Sutton Coldfield Local History Research Group

Richard Holbeche, writing in the 1890s about his childhood memories, remembered a building on the Parade - “a little white house just beyond the bridge - a wire covering to the window looking up the hill towards the Cup suggested that a dair...

The square tower of Sutton Church is a landmark that can be seen for miles, even now that there are so many other tall buildings in Sutton. It was built in the fifteenth century by one of the Beauchamp Earls of Warwick, partly to demonstrate his p...

In 1920 many train journeys to Birmingham from Sutton were made on the Midland Railway. This line ran from Walsall through Sutton Park and Walmley to join the Midland main line at Castle Bromwich; there were three stations in Sutton, Sutton Park, ...

Travel on the roads in the nineteenth century was not free - every so often you would come to a toll gate and have to pay a fee to go through. There was a toll gate in Sutton, in Lichfield Road next to the junction with Tamworth Road. The toll hou...

Sir William Dugdale, in his “Antiquities of Warwickshire” published in 1651, recounts that Bishop Vesey built fifty-one stone houses in Sutton Coldfield. “And for the prevention of robberies”, says Dugdale, “which were in those days frequent upon ...

Canwell Priory was dissolved in 1530, and the property was acquired by Bishop Vesey. Vesey bequeathed Canwell to the descendants of his brother, Hugh Harman, and by 1820 Canwell Hall and its estate were in the possession of Sir Robert Lawley. Part...

In 1533 the newly-formed corporation of Sutton, the Warden and Society, showed its gratitude to Bishop Vesey by bestowing the lease of the town mill on Thomas Keene, who had married one of Vesey’s nieces. The deed records: “Mindful of ...

Roger of Newburgh was the second Earl of Warwick after the Norman Conquest, and took over the lordship of the Manor of Sutton Coldfield in 1126. Earl Roger made frequent journeys to the Holy Land and struggled to survive the civil wars of Stephen ...

Peers’ 1870 Guide to Sutton Coldfield includes a history of the town in which he describes a cottage “with a large yew tree before the door on the north side of the Birmingham Road; which is the oldest the house or the tree, cannot be told, but bo...

Medieval documents relating to Sutton, such as the early thirteenth century charters, are often difficult to date. Walter de Bereford’s charter does bear a date, however - “ad purificacione beate marie anno regno regis Henrici filii re...