Sutton Coldfield Local History Research Group

Sutton Coldfield in 1845 was described as mainly agricultural, a not very important place with little trade. Sutton had doubled in population, however, in the previous hundred years, and the enclosure of the commons in the 1820s had increased the ...

Some of the most notable furnishings in Holy Trinity Parish Church were brought in from elsewhere in Victorian times. Previously Anglican churches had been relatively free of ornament, but with the rise of the Victorian Gothic style of architectur...

“Friday April 22nd 1864. A very fine day. Went out for a walk round Cole’s Lane which I enjoyed very much, for although the high road was hot and dusty, the lanes were shady and cool”. This extract from the diary of Frank Chavass...

John Snape, born in 1737, son of a schoolmaster on the Moxhull estate in Wishaw, was employed as a young man by Andrew Hacket III at Moxhull Hall, where he learnt to be a surveyor. He made beautifully produced surveys for local landowners in 1761,...

Henry Hurst of Walmley was descended from a long line of Hursts, many of them named Henry, and was succeeded after his death in 1670 by his son, another Henry Hurst. Henry was a well-off yeoman farmer who inherited his farm and land intact from hi...

In the eighteenth century the main road through Sutton was not very satisfactory - Mill Street was “a crooked road leading down to Skinner’s Pools”, Birmingham Road “straggled by Wild Green to a narrow lane leading across t...

It is Saturday 13th June 1761. A heavy wagon laden with sacks of wheat and drawn by six horses is trundling along the highway across the common in Sutton Coldfield, The driver is Richard Reynolds, son of the miller at Longmoor Mill, so perhaps tha...

There are five pools in Sutton Park today, but three hundred years ago there were none belonging to the Park. Keepers Pool and Windley Pool were in existence, but they were part of an estate belonging to Sir Tomas Holt of Aston Hall, while Bracebr...

In May 1940 the German advance into France exacerbated fears that the invasion of Britain would soon follow. Then, on the evening of 14 May 1940 the Secretary of State for War, Anthony Eden, gave a radio broadcast announcing the formation of the L...

A perambulation of the boundary of Sutton Coldfield made in 1824 describes the section between Little Hay and Canwell Gate as having “Lands of Admiral Manley on the left”. Admiral Manley had inherited over thirteen hundred acres of lan...