O
O.C.
Guest
To a Brummie growing up in the 30’s till the 50’s Sutton Park was a magical place which was as good as the seaside but as kids not many of us knew or cared about the history of the place, it was a place for most of us to escape the squalor and slums of Aston and Nechells as our only playground were the bomb pecks apart from concrete recreation grounds where we could play cowboys and Indians or fight another war among and inside the empty and half demolished buildings
But when you were in Sutton Park it was another World, swimming in the lakes paddling in the pools and climbing tree’s were you could be a Highway man, Tarzan, Robin Hood or one of his merry men transported back in time to whatever period you wanted to be in. It was a treat only allowed at bank holidays once a year but we loved it spending the last hour or so before you got on the train or bus back to Brum in the tea huts or sitting on the grass eating an ice cream thinking how lucky we were
The train takes about 10 minutes from Birmingham to Sutton Coldfield, and five minutes from the railway station are the gates of Sutton Park. Of the hundreds of thousands of city dwellers in Birmingham who have been to Sutton, how many, one wonders, realize what a wonderful "section" of English history lies there almost at our doorstep. Far back in the dim days of the early Heptarchy (Which is a 16th Century Term for the period 449 till 828) the Kings of Mercia, from their palace at Tamworth, set apart the forest of Sutton for their hunting ground, and Sutton Park is just a little bit of that forest that remains today. And long before the days of the Mercian Kings, before the Chief Beorm established his Hamlet which was to become Birmingham (Beorming-Ham) the citizens were known as Beormings (known to us as Brummies) had built their little hamlet on the River Rea, perhaps before Caesar had discovered the strange people who stained their bodies with woad, some warring Celtic tribes on this wild upland had scooped out, with their rude bronze mattocks (A kind of Pickaxe), earthworks from behind which they could shoot their arrows. And here they remain to this day, untouched by the plough, levelled a little by the hundreds of winters, and with old oaks growing on them here and there, but clearly to be traced even now in Sutton Park. The dyke which crosses the carriage road to Streetly, just past the " Keeper's Well," and runs across the valley and through the opposite wood has sometimes been considered one of these. Another surrounds the foot of the tree-crowned hill above Blackroot marsh, and the crest of the hill is scored all over with old entrenchments. What pictures of wild battle do these overgrown dykes suggest! What skin-clad barbarians fighting' with strange weapons in peaceful-looking Sutton Park! And there are many other traces of the ancient Britons in and near Sutton Park. The District of Maney has been derived from the British “Meini”, the stones. A large Druidical stone was found there in 1853. The name of Rowton Well may have been derived from the British “Rah Din” meaning camp on the hill, and a tumulus which is a mound usually over an ancient grave on a hill near the well was opened by the Sutton Corporation in 1859 and proved to be artificial. Barr Beacon, two miles west of the park, is supposed to have been a Druidical shrine. A curious sacrificial bowl has been found there. Aldridge, two miles to the north, was an " old ryke," or dwelling place, when the Saxons found it. and there is a tumulus near the church. The King's Standing mound, near Banner's Gate Lodge, was a British tumulus. A larger tumulus is in Bourne Vale Wood, near Streetly. Lastly, at Stonnall, two miles from Aldridge, when a tumulus was opened there in 1824, there was a great find of bronze swords, spearheads, Celts, and other British implements. But although the diggers of all these earthworks scored their mark across the heath of Sutton they left no written witness of their names. It was not till Caesar brought his legions to Britain, and sent back his wonderful reports to the Roman Senate, that the recorded history of our land began. Of that Roman occupation there are some most remarkable remains in Sutton Park. For five hundred years Britain was an important and prosperous colony of the Romans, and those mighty builders dotted all over the country their cities and forts, their "casters" and " chesters," built their great