Sutton Coldfield Local History Research Group

The Warden and Society of Sutton, incorporated by Royal Charter in 1528, governed a population of less than 1000 and an area of about twenty square miles. Less than one third of this area was occupied by fields or houses, the rest (apart from Sutt...

The Birmingham and Watford Gap turnpike road crossed the valley of the E brook on an embankment or causeway known as The Dam. The land on the west side of The Dam was part of the Somerville Estate, and in 1869, to encourage development, it became ...

Park Road was made in 1826, leading to Sutton Park via Town Gate and Meadow Platt - before 1826 Meadow Platt had been farmland. This new road was said to be a great boon, previously the only access to the park was along Lichfield Road and Blackroo...

Sutton Park was a popular destination for a day out in the 1850s. On the first of August 1853 Alderman Cutler told a meeting of Birmingham Town Council that at least fifty “Gypsying Parties” had left Birmingham the previous day, many of them headi...

Many parts of Sutton Park have a natural landscape untouched by the shaping hand of man, but in other parts the results of exploitation of the Park by our ancestors is plain to see. Mike Hodder, in his new book The Archaeology of Sutton Park, note...

The heathland in Sutton Park sometimes catches fire after a dry spell of weather, the fire usually being confined to a small area. The hot dry summer of 1976 was exceptional, when heathland caught fire on August 21st and burned for a week, consumi...

A survey of Sutton Park, made in 1779, shows that the boundary fence had nine gates. Only four of the gates lead into the park from Sutton, the other five give access from the neighbouring Staffordshire parishes of Perry Barr and Great Barr - op...

Simon Perrot Esquire was a substantial townsman of Sutton Coldfield, holding the post of Warden (equivalent to Mayor) in 1580 and 1590. He had mansion house in Maney which probably stood in Manor Hill by the railway bridge - it was knocked down ov...

The Manor of Sutton Coldfield was a royal manor belonging to King Henry I from 1100 until 1126. King Henry loved to hunt, and made a large park specially for conserving and hunting his favourite fallow deer at another of his manors, Woodstock in O...