Sutton Coldfield Local History Research Group

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...