Sutton Coldfield Local History Research Group

One of the hazards of local history research is having confidence in the sources of information. For example, Riland Bedford in his History of Sutton Coldfield published in 1890 confidently states that the building at 1, 3 and 5 Coleshill Street h...

A Medieval ploughman working all day in his fields is said to have been sustained by drinking a gallon (nearly five litres) of ale. The ale consumed in this way was small beer, of low alcohol content, only half the strength of that served up in th...

“What pictures of wild battle do these overgrown dykes suggest! What skin-clad barbarians fighting with strange weapons in peaceful-looking Sutton!”. William Midgley was inspired to write these stirring lines in his 1904 History of the Town and Ch...

New Hall Mill will be grinding corn again on Sunday May 14th, and the volunteer millers will be hoping that nothing goes wrong. One problem already experienced several times occurs when the grains of wheat are too soft and the wheat turns into pas...

The dam of Blackroot Pool in Sutton Park was completed in 1759. Lying as it did within Sutton Park, the corporation of Sutton, known as the Warden and Society, owned the site of the pool, but the pool really belonged to Joseph Duncumb of Moat Hous...

The first bus services in Sutton were provided by horse-drawn omnibuses, as Miss Bracken, writing in 1860, noted, ““Other modes of breaking the silence have been discovered in omnibuses oscillating between Birmingham and Sutton, with multitudes im...

I’ve received lots of compliments about the “History Spot” articles, particularly since I had to miss a few weeks recently, so thank you. In writing the articles I depend heavily on the local history collections at Sutton Library. For example, in...

Sutton Coldfield’s Town Charter of 1528 put an end to the feudal system which had operated in the town for over half a century, and the dissolution of Canwell Priory shortly after released Hill and Little Sutton from their feudal obligations to th...

The Sutton Coldfield Volunteer Rifle Corps was formed in 1880, and at full strength it comprised 140 officers and men. Sutton men wishing to join a join a volunteer force before 1880 could probably have gone to the Warwickshire Rifle Volunteers; i...

If the letter from Cromwell to Captain Eyre, of Wolverhampton, - preserved in the Salt collection - be genuine, Cromwell himself was in the town of Sutton on the 27th August 1643” wrote Riland Bedford in his “History of Sutton Coldfield”, 1891. W....

After the closure of the racecourse at Four Oaks Park in 1889, Four Oaks Hall and its park were purchased by Lord Clanricarde. The purchase of Four Oaks Hall was a purely business transaction, done with a view to making a profit, and his agents so...

Sutton was an agricultural town in the eighteenth century, and almost all the farms were engaged in mixed husbandry - growing crops and raising livestock on the same farm. To keep animals over winter required a good stock of hay, so most farms inc...

Sutton Coldfield High Street seems to have been planned as the main street of a small market town, probably laid out in the late twelfth century. The houses were set out in burgage plots on either side of the street, each plot with a frontage of a...

Francis Smith of Warwick (1672-1738), together with his brothers William and Robert, worked hard on the rebuilding of the town of Warwick after the disastrous fire of September 1694. The brothers became the most famous architects and building craf...

The building known as the Guildhall in Lichfield Road was built in 1834 as Sutton’s Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Chapel The opening mass was conducted by Bishop Walsh on Tuesday October 21 1834. Although there were said to be only six Catholic fami...

Several families named Honeybourne lived in Sutton in the seventeenth century. There is some evidence that skilled weavers from the village of Honeybourne (near Evesham in Worcestershire) came to Sutton in the 1530s as part of Bishop Vesey’s plan ...

When War was declared on August 4th 1914, a local newspaper reported on the mood of the occasion, noting that many events, including the Royal Sutton Coldfield Horse Show, went on as usual on that day. The Horse Show was an annual event, started i...

King Henry VIII commissioned the scholar John Leland to examine the libraries of all the religious houses in England, and to study in them. This was in 1533 and Leland spent the next few years travelling, going to various monasteries and priories,...

Riding north out of Sutton in 1850, a traveller along Lichfield Road would come first to the “Top of Sutton” at the Tamworth Road junction; from there it would be the district of “Doe Bank” as far as the junction with Four Oaks Road; beyond Doe Ba...

In the Middle Ages all the grain grown in Sutton was ground at the manorial corn mill which stood at the bottom off Mill Street. This mill was damaged by a flood in 1668, and was eventually converted into a skinning mill where hides were cleaned b...

