The story of Lichfield Cathedral begins with a name and a legend. The name is Chad; the legend, that a thousand Christians were martyred here around AD 300, during the reign of the Roman Emporer Diocletian, and that ‘Lichfield’ therefore means ‘field or place of the dead’. There are other explanations of the name (‘field by the grey wood’ and ‘place of the lakes’ have both been suggested) but being a martyr site, a holy place, may explain why, as the Venerable Bede, the 8th-century English church historian, tells us:

Chad established his episcopal seat in the town of Lyccidfelth (Lichfield)…There he built himself a house near the church (of St Mary), where he used to retire privately with seven or eight brethren in order to pray or study whenever his work and preaching permitted.

A humble, zealous man

Bede’s account of Chad suggests that he was a remarkable man. He had been a pupil of St Aidan at Lindisfarne, and when he was appointed Bishop in 669,he moved the See from Repton to Lichfield. The Christian Church was weak in Mercia at that time and Chad, although bishop for only three years, brought many to the Christian faith. Stories tell of a humble, zealous man of transparent godliness. Bede further records that ‘Chad died on the second of March (672) and was first buried close by Saint Mary’s Church’, where miracles were said to have taken place, ‘but when a church of the most blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, was built there later, his body was transferred to it.’

Although we have no direct evidence of their position, it is thought that the Saxon churches, dedicated to St Peter and St Mary, stood on the site of the present cathedral, on an east-west axis in line with the holy well, still found by St Chad’s church, the far side of Stowe Pool. In this well, Chad is reputed to have baptised converts, and also stood to pray. The churches, and Lichfield, therefore became the centre for the cult of St Chad and a place of pilgrimage from AD 700.

A manuscript and a carving

Some thirty years later, the St Chad Gospels, an illuminated Latin manuscript of Matthew, Mark and the early part of Luke was written, probably by a monk from Lindisfarne for use in his shrine church.

In 2003, whilst digging to prepare for the moving altar platform in the Nave, three fragments of an early Saxon carving were found. It appears likely that this was one half of the end of a shaped stone coffin, housing the bones of Chad, in St Peter’s Church. The carving is of an Archangel, almost certainly Gabriel, appearing to Mary at the Annunciation. It is thought that the Shrine was wrecked by the Vikings, but the broken stones reverently buried.