James Tucker in Cov

When I take a train from Longbridge (the extreme south of Birmingham) to the city centre, the trains are bound for Lichfield, to the north of the city. Until Saturday, that was basically the sum total of what I knew about Lichfield, even though it has a cathedral and is apparently really quite old. We decided to go there, though, as it seemed foolish not have gone to see somehting so close, and accessable by local rail.
Well, Lichfield's old city centre is very nice, if a lot like most other English market towns, though it has some claims to fame- Samuel Johnson was born here (house to the right), as was Elias Ashmole, who founded Oxford's famous Ashmolean museum, the actor David Garrick, and Erasmus Darwin, Charles's father (I think). It was also the capital of Mercia in the 700's, and as Offa's capital was briefly the Archdiocese of England- taking that honour away from Canterbury for about 20 years.
There were a few nice old tudor buildings and passageways, and a great deal of Georgian ones- the 1700s were a real heyday for Lichfield- as well as the normal things you'd expect from a cathedral close, even if it is a small one. Anyways, for something so close to Birmingham (about 30 minutes from the city centre), Lichfield is really poorly-known. There's an upshot to that, though. Some cathedrals and their closes are quite ready for tourists, and need to be, and so the places where people live and work are carefully fenced off or otherwise segregated. In Lichfield, I'm pretty sure I could have walked into the Dean's garden and had a chat with him- everyone was just going about their normal business. And, yeah, being November might have influenced that.