In 1935 the old Kings Arms public house was demolished and a new pub was built in its place. The old Kings Arms was a brick building with mock-Tudor decoration, possibly built in the eighteenth century. The earliest record of it is a map of 1763, showing a house occupying a narrow plot of land fronting Coleshill Road.

The Kings Arms does not appear on a list of Sutton licensed premises in the late eighteenth century, and the 1824 Corn Rent Schedule shows that it was not an inn but a dwelling house occupied by Daniel Wilkins. He was a spade-maker, not a farmer, and the house had always been a workman’s cottage rather than a farmhouse, although Daniel was the tenant of a few tiny nearby fields as well as of the house. Most of the Sutton spade-makers were employed at Mr. Parkes’ spade mill at Powells Pool, but Daniel may have been doing some work at home, as the next record shows.

The next record is the 1859 Valuation of the parish, in which the Kings Arms is named, with James Sheppard as the licensee. This schedule gives details of the outbuildings, including two blacksmith’s shops - no doubt they had been used by Daniel Wilkins the ironworker. There was now a stable block at the rear, so perhaps the smithy was still in operation, producing horseshoes. A club house had been built above one of the smith’s shops, reflecting the new function of the house as a pub.

In 1917 there was a gymnasium at the back next to the stables (probably a new building) - “the gymnasium was used by Owen Moser to train boxers”, according to Dick Hawkins, a regular at the Kings Arms for over fifty years. He was quoted in the Sutton Coldfield News in November 1980 in an article covering the re-opening of the pub after an £80,000 refurbishment. This was not the old converted cottage - that had been pulled down in 1935 when the present Kings Arms was built. Mr. J. Collister was the first licensee of the new Kings Arms, having worked in the old pub for a few months - Mrs. Coombs, his daughter, still remembers it.

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The old Kings Arms public house, at the corner of Coleshill Road and Coleshill Street (photo courtesy of Sutton Reference Library)