Patrick Comerford
Sometimes the places and things we see every day are the ones we pay least attention to in life. The Lichfield Clock Tower or Friary Clock Tower has been a familiar sight and sound for me for almost six decades now. It looks like an old friend I have known since my teens, and I still remember how when I was first staying in Lichfield in my teens, I could hear it peal out the hour, half hour and quarter hours, even in my sleep.
I have walked by this landmark in Lichfield constantly and regularly for half a century and more. But it was only on a recent afternoon, in the past few daysm that I had a close look at this Grade II listed 19th-century clock tower on The Friary, close to the Bowling Green roundabout.
The clock tower was first erected in 1863 at the junction of Bird Street and Bore Street on the site of the ancient Crucifix Conduit that had supplied water to the Friary since 1301.
The Franciscans came to Lichfield in 1237 and built the Franciscan Friary on property granted by Alexander de Stavenby, Bishop of Lichfield. A large fire in Lichfield in 1291 destroyed the Friary, but it was promptly rebuilt.
The Crucifix Conduit was built at the gates of the Friary at the corner of Bore Street and Bird Street in 1301 when Henry Champanar, son of Michael de Lichfield, bellfounder, granted the Franciscans the right to build a conduit head over a spring and to pipe water from Aldershaw to the Friary. The water was supposed to be for the friars’ use only, but a public conduit was built outside the Friary gates.
When John Comberford of Comberford died in 1414, his bequests included 10 shillings for masses to the Franciscan mendicant friary in Lichfield.
During the Tudor Reformations, the Franciscan Friary in Lichfield was dissolved in 1538. The estate and remaining buildings were sold in 1544 to Gregory Stonyng, Master of the Guild of Saint Mary and Saint John the Baptist. The Crucifix Conduit and the related assets of the Guild were transferred in 1545 to the Conduits Lands Trust, which assumed responsibility for maintaining the water supply to Lichfield when the spring at Aldershaw was granted to the Burgesses, Citizens and Commonalty of the City of Lichfield.
While the Friary estate and its buildings were bought, sold and leased to many different people and families until 1920, the Crucifix Conduit remained in position until the 19th century.
Building clock towers had become a fashion in England by the mid-19th century. After Big Ben was built in London in 1858, Lichfield City Council decided to follow fashion and to building its own clock tower in Lichfield.
A number of locations were suggested for the clock tower including the roof of the Guildhall and the Market Square, where it would incorporate the statue of Samuel Johnson into its structure. These proposals were dismissed eventually and instead the council agreed to build the tower at the junction of Bore Street and Bird Street, on the site of the former Crucifix Conduit.
The tower was designed by Joseph Potter jr (1797-1875), who also designed the Guildhall (1846-1848). His father, the Lichfield architect Joseph Potter (1756-1842), had worked closely with James Wyatt (1746-1813), supervising alterations to Lichfield Cathedral (1788-1793), Hereford Cathedral (1790-1793), and Saint Michael’s, Coventry (1794), as well as carrying out alterations (1816-1830) to the Gothic hall at Beaudesert House, on the edges of Cannock Chase, for the Paget family. He was also the architect for Newton’s College (1800) in the Cathedral Close in Lichfield and the Causeway Bridge at Bird Street (1816).
Joseph Potter jr designed the clock tower in a Norman style and it was financed by the Lichfield Conduit Lands Trust. When the tower was complete it had cost the trust £1,200. When the tower was built in 1863 it also marked the 300th anniversary of the Conduit Lands Trust.
Some accounts say Potter adapted the Crucifix Conduit as the base of his clock tower and that the conduit was still used as a public water supply after that date. Originally the clock had only three clock faces. At first, a west face was considered unnecessary as it would only look out unto one property, the Friary. However, the tenant in the Friary, John Godfrey-Fausett, complained and a fourth face was added.
During its early years, the clock developed many problems with its timekeeping accuracy, until its mechanism was overhauled in 1898 by JB Joyce & Co, clockmakers, of Whitchurch, Shropshire. The company, founded in 1690, claims to be the world’s oldest surviving clockmakers. Its clocks include the Joseph Chamberlain Memorial Clock Tower, Birmingham; Liverpool Lime Street railway station; and clocks in the cathedrals in Lichfield, Chester, Chichester, Oxford and Salisbury.
Much of the west side of Lichfield was still undeveloped by 1920 and Lichfield barely extended beyond St John’s Street to the west. Sir Richard Ashmole Cooper (1874-1946) of Shenstone Court, MP for Walsall in 1910-1922, bought the 11-acre Friary estate in 1920, and gave the Friary to the city to develop the area and to lay out a new road. The new Friary Girls’ School was built in 1921, and the Bishop’s Lodging was incorporated into the building.
Meanwhile, Bird Street and Bore Street were becoming increasingly congested with traffic because of the narrow layout of the streets. These problems were magnified in the 1920s, and the position of the clock tower only helped to make matters worse.
When a new road named The Friary was built across the former Friary site in 1928, linking Lichfield and Burntwood, the clock tower had to be relocated. It was dismantled in 1927-1928 and it was moved 400 metres west along the new road to its present site beside the Bowling Green roundabout.
Potter designed the four-stage tower in the Norman style, and it is built of ashlar with a swept slate pyramidal roof. The lowest stage has a cornice with zig-zag and weathering over. The east face has a round-headed entrance of one order with zig-zag to the arch, an enriched tympanum, a door with enriched strap hinges, and a plaque above records the history of the Crucifix Conduit.
A bronze plaque on the south side records the gift of the Friary estate to the City Council. On the west side, a plaque records the removal of the tower from its original site. On the north side, a quatrefoil panel records the foundation of the conduit and there flanking round-headed niches that once were with drinking fountains – the niche to the left has a scalloped bowl, but the bowl is missing from the shallower niche on the right. The two round-headed lights above have grilles.
The second stage has a cornice with weathering over. There are three three-light blind window with colonnettes, enriched arches and glazed slits, and one five-light window above with a zig-zag sill band and two slits. There are three single-chamfered lights on the west face.
The third stage has a round clock face on each face. The top stage has nook shafts and a corbel table, and a bell-opening of four lights with louvres on each side. The roof has a finial.
The tower was repaired and restored in 1991 with the assistance of the Conduit Lands Trust. Lichfield City Council now has responsibility for maintaining the clock tower.
The original site of the Clock Tower was at the junction of St John Street, Bore Street and Bird Street, Lichfield. Some sources say its precise location was outside what was once the National and Provincial Bank and that became the Brewhouse and Kitchen pub and restaurant.
However, a blue plaque above a public fountain and tap on the opposite corner, at the corner of St John Street and the Friary, says: ‘The Crucifix Conduit stood very near this place. It brought water from Aldershawe to Lichfield between 1301 and 1928. This area was landscaped in 2001 by Lichfield City Council with support from Lichfield Conduit Lands Trust and Lichfield District Council.’
The water is no longer suitable for drinking, but it is a reminder of the water supply that was once available there from 1301 on.
