Church Heritage Record 620036

3-bay chancel with 2-bay north Dyott chapel and south vestry and organ loft; 5-bay nave with lean-to aisles and west tower and spire. Sanctuary projects E beyond N and S chapels. Building west of chancel arch has been vertically and horizontally subdivided to form a heritage centre.

Nave 70’ x 28’; aisle 19’ wide; chancel 30’ x 24’. Spire 200’ high.

High archaeological potential as the site of a place of worship at the centre of the city of Lichfield since at least the C12, possibly much earlier. Archaeological investigations in the vicinity have discovered much medieval material together with Mesolithic, Neolithic, and Romano-British and Anglo-Saxon finds.

In addition to the recorded burials in the Dyott chapel and the church at large, the long history of worship on the site creates a strong possibility of further burials.

The Venerable Bede records that the burial of St Chad (d.672) took place in St Mary’s church, and that his remains were afterwards transferred to the Cathedral. However, it is not clear that that St Mary’s was on the site of the present one. The Victoria County History records that “according to a note of 1713 in the chuchwardens’ accounts an ancient inscription in the tower stated that the foundation stone had been laid in 856”, but speculates that “the inscription, if it was not merely a product of antiquarian guesswork, had probably been misread, perhaps as a result of damage.” According to the VCH, the present church was not certainly recorded until 1293, and suggests that it was “probably established when the new town was laid out in the mid 12th century.” It was referred to as the chapel church in 1329, a usage which persisted into the C20; until the early C17 its usual name was “the chapel of St. Mary in the market place.”

The Norman church on the site was destroyed in a conflagration in 1291. The church was rebuilt in the C14. It seems that the steeple blew down in 1593, and the church suffered damage in the siege of Lichfield during the Civil War, in 1643. After further dilapidation it was decided in 1716 that the church should be rebuilt; only the C14 tower was left, encased in brick and stucco.

In 1852 it was decided to rebuild the exterior of the tower in stone and restore the steeple, as a memorial to the vicar, the Reverend Henry Lonsdale: this was an early work by G. E. Street. In 1868 the brick and stucco church was taken down and the present church in stone, by James Fowler of Louth (a native of Lichfield), erected as a memorial to John Lonsdale, Bishop of Lichfield (and brother of Henry Lonsdale, and father of Canon John Gylby Lonsdale, vicar from 1866-9): it was consecrated in 1870.

Dr Johnson, whose birthplace stands just to the W of the church at the corner of Market St and Breadmarket St, was baptised in St Mary’s. There are statues of Johnson and Boswell in the square. Also to the W of the church on Breadmarket St, recorded by a plaque, the site of the birthplace of Elias Ashmole, founder of the Ashmolean.

St Mary’s was the guild church in the later Middle Ages, and became the civic church; new civic seats were installed in 1945, and the church has continued to be used for civic services since the opening of the heritage centre. The church was also used by the grammar school

The very impressive tower and spire predate the body of the church, being a C14 tower adapted in the C18 and then encased in stone, with a spire added, by G. E. Street in 1853. The tower has gabled angle buttresses with top blind tracery panels, a W entrance of three orders with foliate capitals, a cinquefoil inner arch and paired doors with rich strap hinges. The gable has a quatrefoil and cusped mouchettes, and is framed by sexfoils and pilasters terminating in pinnacles. Above, a four-light W window on deep weathered sill with a hood mould and foliate stops; triangular-headed blind tracery panels and elegant paired two-light louvred bell openings with crocketed gables; and quatrefoil frieze and pinnacles, the latter partly disguising the breaches of the spire. The spire has three rises to a height of 200ft, its three tiers of lucarnes (three-, two- and one-light) emphasise its powerful upward movement and enable it to do more than simply hold its own when seen (as it readily is) in the distant views of the town in conjunction with those of the Cathedral.  There is a clock at the second stage on the market-place (N) side, and a turreted tower stair between the tower and S aisle.

The body of the church is in the Decorated Gothic style by James Fowler, 1868-70, with a plinth and coped gables and geometrical tracery to the windows. The chancel has clasping buttresses with pinnacles, a large east window (of seven tall lights with two sexfoils over the side portions and a huge circlet in the top embracing six cinquefoils, on a weathered sill) and a gable cross. The clerestory extends into the chancel: two windows of two-lights with alternating quatrefoils and trefoils to each bay between shallow buttresses.

The lean-to chapel and vestry have angle buttresses with pinnacles and symbols of Evangelists (John and Luke) and coped parapets; the aisles have coped parapets and three-light windows between gabled buttresses, with angle buttresses with pinnacles and symbols of Evangelists (Mark and John) to W. The chapel has a three-light E window and two N windows of two lights; the listing description records that the vestry has a two-light window to the left of the entrance with beast stops to breaks in sill course. The first window in N aisle has been lowered to form entrance, with inserted C20 doors and canopy. The NW entrance has three orders in a shallow gabled porch with good carved foliage to capitals and hood stops and a gable with blind plate tracery, with inserted C20 doors and canopy. A C20 window has been inserted beneath N aisle W window.

The interior was subdivided in 1979, with the ground floor forming meeting rooms, lavatories, a kitchen and restaurant, and an entrance lobby, and a mezzanine floor above housing a heritage centre, with the chancel and chapel retained for worship. The interior volume must once have been extremely impressive, and many fine features remain.

The interior is animated by sandstone facing variegated with deliberate though irregular alterations of dark and lighter coloured stone. The roof structure, “the great glory of the interior” (PM 847), has arch-braced scissor trusses with double purlins and wind-braces. The nave has arcades with very good, naturalistically carved foliate capitals. The tower has blocked three-light windows to N and S and a deeply splayed tower arch.

The chancel remains full-height, divided at the chancel arch with a plasterboard screen with glazed panels in the shape of a cross. The chancel arch is of one order with a corbelled inner arch. The chancel roof is ach-braced on corbelled wall shafts.

On the N side the separation between the chancel and the Dyott chapel is managed by a central pier, with arches on either side, now infilled with a glazed wooden screen. The organ chamber on the S side has a single opening with a hood mould that is continuous with a string course.  To the vestry, a door of two orders with foliate capitals and a hood-mould with head stops. There were supposedly Minton tiles to the chancel floor, but it is not clear if these survive beneath the present carpet.