boundary walls across the land, and above all made those great highways—roads which all led to Rome—through the forests and marshlands, and over the rivers and mountains. One of them ran from Dover to Wales (Gatheli, Celt, or Watling Street), another from Totness to Lincoln (the Fosseway) and there were many others. From the Fosseway there branched on the Cotswolds a road running through Derby towards Newcastle. It was one of the Icknield Streets, so called, perhaps, from the British tribe the Iceni, through or near whose country they ran. Now two of these great roads, Icknield Street and Watling Street, crossed each other four or five miles north of Sutton Park, where there was a great fort called Etocetum, and where there are now two little hamlets— one called Chesterfield (the field of the camp) and the other Wall. Many centuries have passed since this was a walled town, but even yet a trace of its greatness may be seen in the masses of rough rubble masonry set in the hard Roman cement, which crop up here and there in the meadow at the back of the church. And many relics of the old fort have been dug up and are placed in the museum at Lichfield. Fragments of Samian ware and tesselated pavement are there, tiles (all stamped with the Roman letters, P.S.). coins, scrapers, a curious but elegantly moulded column base, and a massive piece of lead piping with the rough seam along the top such as one sees in every museum in Italy, and many more interesting remains of Roman Britain would be found if the site were excavated. There is a street in Birmingham, a little section of the great road, still called Icknield Street, but the traffic of the world long ago deserted the road between Birmingham and Wall, the ploughs filled up the ditches and levelled the ridge, and only a memory of it remained here and there, as a boundary line between the old counties of Stafford and Warwick. Only a memory except in Sutton Park, where there can still be seen a mile and a half of one of the most perfect examples of a Roman highway left in Britain. It enters the Park- near the fork of Sutton Oak Road and the Chester Rd (on a Old 1900 map by the Royal Oak Inn), and leaves it at The traffic island at Rosemary Hill and Streetly Lane (the field on the Street), overgrown with gorse and ling but straight as a line, sixty feet across, arched in the middle and with ditches on either side, just as it was left by the Roman legionary seventeen hundred years ago. A golf course has been formed on the surface of the road by the Sutton Golf Club, where the heather has been cleared away, and the perfect arch of the street covered with smooth turf. Here one may stand and see the road stretching across the heath as far as the eye can reach, and imagine it again as the great paved imperial highway from the Eternal City to the ends of the known world, busy with the traffic of the tributary Britons, the legions and people, the slaves and the commerce of the " senate and people of Rome.
It the Gentemans Magazine of 1792 a person who called himself “Incola” wrote the following piece
The Park furnishes fuel for the poor inhabitants from a vast magazine of peat near the Roman Road, mentioned before, composed of the rotted branches of some thousands of fir trees, cut down by the Romans to enable them to pass over a morass there. The bodies of the trees are sometimes dug up sound, with the marks of the axe on them, which effectually confutes the opinion of those who suppose they have lain there ever since Noah’s deluge.
This old peat may still be seen near Rowton’s Well it is a long narrow cutting not unlike a section of the road running towards the Roman Street, and is strong evidence for thinking that “The camp on the hill” was a regular station for the Roman Troops on their way to the North and that Rowton’s Well was dug by the Romans, in the middle of the little amphitheatre of hills to supply the camp with water.
But, as most of us know the Roman colony in Britain came to an end in the 5th Century, as the Roman soldiers were withdrawn for the defence of Italy.
The Britons were attacked by the Picts and exterminated by their Saxon allies.
As dust began to settle on the ruined cities so the gorse begin to grow slowly year by year on Icknield Street
Tribe after Tribe of the English came and fought each other for the land, and formed the seven kingdoms of the Heparchy, each trying to conquer the other for 300 years.
