This was the first of two mini trips in February. With a six-month gap between two holidays, anything that would break up this period was very welcome. Back in the day when I still watched TV, I would occasionally watch Britain‘s Got Talent. In 2014, I was absolutely captivated by a group of five young men that had formed a group only one month prior to the audition. The judges were somewhat cynical when they first appeared on stage and so was I. However, they sang an absolutely beautiful version of Stars from my favourite musical Les Miserables. I was soon won over and was delighted when they won the series. This group was Collabro. They were very successful in real life and released multiple albums. They also were touring extensively. Around the time I went back to work for Emirates, I saw that they were coming to one of the concert venues here in Manchester. I decided to get a ticket. They were even more amazing in person. Sadly, this was their farewell tour. They did an annual reunion concert for the past two years, but unfortunately, I was not able to go to either of them due to work commitments. During the reunion concert last year, they announced a cathedral tour for this year. As soon as I found out about this, I planned to make it to one of those concerts. When the details were released a week later, Norwich instantly caught my eye. I have always loved this city. Graham spotted Lichfield on the list and suggested that this was doable. Both fit in with my shift pattern. As the tickets were not particularly expensive, I ended up getting tickets for both. We were planning to make a weekend out of the Norwich trip, but for the Lichfield trip, we were planning to go after my early shift on the day after the concert and I was going to head back the next morning in time for my late shift. In the end, it did not quite work out like this. Due to an operational change, I was supposed to be at work for 09:00 the day after the concert. In the end I managed to swap so that I had the day after the concert off, which gave us a full day in Lichfield.
I do work quite close to Manchester Airport, and I was able to get on the train to Crewe at the airport. Graham had got on the same train at Manchester Piccadilly. The train was running slightly late, but we had plenty of time at Crewe to catch the onward train. I spotted Graham as soon as the train pulled into the station and went to join him. It was a cold and wet day, but thankfully there was a waiting room at Crewe station. The train to Lichfield also started in Crewe and it arrived quite early. As soon as the train was there, we got on. We had a nice smooth trip, and I spent most of the journey reading. I had planned to take an Uber from the station to our hotel. However, when we headed towards the exit, we noticed that there was a train to Lichfield City station leaving soon. Graham had worked in Lichfield for a while and said that it would only take about 15 minutes to walk from Lichfield City station to the Cathedral. This sounded good to me as finding the pickup point for Uber at a station is not always entirely straightforward. It only took 3 minutes on the train and despite the fact that it was still slightly damp and it was also dark, I realised that Lichfield is a very special place. I was glad that we would have the chance to explore this city properly the following day.
I had managed to get a decent price for bed and breakfast at the Cathedral Hotel. We walked past the Cathedral on the way to the hotel. The Cathedral Hotel is in a beautiful historical building. We got checked in and I still had a little time to relax. Then I left Graham to his own devices and headed back down the hill to the Cathedral. Graham had offered to walk with me but not only had we walked past the cathedral on the way to the hotel, but it is not exactly small either. I figured that I would have no trouble finding where I needed to go.
Graham had told me that the cathedral was stunning and he was not wrong. There were stewards near the main entrance hat intercepted people and sent everybody to a side entrance. There were more stewards there to check tickets and to point people in the right direction. At Lichfield Cathedral, they had numbered seats. I was quite near the front. As I was going to two concerts, I had bought the cheapest tickets. At Lichfield Cathedral, this was a restricted view. Mt seat was off the side and a massive pillar obstructed most of the view of the stage. I was absolutely fine with this as I had come for the music.
The concert started at 19:30 with the support act, Qymira. Qymira is a very talented musician who was born in Hong Kong, but lives in the south of England. Some of the songs she performed I really liked. Others were not quite my cup of tea and one of the choices seemed to be downright bizarre for a cathedral. On the whole, I did like her set though. Shortly after she left the stage, Collabro came out. They were amazing when I saw them at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester in 2022, but the performance that evening was next level. During this tour, they stripped things right back, concentrating on their harmonies with just a pianist to accompany them. The result was truly magical. They became famous or performing songs from musical theatre. However, we were more than halfway through the first set until they did the first song from a musical. The setlist was a really great mix including crossover pop, swing, hymns, an original song, and of course songs from various musicals. I was not familiar with all the songs they performed, but I loved every single one of them. The one that had be go weak at the knees was their version of The Prayer, which was originally sung by Andrea Bocelli and Celine Dion.
This really showcased just how much talent they have. During the interval, I bought a tour hoodie. I was in two minds about this as it was white, but I am glad that I ended up getting this as it is really warm and comfortable. The second half was even better than the first. Again, this was a really good mix, but a little heavier on the musicals. The highlight of this set for me was Music of the Night from Phantom of the Opera. They also sang two songs from Les Miserable as part of this set. The encore was Stars from Les Miserables. They always close with this. This was the song they sang in the audition for Britain‘s Got Talent and also in the final. It was a truly amazing evening. I was so glad that I had tickets for a second concert later in the month.
