Sutton Coldfield Local History Research Group

Keepers Pool in Sutton Park is said to have been made in the fifteenth century, but a twelfth century date is equally likely. In setting out a deer park, the Lord of the Manor needed to include areas of woodland, some open spaces, and some stret...

A necessary resource for any settlement is access to fresh water, and water was readily available in Sutton Coldfield, as a writer in 1762 observed: “In digging wells, after one or two shallow strata of mould, gravel, and clay, a hard sand, ...

Bishop Vesey intended that his native town of Sutton Coldfield should thrive. On his travels throughout England, he saw that the cloth trade was the most profitable industry in the 1520s, and accordingly he set about establishing weaving in Sutton...

In 1935 the old Kings Arms public house was demolished and a new pub was built in its place. The old Kings Arms was a brick building with mock-Tudor decoration, possibly built in the eighteenth century. The earliest record of it is a map of 1763, ...

It is Saturday 13th June 1761. A heavy wagon laden with sacks of wheat and drawn by six horses is trundling along the highway across the common in Sutton Coldfield, The driver is Richard Reynolds, son of the miller at Longmoor Mill, so perhaps tha...

In its pure form the feudal system allowed men to hold land from their feudal lord in return for services and other obligations, but from the beginning some of these services had been replaced by money rents. For example, in about 1200 Waleran Ear...

There are five pools in Sutton Park today, but three hundred years ago there were none belonging to the Park. Keepers Pool and Windley Pool were in existence, but they were part of an estate belonging to Sir Tomas Holt of Aston Hall, while Bracebr...

Some of the roads and lanes in Sutton are very ancient - the present A5127 possibly follows the route of a prehistoric Salt way. The earliest documentary reference to roads dates from 1260, when Bulls Lane and Ox Leys Road are described as two gre...

Langley Hall, which stood in Ox Leys Road, was pulled down in the 1820s; at one time it was the richest and most splendid house in Sutton. In the Middle Ages it belonged to the powerful De Bereford family of Wishaw, passing by inheritance to Gilbe...

In 1604, Raphael Symonds, gentleman, the Warden of Sutton Coldfield (equivalent to Mayor), issued a deed of proclamation on behalf of the Corporation, effectively a lease. The Latin deed says - Know ye that we have granted to George Pudsey Esq. fu...