dorn the cathedral itself. The town
stands in a fertile and gently undulating district without ambitious
scenery, and the cathedral, which is three hundred and seventy-five feet
long and its spires two hundred and fifty-eight feet high, is its great
and almost only glory. It is an ancient place, dating from the days of
the Romans and the Saxons, when the former slaughtered without mercy a
band of the early Christian martyrs near the present site of the town,
whence it derives its name, meaning the "Field of the Dead." This
massacre took place in the fourth century, and in memory of it the city
bears as its arms "an escutcheon of landscape, with many martyrs in it
in several ways massacred." In the seventh century a church was built
there, and the hermit St. Chad became its bishop. His cell was near the
present site of Stowe, where there was a spring of clear water rising in
the heart of a forest, and out of the woods there daily came a
snow-white doe to supply him with milk. The legend tells that the
nightingales singing in the trees distracted the hermit's prayers, so he
besought that he might be relieved from this trial; and since that time
the nightingales in the woods of Stowe have remained mute. After death
the hermit-bishop was canonized and Lichfield flourished, at least one
of his successors being an archbishop. St. Chad's Well is still pointed
out at Stowe, but his Lichfield church long ago disappeared. A Norman
church succeeded it in the eleventh century, and has also been removed,
though some of its foundations remain under the present cathedral choir.
About the year 1200 the first parts of the present cathedral were built,
and it was over a hundred years in building. Its architecture is Early
English and Decorated, the distinguishing features being the three
spires, the beautiful western front, and the Lady Chapel. The latter
terminates in a polygonal apse of unique arrangement, and the red
sandstone of which the cathedral is built gives a warm and effective
coloring. Some of the ancient bishops of Lichfield were fighting men,
and at times their cathedral was made into a castle surrounded by walls
and a moat, and occasionally besieged. The Puritans grievously battered
it, and knocked down the central spire. The cathedral was afterwards
rebuilt by Christopher Wren, and the work of restoration is at present
going on. As all the old stained glass was knocked out of the windows
during the Civil Wars, several of th