Just off Thornhill Rd close to the Sutton Coldfield Golf Club was Manor Rd and half way along was a horse riding school owned by Colnol Leach (ex Indian Army ). I used to work there at the weekends mucking out and polishing saddles with saddle soap. Supprise, supprise the site now has houses built upon it.
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Welcome to the Forum, Redwood Rose.
I think that the Riding School had been at least partly encroached upon by housing at an even earlier date. Between the back of houses on Chester Road and those in Thornhill Road facing the park was farmland up until the 1950s. Behind our Chester Road house was a farmer's field regularly sowed with wheat, barley and so on. (My father was offered it in the 1930s at 6d - 2.5p - per sq. yard but dismissed the price as outrageous!) Beyond it and lying immediately behind the Thornhill Road houses was a field always known to me as The Riding School Field occupied, not surprisingly, by horses. This was obviously part of the Manor Road riding school and the land could also be accessed down a track leading off the Chester Road past a cottage, a few yards from the shops at the top of Manor Road.
The "Riding School Field" was sold off to McLean's in the mid 1950s and they built one of their earliest estates on it -"Thornhill Park". Glossy, modern houses with the "wow" factor at the time. Later the field nearer the Chester Road (accessed down a narrow, grassy track from the Chester Road with a sign proclaiming "Trespassers will be Prosecuted", although I always regarded the risk as minimal) was also built on and I bet the developers paid a bit more than sixpence a yard for it.
Parts of Streetly were then really very rural.
(All a bit off-topic but my excuse is that you could at least SEE Sutton Park from everywhere we are talking about.
Chris
PS
Because of some technical quirk this post appears in the name of Redwood Rose. However I (ChrisM) must confess to responsibilty.
In addition Redwood Rose's original post, to which the above is a reply, seems to have disappeared from this thread - but the quote at the beginning of this post is an exact transcription of the original.