Lichfield Discovered

30/08/2026

⛈️ All of the thunderstorms this week got me into the mood for a good old gothic ghost story. When writing about haunted houses I am often faced with a dilemma between the desire to share a really good story and the guilt that the people living there may not share the same enthusiasm.

🪎Fortunately, in this instance, I have no qualms, as the location for today’s tale was demolished in the 1960s. Well, sort of. Part of Bellamour Old Hall in Colton still stands as ruins, rumoured to be cursed after attempts to raze it to the ground were met with a series of accidents and mishaps. The hex on the house was said to have been placed by former owner Lady Mary Blount, who later built a new Bellamour Hall alongside it for her son. The journal of a Miss Mary Bagot of Blithfield mentions that a stash of treasure was supposedly hidden somewhere amongst the stones of the old house. Are these two legends linked in some way?

🧱The new Bellamour Hall is also no more. It was taken down in the 1920s and sold off piecemeal. When the two halls were still standing, the old one seems to have been used as a residence for senior servants on the estate. George Morrall, head gardener, lived there with his family in the late 19th century. Later, his son Harry succeeded him in the role and spoke to a local newspaper about the spooky side of his former home.

👣 Harry Morrall explained that his twin sister Charlotte was born at the Old Hall. Presumably, as her twin brother, he must have been born there too, and a check in the Colton parish registers confirms that in July 1882, both Harry and Charlotte Morrall were born at Bellamour. It was on the evening of 15th September 1905 that Miss Morrall woke to see what she described as someone in flowing black robes with a beautiful face beckoning to her. Exactly a year later she saw the same thing and between visitations she sometimes heard footsteps walking the floorboards of the old hall.

🩸Although he never witnessed the apparition himself, Mr Morrall did hear the phantom pacing the corridors. On one occasion, he saw the door latch to his room lift up as if someone was about to enter but, when he shouted, the presumed paranormal intruder changed its mind and left. The twins found out from another member of the Bagot family that a man had supposedly been murdered there in 1698, his widow becoming a nun.

🦴Possibly related to the haunting of the old hall are reports of cries emanating from a nearby meadow. Intriguingly, this seems to be near to the site where the stone foundations of a medieval chapel lie beneath the lawn. Bones and the carving of a stone head with a grotesque human face were also found here by the Reverend Parker c.1921.

🔮One final story dates back to around the time of the attempted demolition of the old hall. In 1963, the owner invited a psychic from Birmingham to visit and she claimed to have picked up on a lady with a cross around her neck and a man carrying a Bible. Underwhelmingly, she also claimed to have seen ‘lots of trees around’. Wait, I’m getting the word…..’cobblers’.

🪏I’m looking forward to digging into these tales of hidden treasure, crying bones, beckoning nuns and phantom footsteps to see if there’s any truth buried within them. In the meantime, if you know any more about Bellamour please do let us know!

Katie G 👻

Image: The ruins of Bellamour Old Hall. Built by Herbert Aston in 1638
(c) Staffordshire County Council

27/08/2026

Lightning might not hit the same place twice, but it’s hit our city dozens of times in the last hour or so. That really is a mighty storm out there….! ⚡️

It’s had us searching through the archives, finding lots of incidents over the centuries when thunderstorms have raged above Lichfield, and lightning bolts have crackled down on the city and surrounding villages. 💫

We’ll share a post all about that stormy history later on - in the meantime, keep safe out there everyone. 👍🏻

John T

(Screenshot from the Lightning Maps website - each dot is an individual lightning strike… 😮)

25/08/2026

Evening all! 🌞

We’ve got an Open Morning at The Old Grammar School this Saturday 29th August from 10am - 12.30pm.

Pop in to enjoy an explore of what is a remarkable historic building, the history of which goes all the way back to the 1500s…. 👨🏻‍🎓

Entry is totally free, we’ll be doing tours, there’ll be historic displays too, plenty of history chat and delve into our community history library. 📚

The Old Grammar School is on St John’s Street, with access from The Old School Yard Garden (the gate will be open or walk through from the Frog Lane car parks). 🅿️

Hope to see you then!✨

Team LD 🗝️

23/08/2026

🚗 As I negotiated Muckley Corner one morning I mused upon a few questions about it, ranging from the pedestrian, ‘When did the corner actually become a roundabout?’ to the less prosaic, ‘Was there once an ancient burial mound here?’. Once home, I set out to find some answers.

