Sutton Coldfield Local History Research Group

Visitors to Sutton in 1900 would flock to Sutton’s Crystal Palace - it had a zoo in its grounds where they could see monkeys, lions, camels and kangaroos. Our Crystal Palace was opened in 1879, but twenty-six years previously a more ambitious plan...

Richard Holbeche started school at Mr. Cull’s Academy in Sutton High Street at the age of five years in 1855. Recollecting his schooldays in his 1892 Diary, Holbeche could not remember doing very well academically, although he did receive on...

The Cup public house ceased trading in 2008, after an existence of over 250 years. The building still stands, at the junction of Manor Hill and Birmingham Road, and is now a restaurant. The present building dates from 1901, but it is on the site o...

The town of Sutton was incorporated in 1528, and one of the assets of the new Corporation was Sutton Park. Much needed to be done in the park to make it productive, so Bishop Vesey provided the capital - it cost him over £100 to fence in the...

On a hillside off Ox Leys Road, overlooking the Falcon Lodge Estate, stands a block of apartments, the former stables and outbuildings of Langley Hall. Langley Hall itself was demolished in the 1820s, leaving only part of a moat and some uneven gr...

There were about forty provincial newspapers in England in 1800, and a good percentage of their content consisted of national news and snippets from around the country obtained by the editors through a network - journalists would send items by pos...

Much more is known about the origins of Sutton Park now than forty years ago. Then historians were writing that it was a survival of an ancient forest and chase which once extended over a much wider area, and was left in its natural state when the...

Some of the place-names in Sutton Coldfield originated a very long time ago. Working out the derivation of names, however, is partly guesswork, so Miss Bracken (History of the Forest and Chase of Sutton Coldfield, 1860) may be mistaken in giving a...

Sutton Coldfield celebrated Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee on Tuesday 22nd June 1897. “All Sutton was early astir” wrote an anonymous visitor “and the proceedings of the day were really commenced at nine o’clock, when the Mayor cut the first sli...

The Sutton Coldfield estate which once belonged to Simon Parratt was purchased by Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 1594, using money bequeathed to the College by Sir Wolstan Dixie. The annual rent from this “Dixie” estate of £30 wa...