Sutton Coldfield Local History Research Group

Vesey House in High Street was under construction in 1635, being built in brick by John Burges, the Rector of Sutton at the time. It was a two-storey house with stone quoins at the corners and seven regularly-spaced stone window frames on the firs...

John Leveson, son of a wealthy Wolverhampton family, married Amicia (Amy) Harman towards the end of the fifteenth century. Amy was living in Sutton Coldfield, at old Moor Hall, where her family consisted of her mother Joan, her brother Hugh and hi...

Moor Hall Farm, 29, Moor Hall Drive, a grade II* listed building, is reputed to be the birthplace of Sutton’s great benefactor, Bishop Vesey. Miss Bracken, writing in 1860, refers to it as the Moat House - “tradition fixes the Moat House as his bi...

Sutton Coldfield received a royal charter witnessed by King Henry VIII on December 16th 1528 incorporating it as a self-governing town, the corporation consisting of a Warden and Society. At the time Sutton was a poor insignificant place, unlikely...

There is a memorial in Sutton Parish Church to Hugh Harman, who died in 1528. He was the brother of Bishop Vesey, and father of eight of the Bishop’s nieces and nephews. Hugh’s first wife was Ann, daughter of Humphrey Golson, a local g...

The first official census in Britain took place in 1801, when the number of people living in Sutton Coldfield was found to be 2,847. Earlier estimates of the population are less reliable, although a census of Sutton taken by the Rector in 1771 was...

The Sutton Coldfield Train Crash occurred on Sunday 23rd January 1955, when an express passenger train travelling from York to Bristol derailed due to excessive speed on a sharp curve. The train was headed by LMS Class 5 4-6-0 steam locomotive No ...

Roger of Newburgh was the second Earl of Warwick after the Norman Conquest, and took over the lordship of the Manor of Sutton Coldfield in 1126. Earl Roger made frequent journeys to the Holy Land and struggled to survive the civil wars of Stephen ...

Sutton Library, on Lower Parade, is on the site of an earlier building, the Empress Cinema, which opened on January 1st 1923 and closed in July 1971. In a recent article, local historian Don McCollam has listed all the films screened at the cinema...

“Walmley and Beyond the Wood” was one of the five administrative “Quarters” of Sutton, and lay in the south-eastern corner of the town. Sometimes it was treated as two separate locations, Walmley including Pedimore to the s...