Unknown date but approx 1850s. Note Aston & Handsworth lower left. Also visible is Wylde Green and Reddicap Heath

1. Moat House  2. Royal Hotel (later Town Hall) 3. Old Town Hall (and first cinema in SC) 4. Museum Pub at the beginning
of the Parade.  5. Fire Station. 6. Blacksmiths.  7. The Old Dog Inn. 8.  Sutton Town Railway Station.

Sutton Coldfield Town Centre 1913

Maps provided by David Wilcox. I believe you can buy the originals of these maps, and many others areas of the West Midlands from www.alangodfreymaps.co.uk  

 There are also many old images of Sutton Coldfield here

History of Sutton Coldfield & Parts!  History of Sutton Coldfield & The Chase up to 1860

The West Midlands Police have something known as "Copper Cards" which depict early Police images and Sutton Coldfield images obtained from the Sutton Coldfield Library. I was in the local "nick", on another matter, and asked about these and was very kindly given a full set in a wallet. Having spoken to Sutton Coldfield Library (Marian Baxter) I can now share these images with you all. They are on various pages. These images are copyright. These images below are mainly as a result of an email from foreign climes asking for current images of places from their past. I am happy to oblige.

June 2011. From Mandy Deakin (Moore): I was born and bred in Sutton though have lived in Toronto for over 30 years now.  I am hooked on researching my family and have learned so much over the last year and a half and all your photos are bringing back wonderful memories. We are back in Sutton at least twice a year so I never really feel as though I have lost touch.

I was born at Oakhurst maternity hospital on Anchorage Road and spent the next 20 years in Rectory Cottage, at the corner of Riland and Rectory Roads.  The cottage is and it's once beautiful gardens are now very overgrown and a huge fence completely hides the cottage from view.  We walked around the park with friends last year and an athletic chum jumped and took some lovely shots over the fence.  I have traced my Higgs relatives back to the mid 1700s, in Sutton Coldfield.  Presumably if I had the opportunity to check out parish records I could get further back.

Rectory park was our playground growing up and what a wonderful place it was.  We used to climb the hollow oak with the big kids and I can still remember ever nook and cranny of the inside of it, how smooth it was and where the foothold was. My mum and her friends used to climb the same hollow oak.  She remembered the lightening that struck and claimed the large branch on the left.  She also remembered the lad who jumped of that branch and broke his leg.

My Mum was born in 1927(d. 1976) and always had stories to tell us of all our relatives who had grown up with the park playing a major role in their lives.  My mum's dad's family lived in the Blabbs (bottom of Reddicap Hill and Coleshill Road) and then mum lived in Riland Grove before marrying and moving to the derelict Rectory Cottage, which my father rebuilt. Mum's grand-parents were Thomas Higgs and Eliza Deakin.  Eliza was a midwife (complete with very smart uniform) and I'd love to find out information on local midwives of the era but so far haven't found anything.  Thanks for all you photos of Sutton - They're lovely.  Regards  Mandy Deakin (nee Moore).

Molly Winifred Badham MBE (18 May 1914 – 19 October 2007) was a co-founder of Twycross Zoo. She trained the chimpanzees who appeared on the Brooke Bond PG Tips television advertisements in the 1960s to the 1980s.

Badham was born in Evesham, the daughter of a herbalist and homeopath. She was educated at Town School in Sutton Coldfield. She kept animals from an early age, and bred dogs and ran a boarding kennel, before setting up a pet shop in her home town. Another pet shop in the town was run by Nathalie Evans. Badham bought a woolly monkey named "Sambo" from Evans. Although the animal soon died, the two business rivals went on to share a flat - along with two chimpanzees, Sue and Mickey - and would later become co-founders of Twycross Zoo.

They moved to a bungalow in Hints, between Sutton Coldfield and Tamworth, in 1954, setting up Hints Zoological Society in the ¾ acre plot. Their collection of animals grew, and in 1962 they bought Norton Grange, a large Victorian rectory with 12 acres (49,000 m²) of land, plus farm buildings and stables. They opened to visitors as Twycross Zoo on Whitsun bank holiday, 26 May 1963. Over time, the Zoo expanded onto adjoining fields to cover over 40 acres (160,000 m²).

Badham became an expert in the care of primates in captivity. She provided chimpanzees for PG Tips tea commercials (noatably Mr. Shifter) as a way to raise funds for the Zoo, and one of the Zoo's chimpanzees appeared in a Hammer Horror film with Peter Cushing. She kept studbooks for gibbons and chimpanzees. The Department of the Environment appointed her as an Inspector under the Zoo Licensing Act 1981.

The Zoo grew to have the largest collection of primates in the world. The first Colobus monkey bred in captivity in Britain was born at the Zoo in 1969, and Britain's first Bonobo was born at the zoo in 1994. Badham and Evans set up a charity, the East Midlands Zoological Society, to which their animal collection and zoo premises were donated in 1972.

She published two books with Evans and Maureen Lawless: Chimps with Everything, published in 1979, and Molly's Zoo, published in 2000. She also participated in a television series, Molly's Zoo, in 1999, about the running of the zoo.

Badham was a founder member of the National Federation of Zoological Gardens of Great Britain and Ireland, and a member of the International Union of Directors of Zoological Gardens. She was awarded an honorary BSc by Leicester University in 1982, and received an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours 2002, for her services to the conservation of endangered species. She retired, becoming director emeritus of Twycross Zoo in 2003.

Molly died on October 19, 2007 at the age of 93.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Badham

Dear Mike

I stumbled upon your most excellent site yesterday when I googled Edward Holbeche and got the 1913 list  I am part of the Sutton Coldfield Great War Project. We are researching the soldiers who died and are listed and missing from the memorial. I was handed a handwritten and none internet researched diary done by Andy Coles (out of him needing something to do) between 1998 and last year.

I am a genealogist and did belong years ago to the local research group. My aim was purely to transcribe his work but ended up researching the families- still a very long way to go. But through the paper I am in touch with librarians, church members, cricket club, allotments and so on all commemorating WW1 in some way. A huge contributor is David Phillips teacher BVGS who has written about their boys who served.

I found many names on your 1913 list cross reference with our dead men. Are you interested in joining our group? Some people have contributed just their own family info but have still joined to offer bright ideas!! We are unearthing some interesting stories which marry in with your work I have also researched my husband's family - the Moore family cycle dealers Parade on your 1913 list. Dad in law died 2008 but mother in law is very much alive living near the  Boot. Sutton born and bred and now 87 she is a fount of local knowledge if you feel like grilling her ever. She is drip feeding me old maps pamphlets postcards etc she has accumulated but it is drip feeding!

I did a it of research about three years ago on Belwell Lane and its occupants as my sister rented the old smithy behind Belwell curtains and was interested in its origins. Last year I worked on Dr Cyril Christopher an Oldbury boy who became a doctor of music and organist at Carrs Lane. My sister purchased his house when he died - Cremorne Road That took almost a year!

Everyone keeps asking what we are going to do with our work once it is finished and the answer is I have no idea. A website like yours would be good but I tried a blogspot and really messed that up! I have no concept of what can work on a website and no one who understands local history to ask I would be happy to pay if it is not a fortune but how does all the info get uploaded? I have severe rheumatoid and all this typing is painful so wondered if word docs can be transferred but no one I know can answer that one. The other part of our research is to collate info on the actual war memorials and why the main one is so incorrect. This is proving a challenge so I have put that on the to do later list.

Everyone who has joined the group have given consent to share their details as per data protection and we have a generic email address for use in newspapers etc which is   suttoncoldfieldgreatwarproject - at - hotmail.com - replace -at- with @ to use email.