Sutton Coldfield Local History Research Group

Lady Ffolliot of Four Oaks Hall died in 1744, and the Hall was sold to Simon Luttrell of Luttrellstown in Ireland. Simon Luttrell was an ambitious politician in need of an English country house, and he settled at Four Oaks Hall with his wife and e...

Several of the old houses in High Street were given a face-lift in the eighteenth century. Looking at no. 1 High Street you can see clearly where the brick façade fronting the street has been joined onto the stone side wall. It would be int...

In 1853 a notice was posted by the Warden and Society prohibiting the pursuit of game in the park on the grounds that unrestricted hunting had almost destroyed all the game, and over-eager sportsmen were damaging woods and fences. This ban upset ...

The building of new houses on green field sites near the centre of Sutton was a rare event in the first half of the nineteenth century. Large villa residences for rich industrialists wanting a Sutton address were being built, mostly along Birmingh...

Wylde Green Shopping Centre used to be known as “The Yenton” or the “Tram Terminus”. The trams from Birmingham terminated there because that was the Sutton Coldfield boundary, and the body responsible for making the original tramline from Salford ...

A case was laid before the Court of Chancery in 1788 by William Twamley and others, asking the Court to make the Warden and Society of Sutton Coldfield manage their affairs better. The case was not resolved until 1824, and during these thirty-six ...

Before the Norman Conquest the Manor of Sutton Coldfield belonged to Edwin Earl of Mercia. As Lord of the Manor, Edwin or his steward presided at the twice-yearly court, a court which continued to be held after 1066, when William the Conqueror was...

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...

Sutton Coldfield did not escape the Europe-wide catastrophes of the fourteenth century - the great famine of 1322 with widespread starvation, the epidemic known as the Black Death of 1348-9 which killed half the population, and the so-called child...

Discussing the influence of climate on the human mind, Robert Burton wrote “Sutton Coldfield in Warwickshire (where I was once a grammar scholar), may be a sufficient witness, which stands, as Camden notes, loco ingrato et sterile (in a barr...