🐄 However, during the course of my island-based investigations, another question emerged. There is a reference to Richard Key’s Coach and Horses at Muckley Corner in the Birmingham Gazette in 1766. The reference relates to an incident when some butchers accidentally left behind a heifer after visiting Fazeley Fair. The question here is not how the heck do you forget you brought a cow to the pub and neither is it were the butchers ever reunited with their bovine? It’s actually was the Coach and Horses mentioned a predecessor of the Muckley Corner House Inn?

🤬Records held at the Staffordshire History Centre show it was called the New Inn, then Muckley House, and later Muckley Corner House and there’s a hint that a drinking establishment was in existence here in the mid-seventeenth century. Katherine Reeves, the wife of Humphrey Reeves, was to appear at the Lichfield Quarter Sessions in January 1642 and, in the meantime, keep the peace towards Anne Bull of Pipehill. Humphrey is listed as a victualler which suggests he may have been an innkeeper.

⛸️ A further name change saw it called ‘The Olde Corner House Hotel’ in its final years and I can vaguely remember the place being open when I first moved to Lichfield back in 2004 and being an Italian restaurant for a while. Thankfully we do not need to rely solely on my murky memories as my old mucka, the legendary Brownhills Bob, documented the establishment’s demise on his blog. It closed in Summer 2009 and is now residential properties and apparently the HQ of Planet Ice. I’m not quite sure what in the Torvil and Dean that’s all about.

🍺 There’s a sad story relating to how the replacement of stagecoaches by steam engines displaced some people in February 1864. John Brooks, described as a former driver of the Chester Mail until it was driven off the road, was charged by PC John Hobbs with being found in a hovel in Burntwood and resisting the police. Whilst in custody on the road, Brooks said he could not and would not walk without something to drink. Hobbs took him into a pub and bought him a pint of beer. The magistrates were reported to be sorry for the poor fellow having a good laugh at his broad tales about old times. Not sorry enough not to fine him 1s and costs however.

🫆I’ve already mentioned a couple of cases but there is much more to be done about the links Muckley Corner has to the law because there seems to have been a police station there from the 1860s and in the 19th century century, petty sessions were held at the inn itself. There are even rumours of a lock-up to detain the miscreants of Muckley.

🏥 It’s a diversion too far for now though as I want to get back to my original questions. All I can find is out about the first though is that the island idea was originally proposed in 1953 following a dreadful accident which saw thirteen people hospitalised but I can’t quite pin down the actual date when it was constructed. And as to whether there was once an ancient burial mound here? All I can present is some circumstantial evidence.

🪦In The Midland Antiquarian edited by William Fowler Carter in 1882, it claims that, ‘In early deeds Muckley Corner is called Mucklow. It is situated on Watling Street where it is crossed by the main road from Walsall to Lichfield which was made about 150 years ago; the addition ‘Corner’ was then probably given to it. I think the derivation clearly – AS Mucel; ME mikel, mukel, mockel, great and low, a mound or tumulus – great mound. There is no tumulus to be seen, nor is there any record of one known to me, but many ancient lows have been carted away for agricultural purposes or for repairing. roads About 50 years ago Muckley Corner stood on the boundary of Cannock Chase, and the country to the south was open common’.

🗺️ If etymology isn’t enough, then there are several other landmarks marked on old maps and in street names in the vicinity which give us a glimpse of an ancient landscape that is now mostly lost. I don’t think we’ll ever be able to prove there was a burial mound at Muckley Corner but I think what we can prove is the potential for there to have been one.

