Bishop of Lichfield
diocesan bishop in the Church of England
The Bishop of Lichfield is the ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Lichfield in the Province of Canterbury. The diocese covers 4,516 km2 (1,744 sq. mi.) of the counties of Powys, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Warwickshire and West Midlands. The bishop's seat is located in the Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saint Chad in the city of Lichfield. The Bishop's residence is the Bishop's House, Lichfield, in the cathedral close. In the past, the title has had various forms (see below). The current bishop is Michael Ipgrave, following the confirmation of his election on 10 June 2016.
History
The diocese of Mercia was founded 656 with Diuma as its first bishop; according to Bede he was at the same time the Bishop of Lindisfarne and of the Middle Angles, amongst whom he died. When Chad was made Bishop in 669, his seat was at Lichfield, thus the diocese was named after that city. In 691 the area over which the bishop held authority was divided to form the smaller dioceses of Lichfield, Leicester, Lindsey and Worcester.
The public source identifies “Bishop of Lichfield” as diocesan bishop in the Church of England. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bishop, Lichfield and diocesan.
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The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1432667. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2016.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bishop of Lichfield” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.