Just three memorial stones stand in the churchyard of Holy Cross Catholic Church. Father Time and Mother Nature have taken their toll and the names are barely legible but look closely and you’ll see each of them belongs to members of the Corfield family. You may also notice that the monument in the middle has a somewhat strange inscription, ‘Refused admission into St Michael’s Churchyard’.

They tell of a tragedy which took place on Breadmarket Street in January 1873 when a fire ripped through the home of watchmaker William Corfield. Three generations of the family lost their lives and the reports in the newspapers at the time are an incredibly harrowing and graphic read. The most devastating part is that no rescue effort had been made, as it was thought that the family has already escaped to the adjoining Three Crowns Inn and so the fire fighters focused on saving the building rather than those inside it.

When they eventually entered the property, they were horrified to discover the remains of William, his wife Theresa, and their four children, and his mother, Margaret. The bodies were brought out from the building in front of a crowd of horrified onlookers and taken to the Guildhall. There, an inquest was held and a Catholic Priest read the burial rites, before the family were taken to the graveyard at St Michaels where the Rev J Sejeantson carried out an outdoor service. The family lie together in a grave at Greenhill and I can only assume that what appear to have been their intended headstones at Holy Cross were rejected by the Church of England by being ‘too catholic’ in some way?

Following the fire, the council bought an engine and established a brigade, erecting a fire station at the east end of Sandford Street. We’ll return to the story of how Lichfield battled blazes throughout history another time, as the progression from the precarious provision of ladders and buckets to the professionalism of today’s community fire and rescue service is truly fascinating.