The kingdom was called Mercia and was the most powerful of the 7
It was at Tamworth and the at Kingsbury that the Kings of Mercia held their court. From there the savage Penda struck the last blow for the pagan gods; from there Offa drove back the Britons to the present boundary of Wales, and held them behind his great dyke from Chester to the Wye. And we can dimly see St. Chad; the monk from Lindisfarne, travelling from Lichfield, on foot and unattended, along Watling Street on the edge of Sutton forest, to preach before Wulfere, the son of Penda, the last of the kings to be converted to Christ, in the year 765
A wild, fierce race were the Angles. When they were not fighting the Britons or the Danes, or each other, their chief delight was the hunting of the wolves and boars, the wild cattle and the deer, in the great forest wastes which surrounded their little towns and homesteads. The Mercian kings set apart for the chase several great preserves—Sherwood Forest, the Forest of Cannock, and a great tract near their gates at Tamworth. All the country behind the strip of arable land in the Tame Valley to Aston, as far back as Barr Beacon and Weeford, an area of 100 miles, formed one great hunting ground, and in the middle of it, on Maney Hill, seven miles south west of Tamworth, the kings built a hunting lodge called Southtun, on the edge of the Colfield, (Latin for Field on the hill) the waste heath sloping to the north from Barr Beacon. This place is now Sutton Coldfield, and the eight or nine square miles of woods and heath in the; middle of that " Forest and Chase of Sutton " have been wonderfully preserved to us as Sutton Park, almost the same to day, except for the hideous defilement of the railway, as it was when the yellow-haired English kings hunted the wolf in Hollyhurst, and chased the deer across the heath to Barr or to Lichfield.
Centuries passed and Egbert ruled and under him," he reduced the Mercian kings to the rank of earl. The Danes plundered the country as far as Worcester, and sacked Tamworth, and many a poor cottager from the Tame valley and his womenfolk hid themselves in Sutton woods. Alfred drove back the Danes, and sent his daughter, Ethelfloeda, the Lady of the Marches, and her husband Ethelred to rule for him at Tamworth, and to rebuild the town— their work can still be seen in the foundations of the castle. The battle of Hastings was fought and lost, and the Normans divided our country among them and made the great Domesday Book, the census and detailed description of the land. It is mentioned in it that the woodlands of Sutton extended two miles in length and about one in breadth, not very different to their extent to-day, but then they were all valued at four pounds. At the time of the Domesday a little hamlet had grown up here in the heart of the forest, and there were eight hides of arable land, the holdings of eight families, about eight hundred acres.
People on reading this article might be puzzled over something that I wondered about many years ago and that is were are all the great oaks like the ones at Sherwood forest?
Well I can answer that question now Sutton Park was burnt down in 1868 destroying over 500 acres of buildings and trees while totally decimated Streetly Wood.
And as long ago as 1900 Hollyhurst wood the nearest to the town and the most beautiful of the woods in the park was being ravaged by the oak blight caused by a small moth
If anyone has any questions shoot away and will answer if I can
But when you were in Sutton Park it was another World, swimming in the lakes paddling in the pools and climbing tree’s were you could be a Highway man, Tarzan, Robin Hood or one of his merry men transported back in time to whatever period you wanted to be in. It was a treat only allowed at bank holidays once a year but we loved it spending the last hour or so before you got on the train or bus back to Brum in the tea huts or sitting on the grass eating an ice cream thinking how lucky we were
The train takes about 10 minutes from Birmingham to Sutton Coldfield, and five minutes from the railway station are the gates of Sutton Park. Of the hundreds of thousands of city dwellers in Birmingham who have been to Sutton, how many, one wonders, realize what a wonderful "section" of English history lies there almost at our doorstep. Far back in the dim days of the early Heptarchy (Which is a 16th Century Term for the period 449 till 828) the Kings of Mercia, from their palace at Tamworth, set apart the forest of Sutton for their hunting ground, and Sutton Park is just a little bit of that forest that remains today. And long before the days of the Mercian Kings, before the Chief Beorm established his Hamlet which was to become Birmingham (Beorming-Ham) the citizens were known as Beormings (known to us as Brummies) had built their little hamlet on the River Rea, perhaps before Caesar had discovered the strange people who stained their bodies with woad, some warring Celtic tribes on this wild upland had scooped out, with their rude bronze mattocks (A kind of Pickaxe), earthworks from behind which they could shoot their arrows. And here they remain to this day, untouched by the plough, levelled a little by the