Sutton Coldfield Local History Research Group

George Eliot, the famous novelist, was born in 1819, daughter of Robert Evans and his second wife, and christened Mary Ann. By his first wife Robert Evans had a son, Robert, born in 1802; this Robert eventually married Jane, and they had several c...

The Medieval Manor of Sutton Coldfield was well-supplied with woodland, meeting the needs of the population for fuel, building, fencing, tools and furniture. The woodland needed careful management to make it productive. Trees were felled so that n...

The Sutton Byway, a seven mile route through Sutton’s Green Belt, was set out in 1986 by Birmingham City Council in conjunction with Sutton Coldfield Civic Society. The byway footpath passes through the fields from Hillwood Road to Worcester Lane,...

The late John Harrison, who was a keen rambler as well as being Chairman of Sutton Coldfield Civic Society, wanted to promote a ten-mile walk round the fringes of Sutton which he called the Sutton Chain of Footpaths. This was achieved in 1986 when...

The town of Sutton Coldfield was governed by the Warden and Society, a self-elected body charged with running the town in accordance with the terms of the Charter. Some inhabitants felt that the Warden and Society was failing in its duty, and took...

The July 11th 1876 issue of the Sutton Coldfield News contained a letter from “Grumbler”, saying “we want more than public-house knowledge and we have an idea that a portion of the town’s wealth should be expended in a free library, and thus be th...

Sarah Holbeche’s Diary gives a glimpse of everyday life in Sutton in the mid-nineteenth century. Sarah Holbeche (1803-1882), a lady who lived in a large house in High Street with her four spinster sisters, compiled the diary over a period fr...

Clifton Street is one of several roads in Sutton to have been obliterated by redevelopment; for example, the Gracechurch Centre now stands on what used to be Avenue Road, and Newhall Street is somewhere underneath Newhall Walk. Clifton Street ran ...

Richard Holbeche was born in 1850 in a large house, no.1 Coleshill Street. Over forty years later, on his return from abroad, he found Sutton Coldfield much changed. It was no longer the quiet market town of his youth, so he wrote a memoir of his ...

Known until recently as Church House, 15 Coleshill Street was described by Richard Holbeche as “the ugly red house opposite the Church Yard”. Holbeche was recollecting the Coleshill Street of his childhood in the 1850s, when the three-...