Some special moments and memories from 2022, one from each month of the year. The photographs are taken from a calendar that I created for myself and due to the printing deadline, December’s photograph is also from November.

1. The Inclined Plane, Coalport, 2. Lichfield Cathedral, 3. Local Pathway, 4. Llangollen Canal Nr Chirk Aqueduct, 5. violet’s Tea Room Bridgnorth, 6. Waddesden Manor, 7. Tewkesbury, 8. Sandringham Church, 9. Attingham Park, 10. The Long Walk, Windsor, 11. The Guild Chapel, Stratford-upon-Avon, 12. Stratford-upon-Avon

Above the door inside the Chapter House one of three the  mediaeval paintings that can be found within Lichfield Cathedral can be seen. It shows the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The other two paintings are located in the South Isle of the Cathedral. One of the paintings depicts the Crucifixion, the other depicts  the Holy Trinity with the crucified Christ lying across the knees of God the Father.

Looking East down the Nave of the Lichfield Cathedral, three Icons can be seen. To left of the Nave Archangel Gabriel is depicted and to the right the Virgin Mary. The centre Icon shows Jesus being crucified on the cross. This Icon viewed from the West shows the resurrection of Jesus.

Bishop Hedda founded Lichfield’s first cathedral in 700 to house the relics of St Chad, the Bishop of Mercia who had come as a missionary and had died in 672. In his History of the English Church and People the venerable Bede retold the life of the saint and described his shrine. The Anglo-Saxon cathedral remained until the beginning of the twelfth century when it was demolished and rebuilt by the Normans. Nothing of the Anglo-Saxon structure remains above ground, but the Cathedral owns two great treasures from the period: a volume known as The St Chad Gospels, which has been dated at 730, and a later eighth-century carving known as The Lichfield Angel.*

*From the Lichfield Cathedral guidebook