The railway line that linked Sutton with Birmingham opened on June 2, 1862.

The first engine to arrive in Sutton was met by a party of leading townsmen, induding the warden Josiah Wright, who was headmaster of Bishop Vesey's Grammar School.

The trains that arrived later that day disgorged huge numbers of people, who filed through the usually-quiet streets of Sutton on their way to the park.

It was estimated that about 2,000 people travelled by rail to Sutton on that first day. The journey took 35 minutes, with a first-class fare costing 1s 6d and a second class 1s 3d. With the journey by rail both shorter and cheaper, the omnibuses that had previously brought people from Birmingham to Sutton saw a significant decline in business.

The readers of the Birmingham newspapers were presented with Sutton as an idyllic place for a day out. 'It is impossible to exhaust Sutton', one paper noted. 'New beauties and attractions are discovered every time you visit it. No person, we should think, ever went to Sutton without longing to go again.' The main attraction, of course, was Sutton Park, where 'the woods are especially beautiful and we scarcely know at which season of the year they are most lovely.’ With some of them apparently growing to 12 feet in height, the ferns in the park were also very much worth seeing.

Visitors were also recommended to climb Maney Hill and stand on the site where a stone circle was built by the Druids. This was, of course, a romantic fiction: many sheep had spent their days on Maney Hill but, alas, no Druids.

In the evening a walk through the town was recommended. Sutton was 'a pleasant, quiet old town, standing high, and having a fine view of the surrounding country.’ This particular correspondent was not impressed by Holy Trinity, deeming it 'not especially beautiful', with 'various repairs in very bad taste'. But its interior was the reason to visit.

So the visitors came from far and wide on the railway to visit Sutton Coldfield.

From 1868 they were also able to visit the Royal Promenade Gardens, adjacent to the main gate of Sutton Park. In summer 1876 a staggering 110,000 people visited the gardens, 77,500 of them arriving on excursion trains.

Glimpses into Sutton's Past Parts I, II & III by Stephen Roberts can be ordered from Amazon.

Associate Professor
Stephen Roberts