The New International Encyclopædia/Lichfield

LICH′FIELD. An ancient city in Staffordshire, England, a civic county, 15 miles southeast of Stafford (Map: England, E 4). Considerable brewing is carried on, together with market gardening and manufacturing of harness, carriages, and carpets. Its chief edifice is the cathedral, a red sandstone building of fine proportions in the early English style, dating from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and occupying a commanding site. Its length is 403 feet; width of transepts, 149 feet; of nave, 65 feet; and height, 60 feet. It is surmounted by three spires, the central spire being 260 feet high, and the two western spires each 190 feet high. Other notable features are the western façade, ornamented with one hundred statues in niches; the triforium, the Lady Chapel, and several fine monuments. The cathedral, formerly surrounded by a wall, was besieged and damaged greatly by the Puritans in 1643. It was restored by Wren, who built the central spire; at the end of the nineteenth century it again underwent a complete restoration. Lichfield has a free grammar-school, in which Addison, Ashmole, Johnson, and Garrick, natives of the town or vicinty, were educated. The market-place contains a colossal statue of Dr. Johnson. Lichfield was made an episcopal see in 669, and received its city charter in 1549. Population, in 1891, 7864; in 1901, 7900. Consult: Britton, History of Lichfield (London, 1836); Beresford, Lichfield (London, 1880).