Sutton Coldfield Local History Research Group

Longmoor Valley in Sutton Park extends from the dam of Longmoor Pool up to the golf course, and is described as having a broad valley floor bounded by rising ground. Most of the valley floor was waterlogged marsh and bog, and in places the mossy v...

In the eighteenth century, treatment of mental illness was carried out by non-licensed practitioners, who often ran their “Madhouses” as a commercial enterprise and with little regard for the inmates. A Parliamentary committee investig...

A great storm on July 24 1668 caused a flood which broke the dams of Bracebridge Pool and Wyndley Pool, and the Parish Clerk noted in the baptisms section of the parish register “the Flood of water was so great here at Sutton Pool that it flowed o...

Mill Street has seen a great deal of redevelopment over the years. Three hundred years ago the grammar school founded by Bishop Vesey and some almshouses used to stand near Church Hill. However, on 6th March 1737 the Warden and Society resolved &l...

The account of Robert Kelynge, the bailiff of Sutton, for the year 1433 survives in the Stratford upon Avon Record Office. He recorded all the income and expenditure for the year for the Lord of the Manor, who was Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwic...

The Aston Hall estate of Sir Thomas Holte included, early in the eighteenth century, a farm, Stonehouse Farm, most of which is now within Sutton Park. In 1730 a dam was built there, creating a reservoir (Powell’s Pool) with a water mill nearby. Wi...

The opening of the Sutton Coldfield Branch line of railway in 1862 marked a great change in the town’s history. Looking back, it seemed to later Victorians that it was the end of ‘old Sutton’, a rural market town idyll suddenly b...

The construction of the three railways in Sutton, the London and North-Western Railway Sutton Branch in 1862, the Midland Railway of 1879, and the Lichfield Extension line of 1884 each made an impact on High Street. At first the effect was indirec...

Richard Ashford was a yeoman farmer in Maney in the 1640s. It was a mixed farm, with cattle and sheep as well as crops growing in the fields. Ashford had two horses to do the work of the farm, but he also kept a team of four oxen - for centuries t...

In the 1520s King Henry VIII held hundreds of manors, and more were to fall to him with the dissolution of the monasteries. Many of these manors were destined to fund university colleges and schools, and this was nearly the fate of Sutton Coldfiel...