Once the concert was over, we were allowed to leave via the main door, which was great as I was sitting very close to this and it was also closer to the hotel. It was raining heavily when I left, but my coat is fairly waterproof and thankfully I did not have far to go. There were a lot of people heading in the same direction. We had only been given one key, but thankfully Graham had left the door slightly ajar. I got ready for bed and then read for a short while before going to sleep. The bed was not particularly big, and it was somewhat cozy, but we both slept well.
When I looked out of the window in the morning , this did not fill me with joy. It was raining heavily. The weather forecast had looked promising, but unfortunately this had turned on us. Still, there was nothing that we could do about it. We got up and ready for the day. Then we headed downstairs for breakfast. The hotel was definitely Collaborator central that morning. Collaborators are what the band calls their fans. I think probably everybody apart from Graham who was at breakfast that day had been to the concert the evening before. Breakfast was very nice. Graham had some fruit and yoghurt to start and I had some muesli. We then both had the full English breakfast with poached eggs. We also both had coffee and orange juice. Breakfast hit the spot.
After breakfast, we went back up to the room. I figured we would stay there as long as we could, but Graham was keen to get going. I packed my stuff and then we went downstairs to check out. I quickly took a photo of the hotel and then we headed towards the cathedral. It was still raining pretty heavily, but thankfully the cathedral was not far from the hotel. I was surprised that all the chairs were pointing in the opposite direction from the evening before. This must have taken forever. The person at the information desk offered us a guided tour for a small fee which was due to leave an hour later. As our original plans would not have worked in this weather, we decided to go for it. We used the time until the tour started to explore on our own.
Lichfield cathedral has a long and interesting history. The first cathedral was probably built around 669 by Saint Chad, the first bishop of Lichfield. When he died in 672, he was buried in the original cathedral. This building no longer exists. In 2003, excavations under the east end of the nave revealed a grave cut into the sandstone bedrock which has been attributed to Chad. In 1854, a foundation was found under the choir and presbytery floor. This basilica-shaped foundation was recognised as the second cathedral. The Victorians assumed this was a Norman cathedral, but its shape, dimensions and material suggest otherwise. The foundations have not been carbon dated, but there is a theory that the church was built by Offa when he made Lichfield a seat of an archbishop. It is unclear when the present cathedral was built as records were destroyed during the civil war, but general opinion is that the cathedral was begun in the early 13th century. It was completed with the building of the Lady Chapel in the 1330s. Our guide explained that there are signs where one phase of the building ended and the next began as the architecture does not quite match up.
During the English Civil War, the Cathedral Close was besieged three times. The cathedral was severely damaged, losing all of its medieval glass and many monuments. The clergy followed King Charles I, but the town generally sided with parliament. Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke, led an assault against the royalists during the first siege, but was killed by a musket shot from the tower of the cathedral. Our guide explained that he had actually been incredibly unlucky as the musket ball had hit an adjacent building, but ricochet and entered through a gap in his helmet killing him in the process. The name sounded very familiar, but I initially could not work our why. It was only later that I worked out that he was the lord of the manor at Warwick Castle.
Even though all of the stained glass at Lichfield cathedral was destroyed during the Civil War, the windows of the Lady Chapel contain some of the finest medieval Flemish painted glass in existence. A benefactor purchased the stained glass that had come from Herkenrode Abbey near Liège, Belgium after this had been dissolved and donated it to Lichfield cathedral. The remaining stained glass in the cathedral is mainly Victorian. There are two real treasures in the cathedral that are on display in the chapter house. St Chad’s Gospels is dated 720–740 and contains the gospels of Matthew and Mark, and the early part of Luke. There are 236 surviving pages, eight of which are illuminated. It was a real treat to be able to see something like this. The other treasure was the Lichfield Angel. This was found during the 2003 excavations under the nave of the cathedral in and near the grave of Chad. It was part of a stone chest, which is thought to have contained the relics of St Chad. The panel was broken into three parts and buried. It is thought that this was done to protect it from the invading Viking forces.
