page_title: Lichfield
section_title: Geography
hierarchical_section_title: Lichfield / Geography
caption_attribution_description: English: View of Lichfield, Staffordshire from Harehurst Hill, Dean Slade Farm in the foreground.
context_page_description: Lichfield is a cathedral city and civil parish in Staffordshire, England. Lichfield is situated roughly 16 mi north of Birmingham, 8.1 miles from Rugeley, 9 miles from Walsall, 7.9 miles from Tamworth and 13 miles from Burton Upon Trent. At the time of the 2011 Census the population was estimated at 32,219 and the wider Lichfield District at 100,700.
  Notable for its three-spired medieval cathedral, Lichfield was the birthplace of Samuel Johnson, the writer of the first authoritative Dictionary of the English Language. The city's recorded history began when Chad of Mercia arrived to establish his Bishopric in 669 AD and the settlement grew as the ecclesiastical centre of Mercia. In 2009, the Staffordshire Hoard, the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver metalwork, was found 5.9 km south-west of Lichfield.
  The development of the city was consolidated in the 12th century under Roger de Clinton, who fortified the Cathedral Close and also laid out the town with the ladder-shaped street pattern that survives to this day. Lichfield's heyday was in the 18th century, when it developed into a thriving coaching city.
context_section_description: Lichfield covers an area of approximately 5.41 sq mi (14.0 km²) in the south-east of the county of Staffordshire in the West Midlands region of England. It is approximately 25 km (16 mi) north of Birmingham and 200 km (120 mi) north-west of London. The city is located between the high ground of Cannock Chase to the west and the valleys of the Rivers Trent and Tame to the east. It is underlain by red sandstone, deposited during the arid desert conditions of the Triassic period. Mercia Mudstone underlies the north and north-eastern edges of the city towards Elmhurst and Curborough. The red sandstone underlying the majority of Lichfield is present in many of its ancient buildings, including Lichfield Cathedral and the Church of St Chad.
  The ground within the city slopes down from 116m in the north-west to 86m on the sandstone shelf where Lichfield Cathedral stands. To the south and east of the city centre is a ridge which reaches 103 m at St Michael on Greenhill. Boley Park lies on top of a ridge with its highest point on Borrowcop Hill at 113m. To the south-east the level drops to 69 m where Tamworth Road crosses the city boundary into Freeford. There is another high ridge south-west of the city where there are two high points, one at Berry Hill Farm at 123 m and the other on Harehurst Hill near the city boundary at Aldershawe where the level reaches 134 m.
  The city is built on the two sides of a shallow valley, into which flow two streams from the west, the Trunkfield Brook and the Leamonsley Brook, and out of which the Curborough Brook runs to the north-east, eventually flowing into the River Trent. The two streams have been dammed south of the cathedral on Dam Street to form Minster Pool and near St Chad's Road to form Stowe Pool.
caption: Panorama from Harehurst Hill 1.5 mi (2.4 km) south west of the cathedral, showing Lichfield's distinctive 5 spires
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