ways station had been re-opened and a new station built at University.
Class 116 DMU
May 1980 to May 1981
The May 1980 service (shown above from the national BR timetable) is similar to the 1978 service. Here the extract shows no services to Redditch although there were again some sporadic, mainly peak hour services down the Redditch branch.
May 1983 to May 1984
By May 1983 the situation to the south had become more satisfactory with hourly trains to Redditch, with Lichfield City also having hourly trains, and four an hour from Four Oaks to Longbridge.
May 1984 to May 1985
One year further on, in May 1984, the situation is again similar, but with one of the Four Oaks trains per hour extended to and from Blake street.
July to September 1991
By 1991 there were significant changes. Two trains per hour ran south from Lichfield Trent Valley (which had been reopened in 1988), four trains per hour from Lichfield City with some peak services running from Blake Street.. To the south there were four trains per hour to Longbridge, two of which were extended to Redditch.
September to November 1992
The BR national timetable showed that the situation in September 1992 was very similar to the previous year, but was only timetable to extend to the end of November 1992, when a different timetable came into operation (see below).
December 1992 to May 1993
The December to May 1993 timetable is very odd, with the services being split at New Street, with four trains per hour from Lichfield Trent Valley to Birmingham, and four to Longbridge, with two extended to Redditch. There is no rationale given for this but may well have been something to do with the electrification works that were going on at the time.
June to September 1997
My more intimate involvement with the Cross city line began in 1997/8 when I began working at the University of Birmingham, whilst living in Lichfield, and travelling on the line daily. I thus began collecting the Cross City pocket timetables at this point. It will be seen below that the art work / size / format changed continually over the years that were to follow. The route had been electrified in 1993 and was thereafter, until 2024 operated by Class 323 EMUs, up until 2020 in mainly three car formation, with some six car trains at peak times. The situation was similar to the early 1990s with four train per hour frequency between Lichfield City and Longbridge , with two trains per hour extended to both Redditch and Lichfield Trent Valley.
Class 323 EMU
June to September 2002
In the summer of 2002 we have a very similar looking timetable and frequency, albeit with some slight changes of times. But in general we can see the timetable pattern has remained stable over at least five years.
September 2002 to January 2003
In September 2002, there was something of a revolution. The number of trains was increased to six per hour, with four beginning their journeys at Lichfield Trent Valley, and two at Lichfield City and four ending their journeys at Longbridge and two at Redditch. The stopping pattern was complex with not all trains stopping at all stations. To try to make life easier for passengers, trains were to carry a headcode (that can be seen on the above timetable) indicating their destination and the stopping pattern. To put it bluntly, the service was an absolute disaster. A very frequent service with variable stops needs to be highly reliable – and that has never been the case for the Cross City line, largely due to congestion at New Street. My memory is of confused and angry passengers, very late running and many cancelled trains. Although the ambition was laudable, the pattern was never going to work. My memory is that it was replace by an emergency timetable within only a few weeks of its implementation, but I can’t be certain about that. At any rate, a new timetable was issued from January 2003.
January to May 2003
The new timetable again had six trains an hour, two beginning at Trent Valley, two at Lichfield City and two at Four Oaks, with four an hour terminating at Longbridge and two at Redditch. With only minor exceptions (Shenstone and Duddeston), all trains stopped at all stations. From a personal perspective, this led to an unbalanced departure schedule at Lichfield City, with twenty and ten minute intervals, but this pattern was to persist, in essentially the same form until 2018.
May to December 2009
The 2009 timetable is very similar to that from 2003, with very minor changes of timing.
May 2015
Similarly the 2015 timetable was of the same form, but Redditch was now served by three trains per hour following the opening of a passing loop at Alvechurch that increased the capacity of the branch.
May to December 2019
The main change in 2019 was the extension of two of the three services that terminated at Longbridge to Bromsgrove, following electrification of the line through Barnt Green, with some other slight timing modifications. Then in 2020 COVID happened.
May to December 2022
During the COVID lockdown, the services on the cross city line were scaled back to four per hour, with two starting at Lichfield Trent Valley and two at Four Oaks, with two terminating at Bromsgrove and two at Redditch and this pattern was to persist. These four trains used four of the six paths from the earlier six train timetable resulting in unbalanced intervals between trains along the line. Stations north of Four Oaks suffered particularly, with the service being reduced to half hourly, the lowest level of service since the mid-1980s. To make up for this all services were six coaches however.
