Sutton Coldfield Local History Research Group

The house in High Street which was demolished to make way for the Midland railway line in the 1870s had been home to the five Holbeche sisters for over forty years. On the opposite side of the road is the Royal Hotel, but it was not a hotel in the...

“Hunting and shooting are the principal diversions here” - so wrote an anonymous author of a history of Sutton Coldfield in 1762. He comments on the large number of foxes, hares and partridges, and on the wild ducks and teal to be foun...

Where the Mall shopping centre in Sutton now stands there used to be a large pool, which was the reservoir for the town watermill. It extended beyond Brassington Avenue, and the water was held back by a dam from Manor Road to the bottom of Mill St...

Looking for Thomas Clifton’s house Thomas Clifton of Coleshill married Elizabeth Curson of Sutton Coldfield in 1646, and came to live with her in her house in Sutton High Street. He was in the cloth trade, being referred to as a Dyer and Shearman...

Thomas Clifton - a ghost from the past. Writing in Scenes from Sutton’s Past, Jim May described Thomas Clifton as “a decent, sober, hard-working man”. This opinion was based solely on Clifton’s probate records - his will and testament, and the va...

Giving evidence to a Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1859, Henry Columbus Hurry the railway surveyor said “I am speaking about the Three Tuns Inn, which I take to be the centre of the town.” The Three Tuns has long been a familiar land...

Early in the nineteenth century, the conduct of Sutton Coldfield Corporation was under review by the Court of Chancery, as a result of a complaint made to the Lord Chancellor in 1788. Suttonians expected that one result of this review would be tha...

Three yeomen of Sutton, William Twamley, Richard Kesterton and Isaac Terry were accustomed to put horses into Sutton Park to graze, paying the Warden and Society tenpence a quarter. In 1787 the Warden started to charge 18d. a quarter, and our thre...

Wigginshill did not become part of Sutton Coldfield until 1125, when the Earl of Warwick succeeded King Henry I as lord of the manor. Listed as “Winchicelle” in the Domesday Book of 1086, it was a small settlement, with its three open fields of th...

William Felton, having lost his leg in an accident in 1823, decided to start a school. The school began in the front room of a house in High Street (now demolished) next to the Royal Hotel. He went to Birmingham to learn Dr. Bell’s system of...