Sutton Coldfield Local History Research Group

William Kirkpatrick Riland Bedford, 1826-92, became Rector of Sutton Coldfield in 1850. He soon became a member of the Warden and Society of Sutton, and served as Warden (equivalent to Mayor) in 1854 and 1855. These were turbulent times for the to...

Advertisement for the Royal Hotel, 1890.Sanatorium notice, 1900The purity of the air in Sutton Coldfield has often been noted. Writing in 1621, Robert Burton referred to the quality of the air at Sutton, where he had attended Bishop Vesey’s Gramma...

Richard Lee paid the Lord of the Manor of Sutton eight pounds for “the herbage of the Park” in 1480. This was for the grazing rights in Sutton Park, and a previous bailiff’s account, for 1433, records income from Matthew Smallwoo...

The forest laws which had applied to Sutton for centuries were revoked by Bishop Vesey in 1528 when Sutton received its Borough Charter. Now Sutton farmers could leave their sheep to graze freely on the extensive common lands, and they were quick ...

The population of Sutton was growing in the 1860s, and so the demand for services was on the increase. There were shops, scattered along High Street and Mill Street, but it was not until 1870, with the first purpose-built shops on the Parade, that...

The Birmingham and Fazeley Canal, alongside Kingsbury Road in the south-east corner of Sutton is the only canal which passes through Sutton Coldfield. This canal was opened in 1789, with a survey of the route being prepared in 1783 by the Birmingh...

Lewis’s Folly, looking towards Mere Green (photo courtesy Sutton Reference Library) Hugh Lewis moved in to Woodfield House in 1889. Apartments now occupy the site of Woodfield House, but the curious garden wall, fourteen feet high in pl...

The railway came to Sutton in 1862 with a 5-mile-long line from Aston with a terminus at Sutton Coldfield Station. The line was owned by the London and North-Western Railway, and it was always intended to extend the railway to Lichfield where the ...

Extract from the will of John AgottUntil the nineteenth century Sutton Coldfield was in the Diocese of Lichfield The Consistory Court of the Bishop of Lichfield was the body responsible for proving the wills of everybody who died in the diocese. T...

Most of the houses in Sutton up until 1500 were timber-framed single-storey buildings with a thatched roof - easily burned down. They were heated by an open fire in the centre of the main room or hall, and this was a wood-burning fire, the smoke e...