hundreds of winters, and with old oaks growing on them here and there, but clearly to be traced even now in Sutton Park. The dyke which crosses the carriage road to Streetly, just past the " Keeper's Well," and runs across the valley and through the opposite wood has sometimes been considered one of these. Another surrounds the foot of the tree-crowned hill above Blackroot marsh, and the crest of the hill is scored all over with old entrenchments. What pictures of wild battle do these overgrown dykes suggest! What skin-clad barbarians fighting' with strange weapons in peaceful-looking Sutton Park! And there are many other traces of the ancient Britons in and near Sutton Park. The District of Maney has been derived from the British “Meini”, the stones. A large Druidical stone was found there in 1853. The name of Rowton Well may have been derived from the British “Rah Din” meaning camp on the hill, and a tumulus which is a mound usually over an ancient grave on a hill near the well was opened by the Sutton Corporation in 1859 and proved to be artificial. Barr Beacon, two miles west of the park, is supposed to have been a Druidical shrine. A curious sacrificial bowl has been found there. Aldridge, two miles to the north, was an " old ryke," or dwelling place, when the Saxons found it. and there is a tumulus near the church. The King's Standing mound, near Banner's Gate Lodge, was a British tumulus. A larger tumulus is in Bourne Vale Wood, near Streetly. Lastly, at Stonnall, two miles from Aldridge, when a tumulus was opened there in 1824, there was a great find of bronze swords, spearheads, Celts, and other British implements. But although the diggers of all these earthworks scored their mark across the heath of Sutton they left no written witness of their names. It was not till Caesar brought his legions to Britain, and sent back his wonderful reports to the Roman Senate, that the recorded history of our land began. Of that Roman occupation there are some most remarkable remains in Sutton Park. For five hundred years Britain was an important and prosperous colony of the Romans, and those mighty builders dotted all over the country their cities and forts, their "casters" and " chesters," built their great boundary walls across the land, and above all made those great highways—roads which all led to Rome—through the forests and marshlands, and over the rivers and mountains. One of them ran from Dover to Wales (Gatheli, Celt, or Watling Street), another from Totness to Lincoln (the Fosseway) and there were many others. From the Fosseway there branched on the Cotswolds a road running through Derby towards Newcastle. It was one of the Icknield Streets, so called, perhaps, from the British tribe the Iceni, through or near whose country they ran. Now two of these great roads, Icknield Street and Watling Street, crossed each other four or five miles north of Sutton Park, where there was a great fort called Etocetum, and where there are now two little hamlets— one called Chesterfield (the field of the camp) and the other Wall. Many centuries have passed since this was a walled town, but even yet a trace of its greatness may be seen in the masses of rough rubble masonry set in the hard Roman cement, which crop up here and there in the meadow at the back of the church. And many relics of the old fort have been dug up and are placed in the museum at Lichfield. Fragments of Samian ware and tesselated pavement are there, tiles (all stamped with the Roman letters, P.S.). coins, scrapers, a curious but elegantly moulded column base, and a massive piece of lead piping with the rough seam along the top such as one sees in every museum in Italy, and many more interesting remains of Roman Britain would be found if the site were excavated. There is a street in Birmingham, a little section of the great road, still called Icknield Street, but the traffic of the world long ago deserted the road between Birmingham and Wall, the ploughs filled up the ditches and levelled the ridge, and only a memory of it remained here and there, as a boundary line between the old counties of Stafford and Warwick. Only a memory except in Sutton Park, where there can still be seen a mile and a half of one of the most perfect examples of a Roman highway left in Britain. It enters the Park- near the fork of Sutton Oak Road and the Chester Rd (on a Old 1900 map by the Royal Oak Inn), and leaves it at The traffic island at Rosemary Hill and Streetly Lane (the field on the Street), overgrown with gorse and ling but straight as a line, sixty feet across, arched in the middle and with ditches on either side, just as it was left by the Roman legionary seventeen hundred years ago. A golf course has been formed on the surface of the road by the Sutton Golf Club, where the heather has been cleared away, and the perfect arch of the street covered with smooth turf. Here one may stand and see the road stretching across the heath as far as the eye can reach, and imagine it again as the great paved imperial highway from the Eternal City to the ends of the known world, busy with the traffic of the tributary Britons, the legions and people, the slaves and the commerce of the " senate and people of Rome.
