My friend told me a local legend about this house being built out of spite. I did a bit of research and found this:
“Selwyn House was built on the site of the mediaeval moat around the cathedral and it’s Close.
There was a house built of brick here from at least the early decades of the 18th century. The first house is said to have been built by one of three sisters as a “spite house.”
There is well-known legend in Lichfield that says three houses were built by three sisters in the 1750s:
Elizabeth Aston, daughter of Sir Thomas Aston of Runcorn, Cheshire, lived in Stowe Hill, later Stowe Hill House. She died in 1785.
Her sister Jane, wife of the Revd Francis Gastrell, is linked with Stowe House. It was home first to the Revd Thomas Hinton of Saint Chad’s, who died in 1770, and then home to Richard Edgeworth and his family and Thomas Day. The third house was empty in 1777 and is never mentioned again.
But legend has developed to say that this third, unmarried sister lived at Selwyn House, and built this house in order to spoil their view of the cathedral from Stowe Hill and Stowe House. She had suffered from being shuffled between the houses by her sisters, and in a fit of indignation she built a house as tall as possible to block their view. And so it got the popular name of “Spite House” or the “Hate House.”