Katie G 🚙🚛🚚🚐

09/08/2026

🏳️‍🌈💫

🏳️‍🌈 LICHFIELD PRIDE MARCH 2026 🏳️‍🌈

Let's make this year's Pride March the biggest, loudest and most colourful Lichfield has ever seen! 🌈
Whether you're part of the LGBTQ+ community, an ally, local business, charity, sports club, school, organisation or simply want to show your support – everyone is welcome.

📍 Meet at: Grassland, next to Lichfield District Council Offices (Frog Lane)
🕦 Gather from: 11:30am
🚶 March sets off: 12:00pm

Bring your friends, your family, your flags, your banners and your Pride spirit as we come together to celebrate love, equality, diversity and inclusion.

Last year was incredible... this year, let's make the march even bigger! The more people who join us, the stronger the message that Lichfield is a city where everyone belongs. ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

Tag your friends, share this post and help us fill the streets with Pride! 🌈 Let us know your coming! 🙌

29/07/2026

Someone posted a link to a You Tube video of Lichfield City Centre filmed by James Prosser c.1988. I have to apologise for not crediting the original post better but it had disappeared by the time I’d gone back to FB!

It’ll be a real nostalgia trip for some and for those of us who are newcomers (I’ve only been here 22 years) it’s a look at what the city we now call home was like 40 (!) years ago. Some parts have changed a lot, others not so much so see what you can spot.

Link in the comments - enjoy!

Katie G 🎥

27/07/2026

⚠️Vehicle Fire on St John’s Street

Thank you to everyone who has contacted us about the vehicle fire this afternoon on St John’s Street, very close to our base at The Old Grammar School.

Staffs Fire & Rescue teams are still here and the road is closed, so please do avoid this part of town.

The fire hasn’t caused any damage to The Old Grammar School. Our thoughts are with all those who have been affected.

22/07/2026

Yesterday I walked along part of the new Greenway on the old Lichfield to Walsall railway line. I started at Sandfields, Lichfield’s Grade II* Listed Pumping Station, and took a moment to think of Stephen Saunders. A fellow member of the Lichfield Waterworks Trust once upon a time, and a familiar face to many involved in community endeavours in the city, Stephen died earlier this month and will be missed by many of us.

From there I walked above the fields to the Fosseway crossing where the old signal box still stands, and it’d be nice to think it could still serve some future purpose. My own personal favourite railway relic on this stretch is the ramshackle platelayers’ hut where I suspect gangs of workers once stored their tools or sheltered on days where the weather was not quite as kind as it was on my walk.

The section at Pipehill takes you deep into a sandstone cutting and beneath the bridge at Wall Lane. The last passenger train passed through here in 1965 and the track was closed to all traffic in 2001 but you know I have an over active imagination and I still half-expected to hear a rumble of wheels, a hiss of steam or a blast of a horn telling this trespasser in time to get off the line.

I had to hop off just before Hammerwich but will return to continue the journey towards Chasewater and beyond. Huge thanks must go to the Back the Track group for their continued hard work and commitment in getting the Greenway up and running, and maintaining it ever since. It truly is a first class community endeavour.

Katie G 🚂

18/07/2026

We’ve been joking for ages that the traffic lights at Pipehill crossroads are haunted and I’m sure I’m not the only one to have sat there at a red light, waiting for something invisible to pull out of Fosseway Lane.

The Walsall Road itself was once owned by the Lichfield Turnpike Trust who had built a toll house and gate on it by 1787. In November 1879, the Trust held an auction at the Three Crowns inn, to dispose of them. The Victoria County History suggests the house was probably demolished by 1909, although the person who lives in it now assures me that it definitely wasn’t.

Nearby is Pipe Place, a mid-eighteenth century farm house. When owner Mr Bradburne was digging a drain, he discovered the trunks of several oak trees deliberately driven upright into the ground. Some had rotted away above the surface, but others were still whole, each with, ‘a cavity four inches wide and three inches wide from the top cut down its middle’. The structure was traced for about a quarter of a mile and was surrounded by a ‘fosse’ filled with peat.

