Sutton Coldfield Local History Research Group

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...