SaintFamous
Chad Comes Home
Broken shrine, hidden bones, a long road back.
Stand where it happened
- What's there
- Three-spired red sandstone cathedral
- Legend from
- Church history and relic tradition
- Tone
- Curious
His shrine was smashed in 1538. Nearly five hundred years later, one bone came home.
St Chad's shrine stood in Lichfield Cathedral from 700 and drew pilgrims until it was destroyed in 1538, at the Reformation. His relics did not vanish. They passed to the Dudley family and in 1841 came to rest in St Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham. Then, in November 2022, one bone returned to Lichfield, ending almost five centuries of absence. The cathedral itself survived three sieges in the Civil War, though it lost all its medieval glass, and was rebuilt several times.