Sutton Coldfield Local History Research Group

There were about forty provincial newspapers in England in 1800, and a good percentage of their content consisted of national news and snippets from around the country obtained by the editors through a network - journalists would send items by pos...

The Sutton Coldfield estate which once belonged to Simon Parratt was purchased by Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 1594, using money bequeathed to the College by Sir Wolstan Dixie. The annual rent from this “Dixie” estate of £30 wa...

The “Old Duke” beer house, built by George Smith in 1853 changed hands a few years later, and Charles Atkins became the tenant. Atkins, his wife Mary and their two young sons moved here from London - he set up in the Old Duke as a reta...

Sarah Holbeche, a Sutton Lady whose Victorian Diary is in Sutton Reference Library, could, in 1840, walk from Sutton up Birmingham Road past the Golden Cup Inn through rural countryside to the hamlet of Maney. Most of the fields were part of the 2...

Sutton Coldfield High Street is a Conservation Area, “an area of special architectural and historic interest, the character or appearance of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance”. The area was recently reviewed, and earlier thi...

The Plough and Harrow Inn on Slade Road just east of Little Sutton was built on the site of a row of cottages and other old buildings. This isolated settlement on the fringes of Little Sutton consisted of a row of eleven houses and cottages known ...

The chain of footpaths proposed in the 1960s continues from Hill Hook along Hill Hook Road for the next three-quarters of a mile. Hill Hook Road was laid out when the commons were enclosed, passing over the part of the commons called Lower Hook Fi...

In the 1960s it was possible to follow a chain of footpaths from the north of Sutton through the Sutton countryside for ten miles, ending near Minworth. However, by 1985, when this route was being enhanced and designated as the Sutton Byway, the a...

In the eighteenth century the road from Sutton Coldfield to Lichfield was a tortuous and narrow lane, leading up from Mere Green through the village of Hill and on to the common which sloped down towards Staffordshire. The whole route was greatly ...

A necessary resource for any settlement is access to fresh water, and water was readily available in Sutton Coldfield, as a writer in 1762 observed: “In digging wells, after one or two shallow strata of mould, gravel, and clay, a hard sand, ...