Sutton Coldfield Local History Research Group

Sutton Coldfield did not escape the Europe-wide catastrophes of the fourteenth century - the great famine of 1322 with widespread starvation, the epidemic known as the Black Death of 1348-9 which killed half the population, and the so-called child...

When the boundary of Sutton Coldfield was surveyed by the Enclosure Commissioner in 1824, he found that it passed from “the centre of the door of the Cock public house occupied by John Sandon and thence through the kitchen and house in an ob...

“On Sunday afternoon last the Birmingham Battalion of Rifle Volunteers marched back again, after a week spent under canvas in Sutton Park” reported the Sutton Coldfield and Erdington News on July 3rd 1889. The Birmingham Battalion, founded in 187...

Over a thousand years ago an embankment or causeway was made to carry the road from Maney to Sutton across the marshy valley, and 600 years ago this embankment, - now the Parade and Lower Parade - which formed the dam for the mill pool, was reinfo...

Bakers of bread in Sutton Coldfield in the fourteenth century used flour that was a mixture of wheat and rye. A medieval oven recently unearthed in Coleshill Street contained grains of rye, and the corn provided by the Manor for the Head Palesman ...

Joseph Duncomb was elected Warden (Mayor) of Sutton Coldfield in 1760 and again in 1761. While he was Warden he took a share in the newly-made Blackroot Pool in Sutton Park, and he gave himself planning permission to construct a leather mill there...

John Harris was the surveyor appointed to be the Commissioner for the Enclosure of the commons of Sutton Coldfield by Act of Parliament dated 1824. One of his first duties was to define the boundaries of Sutton, and he did this by making a perambu...

In 1721 the prosperous town of Sutton Coldfield was made up of 244 houses and 116 cottages, the cottages housing the labouring poor and their elderly relatives. About forty of these cottages were situated on the commons which stretched for miles r...

Sarah Holbeche was a snob, and looked down on wealthy factory owners. In 1866 she wrote in her diary “The Lloyd brothers made their appearance as occupants of Moor Hall and pew (reserved seat in the Parish Church), specimens of Black Country gentr...

West of a line drawn north to south through the centre of Sutton, most of the land is sandy and pebbly, while to the east there are beds of sandstone and clay. For a long time the land to the west was known as the Coldfield because it was so infer...