We were also incredibly lucky that we were able to see some much more temporary treasures. While we were here, a visiting artist specialising in iconography was there working on her art and a number of her works were displayed around the chapter house an in one of the transepts. This was a real trat. However, it could not quite match up to the second temporary treasure. A Table for the Nation is a 13-metre-long table made from a section of 5,000-year-old black oak. The oak had been submerged in a peat bog and was discovered in 2012 on a far in south-west Norfolk while the farmer was cultivating the land. As it was discovered in the year of Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee, it is now known as the ‘Jubilee Oak’. Crafts people managed to dry and preserve the wood. A plank from the tree was then turned into the table. It was initially on display at Ely Cathedral and then moved to Lichfield cathedral for one year. It has now moved on to its next destination. Our guide explained that this table had been very much enjoyed during its stay in Lichfield and then that there had been regular dinners where people sat around the table. The people of Lichfield also created a table runner for the table which is made up of hundreds of individually decorated textile squares. The finished table runner was unveiled on 26th March. I would have loved to see this. We thoroughly enjoyed the tour and also our own explorations of the cathedral. If the weather had been nice, I don’t think we would have made time for the tour, and this would have been a real shame.
It was still raining when we left the cathedral. We headed across the Cathedral Close to the Erasmus Darwin House. It is the former home of the English poet and physician Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of naturalist Charles Darwin. We entered through the herb garden. On a nicer day, I would have liked to have a good look around this, but with all the rain, we just walked through to get to the house. The collection of the museum is eclectic to say the least, but utterly fascinating. Erasmus Darwin was a man of many talents. He was a gifted inventor and among his inventions were the prototype of a photocopying machine, a flushing toilet, and a canal lift. The invention that I was most fascinated by as an aviation nerd was his flying machine which looks like a mechanical goose. Erasmus Darwin never built this, but his designs have been used to build a mechanical goose that is now on display at the museum, and it actually can fly. However, his inventions were not what had the biggest wow factor. A replica of Erasmus Darwin’s notebook was on display, and some extracts had been enlarged. It was very obvious that he was working on something that very much looked like his grandson Charles’ theory of evolution. Charles had never met his grandfather as he had died before Charles was born, but I am sure that Charles was aware of his grandfather’s work.
After this, we headed to the centre past a duck pond and some beautiful historical buildings. If the weather had been nicer, I am sure we would have sat by the end for a while to see what birds turned up. By this time, the rain had thankfully eased up, but it was still drizzling and sitting by a pond did not appeal. We headed towards the city centre instead. There was something we wanted to check out. When we walked through the city centre, he previous evening, we spotted the library, which is located in the former church of St. Mary’s . We figured that this would be worth a look.
Like with the cathedral, there were multiple church buildings over the years. St. Mary’s was first mentioned in the 13th century. The present building was completed in 1870. From the 1930s, the size of the congregation declined as people were moving out of the centre of Lichfield and businesses were moving in. This meant that a church of the size of St. Mary’s was no longer viable. By the 1970s a committee was set up to save the church. The original proposal included five sections: a social centre for senior citizens, a coffee shop, a gift shop, a heritage exhibition, and the Dyott Chapel at the north end that would remain as the parish church of St Mary. This was completed in 1981. In 2018, this changed again. The congregation moved out and joined with another congregation nearby. The whole of the ground floor was transformed in the library, and the upstairs has become a community hub with a coffee shop, gallery and space for the various events and the performing arts. This is an interesting building, and it is great that this was saved.
We had a look around the market that took place in front of St. Mary’s and explored the centre a little more. It started to rain more heavily again. We decided to get some lunch. We found a burger restaurant called Patty Freaks. This looked good to us. Graham had the Blue Job, which consisted of a smashed beef patty, blue cheese, caramelised onion chutney, garlic mayo, crispy onion, lettuce, pink onion, and gherkin. I decided to be adventurous. I had the Sweet Freaks, which consisted of a smashed beef patty, cheese, bacon, house sweet chili jam, and peanut butter. This sounded completely “out there”, but it was delicious. We both had some fries which were absolutely amazing. Graham had a Sprite and I had a Fanta. This was a good find.
When we had finished our lunch, it was still raining. We went in search of a coffee shop and found a Café Nero. Graham had an Americano and I had an ice pistachio latte. We just relaxed until it was time to head to the station. We took the train from Lichfield City to Lichfield Trent Valley again. I was a little alarmed when we got to Lichfield Trent Valley and even though trains before and after our train were listed, our train was not. We headed to the waiting room where there was a screen with more trains. Our train was heavily delayed. We took a seat. I checked the status of our connecting train. This was delayed as well. It was touch and go if we would make it. The train eventually arrived, but shortly after we got on, there was an announcement that due to the severe delay, the train would terminate at the next station. When we got there, we managed to get on a train that was actually going all the way to Manchester Piccadilly. That train was also running very late. When we got on there was an announcement to ask people that were due to change at Crewe and heading to Manchester to stay on this train. We did not mind this in the least as this was a highspeed train. In the end, we got back to Manchester earlier than we would have done if all the trains had run to time. It was a win win situation and a nice end to a very pleasant day.
Dolphingirl’s Travels 
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