Sutton Coldfield Local History Research Group

The dam at Lindridge Pool was made in 1697 by permission of the Warden and Society of Sutton Coldfield, William Jesson paying an annual rent for the pool. His lease was for 1,000 years at three shillings per annum and a dish of fish and six bottle...

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

The name Sutton Coldfield  seems to have a simple explanation – south town in a field where charcoal was made. But each element of the name – sut, ton (originally “tun”), cold and field – is a bit of a puzzle. T...

Woodland products were of great importance in the past, and in the middle ages woods were carefully managed, usually by coppicing. When harvested, the coppiced tree would send up new shoots from its base, so did not need to be replaced by a new pl...

The Plough and Harrow public house lies on Slade Road to the east of Little Sutton, a 1960s building surrounded by modern housing estates. In spite of appearances, this pub replaced an earlier Plough and Harrow which occupied a site which is now t...

Many writers on English history have been Anglican clergymen, who, like the Rector of Sutton, Rev. W.K.Riland Bedford, deplored “the corrupt condition of the Church before the Reformation”. Riland Bedford makes this remark after listing all the ch...

Viscount Weymouth of Drayton Manor ordered his gamekeeper Thomas Lane to despatch some game to London. In the evening of 11th November 1753 the gamekeeper went to “the house of John Farnell in the Parish of Drayton Bassett in the County of S...

Walter Peyton, a Londoner who made his fortune as a captain of East India Company ships, came to live at Marlpit Hall in Sutton in 1617. He had married into the Sutton aristocracy, his wife being related to the Pudseys of Langley Hall and the Gros...

Sutton Park, granted to Sutton Coldfield in 1528 by Royal Charter, was soon under threat from another provision of the same Charter.  This permitted anyone wishing to establish a farm of up to sixty acres on the common lands to do so, paying ...