Lovely Lichfield: Exploring Lichfield Cathedral

During my years of travels in the UK and Nice Days Out one of my greatest surprises has been just how much I enjoy exploring churches and cathedrals. I'm not at all religious, spent very little time in churches growing up, and honestly thought I'd find it a bit weird to visit them when sightseeing but - oh! - what interesting buildings they can be!

History and meaning and craftsmanship and beauty and incredible architecture and oh so many details to discover... all crammed into buildings which (more often than not) are free to visit and an oasis of calm in a busy town or city.

 

A few weeks ago I blogged about my trip to Lichfield, including Erasmus Darwin House and the Cathedral Close. Lichfield's Cathedral was the main reason I'd decided to visit the city and it did not disappoint.

 

 

 

 

It's an impressive Gothic building with three spires and a vast array of carved figures of kings, queens, and saints - and there's no shortage of interesting things to see inside, as well.

 

 

 

 

I spent a long time looking round and ended up chatting to several very friendly volunteers who filled me in on some of the building's history and pointed out fascinating things I'd missed.

Naturally (because I'm the world's slowest travel blogger and am only just now blogging about a holiday I took two years ago) I've forgotten pretty much everything they told me but the memory of the beauty of this place and the warm welcome from the volunteers is still a very strong and happy one.

For more info about visiting Lichfield Cathedral click here.

You can read about the rest of my trip to Lichfield (including the charming Cathedral Close) here. I visited Lichfield as a day trip during a week's stay in nearby Birmingham, which I loved. Follow the links to read about Birmingham's excellent architecture, museums, and Jewellery Quarter.

Lovely Lichfield: The Cathedral Close & Erasmus Darwin House

Whenever I go on holiday to a big city I try to include an out-of-the-city day trip in my plans. For example, the first time I visited Birmingham I also took a trip to Stratford-upon-Avon (so delightful! so much history!) then on my return visit to the city I hopped on a train to nearby Lichfield.

I started my visit by following the local heritage trail, popping into the Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum and Lichfield's Museum at St Mary's in the Market Square (regular readers will know how much I love A) a heritage trail and B) little local museums). As well as the museum there's also a little cafe at St Mary's, where I stopped for a cuppa and something sugary (yum).

Now, when I came to blogging about my Lichfield trip I had totally planned on devoting a post to this early part of my day - showing you the church, the market square, the local park, etc - but it was such a grey and miserable morning that all my photos turned out terribly. Dull and depressing and definitely not representative of the actually quite lovely stuff to see in Lichfield. Nobody wants to see that snooze of a blog post.

So, I'm skipping that bit and moving on to the part of the day when the sun came out and cheered up all my pictures (hurrah!).

The weather started to improve just as I reached the cathedral close. Lichfield Cathedral itself is magnificent (and deserves its own blog post another time) but the Close is ridiculously charming.

It was lovely going for a quiet walk around the Close, thinking about all the people who've lived in these houses over the centuries and reminiscing a little about the years I spent living in another cathedral close in another city (many moons ago). 

Just off the Close is Erasmus Darwin House, which was my final stop for the day. Erasmus Darwin was Charles Darwin's grandfather and a doctor, inventor, botanist and poet. If you look closely, you can see him peering out the the window of the house...

Erasmus Darwin was a fascinating and incredibly accomplished man about whom I have to admit I knew very little. The museum really brought him, his ideas, and his inventions to life - I very much enjoyed my visit!

Not a bad view to have from your house, huh?

 

The museum also has a lovely Herb Garden, which is divided into Mrs Darwin's culinary herb garden and Dr Darwin's medicinal herb garden. All the plants are labelled so you can expand your botanical knowledge... 

 

 

 

... or you can just sit and enjoy the view like I did!

I'll be blogging about Lichfield Cathedral sometime soon (if you're a regular reader you'll know that "soon" is a bit of a flexible term when it comes to my travel blogging, but I promise I'll get there eventually!). In the meantime, you can catch up on my posts about Birmingham's architecture, museums, and Jewellery Quarter, or read about my earlier trip to Stratford-upon-Avon.

For more city break inspo, check out my posts about visiting Manchester and Leeds.