Sutton Coldfield Local History Research Group

Fairs provided a welcome break from the daily round of life in a country town, the chance to spend money and enjoy the fun of the fair. Richard Holbeche recalled the Sutton fairs of his childhood in the 1850s - “booths and stalls were set up...

The place known as Four Oaks, as shown on a plan in the Corporation Survey of 1811, consisted of a number of dwellings near what is now the Four Oaks Gate to Sutton Park. There had been a settlement here for several centuries, long before the buil...

A minute of a meeting of the Warden and Society of Sutton (i.e. the Corporation) held on September 29 1852 reads: “Mr. Wright, Mr. Bedford and Mr. Parker are deputed to confer with the Gas Committee as to the feasibility of aiding in establi...

Sutton Coldfield used to have a High Steward. The office of High Steward of Sutton Coldfield was created by King Henry VIII in the 1528 Charter of Incorporation of the town. In addition to the governing body, known as the Warden and Society, the t...

In the twelfth century the Manor of Sutton consisted of a central small town or village called Great Sutton and a number of scattered hamlets separated from each other by swathes of countryside. These hamlets were Maney, Walmley Ash, Little Sutton...

Hill Village in 1824 had changed greatly since medieval times, when most of the inhabitants were farmers with land in the open fields. In 1824 only six of the fifty-four householders in Hill Village Road were farmers, mostly with small holdings of...

An account of Sutton published in 1762, “The History of Sutton Coldfield by an Impartial Hand”, is in three parts. The first part, originally printed as a magazine article, is a description of the town and its history, the second, “Continuation”, ...

Joseph Powell, a gentleman farmer who lived in the Ashfurlong district of Sutton Coldfield, was the Warden of Sutton in 1657. In 1663 a tax was payable on every hearth, sometimes called the chimney tax, and the tax collector noted that Joseph Powe...

“Another family which now (1800s) began to exercise influence in the place was that of Webster of Penns Mill” wrote Riland Bedford in his History of Sutton Coldfield 1890. It was hard for tradesmen and manufacturers to become accepted in polite so...

A document of 1569 gives the impression that Little Sutton was then a community of about eighteen subsistence farmers and one or two yeomen, living in houses clustered along the village green, which stretched along Little Sutton Road from the Fox ...