No, The Ladies of the Vale is not a Game of Thrones reference, it’s the affectionate name given to the three spires of Lichfield Cathedral. However, looking through my photos I don’t have one showing all three, so your going to have to take my word for it that there are two at one end…

and one at the other.

The building was built of red sandstone about eight hundred years ago, with a more recent overcoat of industrial pollution. The reason I wanted to revisit it after almost forty years was the funky wall of saints.

Saint Andrew gets a good position on the lowest rank, whereas Saint Offa is up at the top left somewhere. That would of course be Saint Offa of Essex, rather than Saint Offa of Benevento. I bet you didn’t know there was more than one Saint Offa, did you? It gets worse for popular names like James.

Here, covered in a fine patina of West Midlands air pollution, we have Saint James the Less. Seriously, that’s the best he got? Not Saint James the Pious or Saint James the Pedophile? Let’s check some early Christian sources for clarification.

Papias of Hierapolis (not a saint) has this to say:

Mary, mother of James the Less and Joseph, wife of Alphaeus was the sister of Mary the mother of the Lord, whom John names of Cleophas, either from her father or from the family of the clan, or for some other reason.

Wait! So Mary (Mother of God) has a sister called Mary? What were her parents thinking?

“It’s another girl.”
“Let’s call her Mary.”
“But we have five Marys already.”
“OK, let’s call her Mary instead.”
“But… OK, whatever.”

Talking of Mary (the Mother of God one, not one of her eight sisters called Mary or even Mary Magdalene who was no relation) excavations in 2003 turned up part of an eighth century carving of the Annunciation. Here’s the Archangel Gabriel.

It’s possible that the image was smashed by marauding Vikings in the ninth century and reverently buried in the cathedral. However, the fact that it was buried soon after it was created means that some traces of the original pigments used to color it remain. We think of statues as being plain stone, but in the eight century (as in classical Greece and Rome) they would have been painted to give them a more lifelike appearance.

They also have the eighth century Saint Chad Gospel, which reminded me of the Book of Kells.

The stained glass windows are very nice, but added in the past few hundred years because f*ck the Roundheads.

Speaking of Roundheads, some of the gargoyles where used as whetstones to sharpen swords during the Civil War.

Lichfield was also the home of Samuel Johnson, who compiled the first major English dictionary. Of course, he got on a coach for London as soon as he could. His statue in the marketplace looks really bored to be back in Lichfield.

Johnson’s biographer Boswell seems to be more of a party animal.

It was a beautiful sunny day today with temperatures in the high 80s, but a nice breeze in the afternoon to stop it feeling too hot. We are moored up outside Hopwas, which has two pubs, a school, and a military firing range. What more do you need, really?