Sutton Coldfield Local History Research Group

Several of the old houses in High Street were given a face-lift in the eighteenth century. Looking at no. 1 High Street you can see clearly where the brick façade fronting the street has been joined onto the stone side wall. It would be int...

Back in 2005 planning permission was given for the demolition of Barn Farm in Lindridge Road - the annexe to St. Giles Hospice which was built on the site opened in 2007. Barn Farm was a Grade II listed building, so special permission was required...

King Henry the First was keen on hunting, riding through the many forests created in England by his grandfather, William the Conqueror. His favourite food was venison, the meat of the fallow deer. Hunting in the vast forests did not always produce...

Chester Road crosses the boundary into the old Borough of Sutton Coldfield near the railway bridge, and continues within old Sutton as far as the Beggar’s Bush. From there to Queslet Road it marked the boundary between Sutton and Perry Barr. In th...

Sutton’s common lands are remembered today in names such as Hillwood Common, Reddicap Heath and Wylde Green. But go back to Tudor times, and they formed half the area of Sutton - about ten square miles. The commons were the uncultivated land where...

Visitors to Sutton in 1900 would flock to Sutton’s Crystal Palace - it had a zoo in its grounds where they could see monkeys, lions, camels and kangaroos. Our Crystal Palace was opened in 1879, but twenty-six years previously a more ambitious plan...

The Warden of Sutton Coldfield in 1621 was Edward Willughby, responsible for a total annual budget of £90. Although not a native of Sutton, he had settled here and established himself over the previous thirty years - he was also Warden in 16...

The Parliamentary Constituency of Sutton Coldfield came into being in 1945. In previous centuries Sutton had been represented in the House of Commons by the four Knights of the Shire - the four Warwickshire MPs. The only Sutton Coldfield man to be...

When their new house on the Four Oaks Park Estate was being planned, George and Emma Barton specified that it should include a dark room. Emma had already begun taking pictures when they lived at The Grove, Wishaw, and by the time they moved in to...

“If you wanted to see real pomp, you should have seen the fair proclaimed” wrote Richard Holbeche in 1892, recalling the Sutton fairs of his childhood -the fair was a big event. Sutton’s town charter, granted in 1528, provided for two annual fair...