December 2024 to May 2025
In the present 2024 winter timetable, this situation persists, for good or ill. The quality of the rolling stock has however increased with the use of Class 730 EMUs.
Class 730 EMU
Journey times and leaf fall timetables
Finally, before I close, I will brielfy discuss journey times and leaf fall timetables, which are quite closely connected. I take the journey time between Lichfield City and Birmingham New Street as a comparative value through the years. In the 1960s, when the service was operated by Class 116 DMUs, the journey time was around 45 minutes, but by the close of the decade it had reduced somewhat to between 40 and 42 minutes. . After electrification with the introduction of Class 323 EMUs , this time fell to between 35 and 37 minutes. Current times with the Class 730 are still around 37 minutes.
From the early 2000s a “leaf fall timetable” has operated on the Cross City line between October and December, when track conditions can become difficult. A typical example for 2005 is shown below. At the time the normal timetable consisted of six trains an hour, with two starting at Lichfield Trent Valley, two at Lichfield City and two at Four Oaks, with four terminating at Longbridge and two at Redditch. The revised timetable shows four trains an hour, with two starting at Lichfield Trent Valley and two at Four Oaks, with two terminating at Longbridge and two at Redditch. Journey times from Lichfield City to Birmingham New Street were 45 minutes. There was thus both a significant reduction in service frequency and a significant increase in journey time in the interests of maintaining reliability.
Closing remarks
As I said at the start of this blog, the history of services on the Cross City line show a commendable ambition on behalf of the operators, but with this ambition compromised by lack of operational reliability. The six train per hour service that operated from 2003 was notoriously unreliable, with this unreliability in the peak leading to significant overcrowding as two trains worth of passengers often tried to squeeze onto one, with most trains having only three coaches. Perhaps the current less frequent timetable, but with longer trains, is more satisfactory in that regard. The unbalanced timetable, with alternating ten and twenty minute gaps between trains is far from satisfactory however. If one is optimistic, one might say that this will allow six trains per hour to be reinstated in the future, but if this is not going to be the case, the timetable really does need recasting with a consistent fifteen minute interval.
In 2021 I discussed some of the early graves in St. Michael’s churchyard in Lichfield. Amongst these was the distinctive “saddleback grave” shown in Figure 1 below, one of the five listed monuments in the churchyard. At the time I wrote as follows.
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 ……. 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 1 The Saddleback grave in 2021
And this is where serendipity comes in. Over the last few days I have begun to think about filling in some of the gaps in my long term project to collate the memorial inscriptions of St. Michael’s churchyard with the burial registers – specifically to include material from the early registers up to 1812. A very helpful archivist at Staffordshire Archives told me that these have been scanned and can be found on Find my past. So I have been busy doing some mass downloads of the material during my seven day free trial (as you do). Whilst doing this I came across the sketch shown in Figure 2 in the register from 1680-1741, on a blank page opposite the entries from November to March 1691 (note this was before the calendar change!)
Figure 2. The sketch from the 1680 to 1741 Register
It clearly shows the Saddleback grave and gives the inscription as
Here lyeth the bo… of James Allen Esq…..1677
There is another note in lighter script that says
Illegible in 1891
So it seems we have an identification of the occupant of the Saddleback grave – although the date is given as three years later than indicated on the William Salt picture. Checking back on the records however in the 1574 to 1680 register, the only entry that corresponds to the name is from 1674
April 13th Mr James Allen, Magistrate, Beacon St
Beacon St is somewhat conjectural however – it is not easy to read. So it looks as if the William Salt date is the correct one.
The registers tell us little else. There is an entry for the marriage of James Allen (Gent) to Mrs. Hester, daughter of Richard Pyot (Dyot?) in November 1658 at St. Mary’s which seems possible. However this was in the Civil War / Commonwealth period when records become very patchy, so there may have been other about with the same name. If any reader knows more of James Allen, then please let me know. But a least we now have a name.
Engineering, history and ecclesiology 
