Sutton Coldfield Local History Research Group

Several Victorian writers had remarked on the various banks and ditches in Sutton Park, speculating on their significance, and then in his 1904 book A Short History of the Town and Chase of Sutton Coldfield William Midgley wrote “Some warring celt...

Four hundred years ago, although Maney was only a small hamlet, separated from Sutton Town by the valley of the E Brook, the inhabitants took an active part in Sutton Coldfield affairs. Several of the Wardens (the Warden was effectively the Mayor ...

The Warden of Sutton Coldfield in 1621 was Edward Willughby, responsible for a total annual budget of £90. Although not a native of Sutton, he had settled here and established himself over the previous thirty years - he was also Warden in 16...

The Parliamentary Constituency of Sutton Coldfield came into being in 1945. In previous centuries Sutton had been represented in the House of Commons by the four Knights of the Shire - the four Warwickshire MPs. The only Sutton Coldfield man to be...

Street lighting by gas lamps began in Sutton Coldfield in 1853, when the Sutton Coldfield Gas Light and Coke Co. began producing gas at their works on the corner of Riland Road and Coleshill Road. It was not until 1901 that electric lighting was i...

Shirley Farmer Steele Perkins, a rich attorney, lived at Moat House, which he had inherited from his father-in-law, Joseph Duncumb. Commenting that the intellectual society of Sutton reached its zenith in the 1830s, Riland Bedford, in his “The Ril...

When their new house on the Four Oaks Park Estate was being planned, George and Emma Barton specified that it should include a dark room. Emma had already begun taking pictures when they lived at The Grove, Wishaw, and by the time they moved in to...

In 1764 there was a public house in Mill Street called the Bulls Head. It was part of the Sutton Coldfield estate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. In 1594, when the college purchased the estate, it was listed as a private house. According to a surv...

Enclosure of the commons under the 1824 Act of Parliament transformed the landscape of Sutton Coldfield. In addition to the many miles of public roads set out across the commons with geometrical precision, there were also 29 private roads. Some of...

Two hundred years ago the network of roads and lanes connecting the various settlements and farms in and around Sutton Coldfield crossed through farmland and over the open commons. The routes through farmland were well-defined, bounded by hedges a...