Sutton Coldfield Local History Research Group

The wealthiest man in Sutton in 1676 was Henry Pudsey of Langley Hall. On his death in 1677 half his estate was bequeathed to his eldest daughter Elizabeth (then aged 10), who later married Henry Lord Ffolliott - this half of the estate included p...

William Duke of Normandy led an army across the English Channel to invade England in 1066. William defeated King Harold’s English army at the Battle of Hastings - this English army was made up of numerous Anglo-Saxon lords and their follower...

The Medieval way of farming was still being practised by John Greasebrook, a yeoman farmer from Wigginshill who died in 1671. When he made his will, Greasebrook itemized all his land, including twenty-six ridges in the open fields of Wigginshill (...

Under the Feudal system, villagers rented their farmland from the lord of the manor. In 1308 an inquiry at Sutton set out the conditions which applied locally when land was rented, not for money, but in return for services such as working on the l...

The “Old Duke” beer house, built by George Smith in 1853 changed hands a few years later, and Charles Atkins became the tenant. Atkins, his wife Mary and their two young sons moved here from London - he set up in the Old Duke as a reta...

Sarah Holbeche, a Sutton Lady whose Victorian Diary is in Sutton Reference Library, could, in 1840, walk from Sutton up Birmingham Road past the Golden Cup Inn through rural countryside to the hamlet of Maney. Most of the fields were part of the 2...

Joseph Duncomb was elected Warden (Mayor) of Sutton Coldfield in 1760 and again in 1761. While he was Warden he took a share in the newly-made Blackroot Pool in Sutton Park, and he gave himself planning permission to construct a leather mill there...

John Harris was the surveyor appointed to be the Commissioner for the Enclosure of the commons of Sutton Coldfield by Act of Parliament dated 1824. One of his first duties was to define the boundaries of Sutton, and he did this by making a perambu...

The Manor of Sutton Coldfield belonged to the Earls of Warwick in the Middle Ages. The manor, in common with all the other manors belonging to the earl, was managed by the earl’s officials, headed by his Receiver General, with the objective ...

The earliest documentary reference to a church in Sutton Coldfield is in 1291, when the “Taxation of Pope Nicholas” in the Vatican Archives in Rome refers to a payment by Guy Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, for Holy Trinity Church in Sutton, valued at...