Saint
The Field of the Dead
A thousand graves gave the city its name, or not.
Stand where it happened
- What's there
- Three-spired red sandstone cathedral
- Legend from
- Medieval folk etymology
- Tone
- Dark history
A thousand martyrs, says the legend, and the city named for their graves. The evidence says otherwise.
A long-told story explains the name Lichfield as 'field of the dead'. It says around a thousand Christians were martyred here in about 300 AD during the persecution of the Roman emperor Diocletian, and that the city took its name from the slaughter. Wikipedia states plainly that there is no evidence for this, and it suggests the city may instead have grown as people moved from the declining Roman town of Letocetum nearby. The legend lived on, though, and the cathedral that grew up over St Chad's shrine from 700 became the city's centre. No second source for the martyr story was read.