It the Gentemans Magazine of 1792 a person who called himself “Incola” wrote the following piece
The Park furnishes fuel for the poor inhabitants from a vast magazine of peat near the Roman Road, mentioned before, composed of the rotted branches of some thousands of fir trees, cut down by the Romans to enable them to pass over a morass there. The bodies of the trees are sometimes dug up sound, with the marks of the axe on them, which effectually confutes the opinion of those who suppose they have lain there ever since Noah’s deluge.
This old peat may still be seen near Rowton’s Well it is a long narrow cutting not unlike a section of the road running towards the Roman Street, and is strong evidence for thinking that “The camp on the hill” was a regular station for the Roman Troops on their way to the North and that Rowton’s Well was dug by the Romans, in the middle of the little amphitheatre of hills to supply the camp with water.
But, as most of us know the Roman colony in Britain came to an end in the 5th Century, as the Roman soldiers were withdrawn for the defence of Italy.
The Britons were attacked by the Picts and exterminated by their Saxon allies.
As dust began to settle on the ruined cities so the gorse begin to grow slowly year by year on Icknield Street
Tribe after Tribe of the English came and fought each other for the land, and formed the seven kingdoms of the Heparchy, each trying to conquer the other for 300 years.
The kingdom was called Mercia and was the most powerful of the 7
It was at Tamworth and the at Kingsbury that the Kings of Mercia held their court. From there the savage Penda struck the last blow for the pagan gods; from there Offa drove back the Britons to the present boundary of Wales, and held them behind his great dyke from Chester to the Wye. And we can dimly see St. Chad; the monk from Lindisfarne, travelling from Lichfield, on foot and unattended, along Watling Street on the edge of Sutton forest, to preach before Wulfere, the son of Penda, the last of the kings to be converted to Christ, in the year 765
A wild, fierce race were the Angles. When they were not fighting the Britons or the Danes, or each other, their chief delight was the hunting of the wolves and boars, the wild cattle and the deer, in the great forest wastes which surrounded their little towns and homesteads. The Mercian kings set apart for the chase several great preserves—Sherwood Forest, the Forest of Cannock, and a great tract near their gates at Tamworth. All the country behind the strip of arable land in the Tame Valley to Aston, as far back as Barr Beacon and Weeford, an area of 100 miles, formed one great hunting ground, and in the middle of it, on Maney Hill, seven miles south west of Tamworth, the kings built a hunting lodge called Southtun, on the edge of the Colfield, (Latin for Field on the hill) the waste heath sloping to the north from Barr Beacon. This place is now Sutton Coldfield, and the eight or nine square miles of woods and heath in the; middle of that " Forest and Chase of Sutton " have been wonderfully preserved to us as Sutton Park, almost the same to day, except for the hideous defilement of the railway, as it was when the yellow-haired English kings hunted the wolf in Hollyhurst, and chased the deer across the heath to Barr or to Lichfield.
Centuries passed and Egbert ruled and under him," he reduced the Mercian kings to the rank of earl. The Danes plundered the country as far as Worcester, and sacked Tamworth, and many a poor cottager from the Tame valley and his womenfolk hid themselves in Sutton woods. Alfred drove back the Danes, and sent his daughter, Ethelfloeda, the Lady of the Marches, and her husband Ethelred to rule for him at Tamworth, and to rebuild the town— their work can still be seen in the foundations of the castle. The battle of Hastings was fought and lost, and the Normans divided our country among them and made the great Domesday Book, the census and detailed description of the land. It is mentioned in it that the woodlands of Sutton extended two miles in length and about one in breadth, not very different to their extent to-day, but then they were all valued at four pounds. At the time of the Domesday a little hamlet had grown up here in the heart of the forest, and there were eight hides of arable land, the holdings of eight families, about eight hundred acres.
People on reading this article might be puzzled over something that I wondered about many years ago and that is were are all the great oaks like the ones at Sherwood forest?
Well I can answer that question now Sutton Park was burnt down in 1868 destroying over 500 acres of buildings and trees while totally decimated Streetly Wood.
And as long ago as 1900 Hollyhurst wood the nearest to the town and the most beautiful of the woods in the park was being ravaged by the oak blight caused by a small moth
If anyone has any questions shoot away and will answer if I can
