Sutton Coldfield Local History Research Group

Sarah Holbeche noted in her diary “1826. New road to the Park, a great boon, before which the only access was at Doe Bank”. The new road was built as part of an agreement with Sir Edmund Hartopp of Four Oaks Hall known as the Hartopp Exchange, whe...

The old boundary of Sutton, as recorded by the Enclosure Commissioner in 1824, followed Hurst Brook from the canal to Wishaw Lane.Hurst Brook rises at the moat of Peddimore Hall - it is now a ditch cutting a straight line across a flat prairie, bu...

In 1416 the Head Forester of the Earl of Warwick’s Chase of Sutton Coldfield reported to the Court Leet at Sutton that some men had let their pigs loose in the lord’s park without permission, to the destruction of the vegetation there....

In 1935 the old Kings Arms public house was demolished and a new pub was built in its place. The old Kings Arms was a brick building with mock-Tudor decoration, possibly built in the eighteenth century. The earliest record of it is a map of 1763, ...

In 1800 Lichfield Road was still “a tortuous and narrow road which led up to Mere Pool”, but it was much improved when it was taken over by a Turnpike Trust in 1807. Tamworth Road was even worse, and Little Sutton Lane led down the hil...

The Domesday Book, compiled in 1086 for William the Conqueror, is a survey of all the manors in England. Sutton Coldfield is included, one of over 350 manors in Warwickshire, and details of its size and assets are given. The survey does not mentio...

Sir Wolstan Dixie, a London merchant, gave Emmanuel College, Cambridge, £600 in 1594. The College, which had been founded ten years earlier by Dixie’s friend Sir Walter Mildmay, used this money to buy property which yielded an annual i...

Mr. Harris, making his tour of the parish boundary of Sutton Coldfield in 1824, arrived at the point where it turned away from the River Tame near Minworth Mill. He noted that the other side of the river lay in Aston Parish while land further alon...

Moot Halls Sutton Coldfield became a self-governing town in 1528 by virtue of a Charter granted by King Henry VIII. The Charter stipulates that the Town Council comprise twenty-five men, to be known as the Warden and Society. Every man in Sutton ...