Latest issue of Current Archaeology (205) has a piece on the last 25 years
of excavations at Lichfield Cathedral, culminating in the recently
discovered Anglo-Saxon Angel (amazing).
On p. 16, there's a reference to detailed study of the St Chad's Head
complex on the S side of the quire, dating to the 1220s but on the site of
an earlier chapel, 'including the excavation of a well in its floor'. This
is distinct from the 'minster pool' (also on the S side but beyond the
Close), which is what I've assumed is referred to in Chad's legend - where
the stag comes to drink. No mention of whether it's a shaft well or a
spring, though a fair bet that it and the minster pool are hydrologically
related somehow.
On the top, 3rd storey of the complex was the chapel where St Chad's head
was venerated, a major medieval pilgrimage focus.
A Norman burial within the cathedral, probably of a priest, appears to have
been a kind of 'pipe burial', usually a Romano-British pre-Christian
practice in which a pipe incorporated into the grave allows wine (or in this
case perhaps oil) to be poured into it, ritually. So another example of
pagan ideas being carried through into Christian practice, no doubt with
some theological justification devised for it. (Because burial grounds were
re-used during the medieval period, very few Norman graves survive, of
course.) The remarkable survival of a communion wafer in another priest's
burial, perhaps with traces of wine, suggests that the traditional, often
replica, chalice and patten buried with medieval priests could have held the
Host, which would have disappeared in contact with earth. This might relate
to the supposed 'pipe' burial, if communion wine was poured down it.
Christine Buckley
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