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 hill, widened where it forded the brook, and ended in an open common called the Coneygree.
The Coneygree was a triangle of land extending from Coopers Coppice (now Coppice School) almost as far as Moor Hall Farm in Moor Hall Drive. Little Sutton Lane joined the Coneygree at one corner of the triangle, a short lane led from Coppice Farm to join Lichfield Road at a place called Fox Pit (now obliterated by Four Oaks railway station), while the third corner of the triangle ended at the junction of two more lanes.
One of these lanes followed the course of Moor Hall Drive for a hundred yards, then meandered off across what is now the golf course, following the boundary of what was then Moor Hall Park to join “the road from a place called the Whitehouse to a certain place called Shepherds Pool nearly opposite a small gate leading into the plantation at Ashfurlong House.” - Weeford Road. The other lane, called Jackamoor Lane, followed a zig-zag course across what is now the Heath Croft Estate “into the Street of Little Sutton opposite the Public House there called the Fox and Dogs”.
The Coneygree was part of the Sutton Commons, subject to enclosure in 1824. It was one of the Enclosure Commissioner’s job to lay out new roads as required across the commons, and he set out Little Sutton Lane on its present course “A new public Highway and Footway of the breadth of thirty feet and length of one thousand one hundred and thirty yards.” This cut through existing farmland belonging to the Moor Hall estate, by agreement with the owner, Francis Beynon Hacket.
According to Sarah Holbeche, F.B.Hacket “laid out large sums on improvements” at Moor Hall. He persuaded Mr. Harris, the Enclosure Commissioner to improve the privacy of his house and park by stopping up the old Jackamoor Lane and the lane leading along the edge of the park to Weeford Road, which were given to Hacket to revert to farmland. Moor Hall Drive was then laid out with an entrance gate and new lodge, built on the site of Timothy Smith’s old cottage.
