Lichfield on the main routes from London to the north-west and Birmingham to the north-east. It also became a centre of great intellectual activity, being the home of many famous people including Samuel Johnson, David Garrick, Erasmus Darwin and Anna Seward; this prompted Johnson's remark that Lichfield was "a city of philosophers". In the 1720s Daniel Defoe described Lichfield as 'a fine, neat, well-built, and indifferent large city', the principal town in the region after Chester. During the late 18th and early 19th century much of the medieval city was rebuilt with the red-brick Georgian style buildings still to be seen
David Garrick surmise, "that young man never had his equal as an actor, and he will never have a rival". With his success at Goodman's Fields, Charles Fleetwood, manager of Drury Lane, engaged Garrick to play Chaumont on Otway's "The Orphan" (a role he first played in Ipswich) on 11 May 1742 while he used his letters patent to close down Giffard's theatre. That same month, Garrick played King Lear opposite Margaret "Peg" Woffington as Cordelia and his popular Richard III. With these successes, Fleetwood engaged Garrick for the full 1742–43 season. At the end of the London season, Garrick, along with