George Jackson was an out-of-work gun-barrel borer who had taken a labouring job on the road near Penns. He walked the five miles to and from work every day, and soon after 6.00 a.m. on the morning of May 27th 1817 he was walking along a footpath ...

The death of Mary Ashford on May 27th 1817 scandalised the whole country. Here, it seemed, was a case straight out of the gothic novels of Mrs. Radcliffe - a young innocent woman raped and murdered by a thuggish man. Or was it?Monday May 26th 1817...

The first Roman Catholic Church in Sutton was opened on October 21 1834 in Lichfield Road near Bishop Vesey’s Grammar School - the building, known as the Guildhall, is now offices. The opening was the subject of an article in the December 1834 iss...

“All views in Sutton Park are beautiful, but there is one which can only be described as grand”, wrote William Midgley in his 1904 History of the Town and Chase of Sutton Coldfield. He referred to the view to be had after coming up through Hollyhu...

Moat House in Lichfield Road was built in the 1680s as a prestige house by the architect Sir William Wilson on his marriage to the wealthy and well-born widow Jane Pudsey. His marriage elevated him to gentry status, so the Wilsons lived in style a...

The death of Joseph Duncumb of Moat House, Sutton Coldfield, in April 1793 no doubt cast a blight over his daughter Elizabeth’s plans, as she was on the point of getting married. However, only one month later, on May 21st 1793 Elizabeth Duncumb wa...

When Thomas Ardern inherited Peddimore in Sutton Coldfield he went hunting in the surrounding countryside, oblivious of the fact that the Earl of Warwick had the sole rights to hunt in the Chase of Sutton Coldfield. Ardern was arrested in 1287 and...

Woodland products were of great importance in the past, and in the middle ages woods were carefully managed, usually by coppicing. When harvested, the coppiced tree would send up new shoots from its base, so did not need to be replaced by a new pl...

Many writers on English history have been Anglican clergymen, who, like the Rector of Sutton, Rev. W.K.Riland Bedford, deplored “the corrupt condition of the Church before the Reformation”. Riland Bedford makes this remark after listing all the ch...

Wednesday 22nd June 1898 was bright and sunny, and the railway station at Sutton looked a picture. Over a hundred and fifty ladies and gentlemen were waiting on the platform dressed in their finery, a carpet had been laid along the inclined corrid...

Sir John William Cradock-Hartopp, Baronet, sold Four Oaks Hall and its 246-acre park and estate to a racecourse company in 1880. The Four Oaks Racecourse Company soon laid out the racecourse with its grandstands, paddocks and stables, and the firs...

“The Birmingham Steeplechase Meeting” was the heading of an article in the Birmingham newspaper for Monday 12th February 1866. The article went on to say that the promoter, Mr. Sheldon, had arranged “an excellent bill of fare”; there were five eve...

In July 1850 the Warden and Society of Sutton Coldfield appointed Mr. Charles Cooper to be the Corporation Surveyor. At an Inquiry held at Sutton in 1855, Cooper gave evidence, answering questions from the lawyers. Yes, he did have the management ...

Henry Sacheverell of Morley and Callow in Derbyshire, born in 1548, separated from his first wife Jane in 1593 (after she had borne him four children). After a spell in the Fleet Prison he settled at his house called Old Hayes near Ratby in Leices...

“The increase of population …now began to require church extension, and in 1834 the northern part of the parish was provided with a chapel of ease” wrote Riland Bedford, in his History of Sutton Coldfield. Over the next twenty years churches were ...

Sutton Coldfield received a royal charter witnessed by King Henry VIII on December 16th 1528 incorporating it as a self-governing town, the corporation consisting of a Warden and Society. At the time Sutton was a poor insignificant place, unlikely...

The Sutton Coldfield Train Crash occurred on Sunday 23rd January 1955, when an express passenger train travelling from York to Bristol derailed due to excessive speed on a sharp curve. The train was headed by LMS Class 5 4-6-0 steam locomotive No ...

Commenting on the number of pools, ponds, moats and other water features in Sutton Coldfield, the archaeologist Mike Hodder wrote in a recent article “In some cases groups of pools, sometimes accompanying moats surrounding buildings, may have been...

H.L.Edlin, writing in 1953, remarked that the only coppice crop profitable at that time was sweet chestnut, usually with standard oak trees. When creating their new woodland in Sutton Park in the 1771, the Warden and Society of Sutton Coldfield re...

The Workhouse Test Act of 1723 empowered officers in a parish to buy, rent or build premises in which the poor could be set to work - the term ‘workhouse’ was used to describe such places. A person who requested poor relief would be required to en...