The Georgian gents who originally found it thought it must have been a military barricade erected by the Romans to defend Letocetum but more recently it has been suggested by archaeologist Jim Gould that it may have been an aqueduct. If you think about it, the water for that big bath at Wall must have come from somewhere although I’ve always assumed the much nearer springs at Aldershawe would have been the source.

Two lengths of lead piping were discovered on the bath house site in 1874 and in a later excavation, deer horns, a number of dogs’ skulls and intriguingly, the thigh bone of a teenage boy were discovered. A pony skull discovered at the bottom of a nearby well may well have been a votive offering. It probably belongs to that one pulling that spectral chariot up at Pipehill cross roads.

Let us now gallop 1,500 years forward in time from possible pagan practices to Victorian values. The Misses Topham opened an establishment at Pipehill for young ladies in 1856 and in 1882, a tiny chapel was built on the crossroads as a mission room to the church at Wall. During the First World War, a street shrine listing the names of those from the local community who were serving their country stood outside it. These shrines were different to the later memorials we are all familiar with in that they were as much about praying for the living as remembering the dead, and were often bestrewn with offerings of flowers, flags and photographs. Perhaps we didn’t come all that far from those pagan practices after all…The Pipehill Mission Church didn’t quite last a century and after laying disused for several years it was bought by Staffordshire County Council and demolished in 1971.

One other institution which warrants a brief mention is the Pipehill and Farewell Association for Prosecuting Felons who advertised in the Staffordshire Advertiser in November 1817 a list of rewards they offered for the apprehension and conviction of those committing offences such as ‘highway robbery’ (£21), ‘wrongfully milking any cow’ (£5 5s) and ‘maliciously pulling up turnips’ (£2 2s).

My photos are from a beautiful walk up Pipehill the other day, along the old road to Burntwood, now reclaimed by nature and through a field of gold which took me past the Three Tuns. I can confirm that I stuck to the footpaths at all times and did not commit any of the above crimes.

There is plenty more to say about Pipehill, its pubs, its people and yes, its phantoms. Now I’m on holiday and not having to sit waiting at those traffic lights twice a day I have more time to write it down so watch this space!

Katie G🚦

05/07/2026

You may have seen the headlines about old horse bones being found at the site of the new cinema this week. It has been suggested that they are linked to an old stable which once stood on the site, but here at Lichfield Discovered we have a different theory.

The bones were found on the line of the old city ditch. Commissioned by Roger de Clinton in the early twelfth century, the ditch was designed to control trade into the town rather than for defence. You can still follow the route of much of it and see plaques where the five gates, or barrs - Bachunneswich (Beacon St), Sandford St, Stowe, Tamworth St and Culstubbe (St John’s St) - gave access to the medieval town.

A section very near to this equestrian excavation was investigated in 2008, revealing the town ditch had eventually become the town dump with broken medieval pottery, leather and more animal bones, including a medieval dog’s skull, turning up in the old tip.

In the 1800s, whilst digging the foundations for long disappeared cottages in Gresley Row, another section of the ditch was discovered, filled with the horns, skulls and bones of large quantities of cattle. Local lore has it that these are the remains of the two thousand oxen supposedly enjoyed by Richard II and guests during his Christmas food festival at Lichfield Castle in 1397. Leicester may have found Richard III buried beneath one of their council car parks but here in Lichfield we appear to have a load of royal rubbish left by Richard II instead.

We are especially invested in anything to do with the ditch as a part of it runs past The Old Grammar School where we are based. Just the other night, I stepped outside of the council chamber/old school room and stood on (in?) the ditch near the site of the Culstubbe gate. On one side, St John’s hospital which welcomed weary pilgrims here to visit the shrine of Saint Chad and on the other, the Hartshorn coaching inn which not only accommodated tired travellers but also troops. In 1779, there were thirty soldiers quartered here but more on the military comings and goings in the city another time.

We’d really like to do our own archaeological dig to investigate our bit of ditch and are having a think about we can raise some funds to get this going. An extra level of interest is that the area outside The Old Grammar School was once the playground. Our old boys may have left their names and initials carved into walls and wooden doors but will we find any other traces of their time here?

Watch this space!

Katie G 🦴