Sutton Coldfield Local History Research Group

No-one knows how long ago it was that the causeway across the valley, now known as the Parade, was first constructed. Perhaps it started life as an embanked trackway, or perhaps it doubled up from the start as the dam for the town’s mill poo...

The late John Harrison, who was a keen rambler as well as being Chairman of Sutton Coldfield Civic Society, wanted to promote a ten-mile walk round the fringes of Sutton which he called the Sutton Chain of Footpaths. This was achieved in 1986 when...

Chalford House lies hidden behind a belt of trees in Belwell Lane, known to only a few Suttonians until there was an auction of the contents of the House in June 2008. Such a large old house, surrounded as it is by later residential development, i...

The town of Sutton Coldfield was governed by the Warden and Society, a self-elected body charged with running the town in accordance with the terms of the Charter. Some inhabitants felt that the Warden and Society was failing in its duty, and took...

King Henry the First was keen on hunting, riding through the many forests created in England by his grandfather, William the Conqueror. His favourite food was venison, the meat of the fallow deer. Hunting in the vast forests did not always produce...

The July 11th 1876 issue of the Sutton Coldfield News contained a letter from “Grumbler”, saying “we want more than public-house knowledge and we have an idea that a portion of the town’s wealth should be expended in a free library, and thus be th...

Chester Road crosses the boundary into the old Borough of Sutton Coldfield near the railway bridge, and continues within old Sutton as far as the Beggar’s Bush. From there to Queslet Road it marked the boundary between Sutton and Perry Barr. In th...

Chester Road enters Sutton Coldfield near the railway bridge by Chester Road Station, and continues within the Sutton boundary as far as the Beggar’s Bush. Until the early nineteenth century this stretch of road ran across an expanse of bleak heat...

When the commons were enclosed the heathland on either side of Chester Road became the property of private owners; most of the land to the north of Chester Road became the property of the Rector of Sutton, W.K.Riland Bedford, while the strip of la...

Sarah Holbeche’s Diary gives a glimpse of everyday life in Sutton in the mid-nineteenth century. Sarah Holbeche (1803-1882), a lady who lived in a large house in High Street with her four spinster sisters, compiled the diary over a period fr...