The Addenbrookes of Old Swinford and Sutton Coldfield were descended from the Addenbrookes of Wollaston Hall, Worcester. On the death of Edward Addenbrooke of Wollaston the estate fell to a relative John Addenbrooke Homfrey on the condition that he assumed the name and arms of Addenbrooke.

John thus became John Addenbrooke Addenbrooke. He married Elizabeth Grazebrook of Old Swinford in 1780 and they lived at Kingswinford House, Old Swinford in the heart of the Black Country where John carried on business as an Ironmaster.

Their son Edward Addenbrooke Addenbrooke b. 1793 had a large family, four of whom require a mention here

The first son John, like his father , became a succesful Ironmaster and had eleven children.

The second son Edward, later of Upper Sapey, Hereford, married Elizabeth Homfrey and had seven children in Smethwick where he was the Vicar. One of their sons Edward Homfrey Addenbrooke later became a medical general practitioner in Kidderminster.

Two others sons Henry b.1822 and Thomas became solicitors , Thomas at Lymm in Cheshire, Henry in Sutton Coldfield.

But the Sutton conection began when their sister Emma b.1825 married Vincent Holbeche , son of Thomas Holbeche ( a solicitor of Sutton and Warden of the town ) in 1846.

Henry Addenbrooke b.1822 and his brother in law Vincent , also a solicitor, formed what was to be the highly prominent and succesful legal partnership of Holbeche and Addenbrooke in Sutton Coldfield. Thomas Holbeche had been appointed Deputy Steward to the Warden and Society of Sutton before 1835 and Holbeche and Addenbrooke were jointly Deputy Stewards from about 1851. As such they were at the centre of local events for many years.

Henry married Priscilla Stone Briscoe in Stourbridge in 1850 and they had ten children in Sutton whilst they were living in High Street in what was then the heart of the town.

The Addenbrookes had mostly departed Sutton before the turn of the century. In the late 1870s Henry Addenbrooke Jnr b. 1855 emigrated to New Zealand. His cousin Rev. Charles Addenbrooke followed in 1906. New Zealand also received members of the Holbeche family. Mervyn Addenbrooke was born there in 1911. His recollections of his life and family in New Zealand, written in 1999 at the age of 88 , can be read on the Internet.

Priscilla died in Sutton in 1879. Henry latterly lived with an unmarried daughter in a substantial Victorian house, ‘Woodfield’ on what is now Birmingham Road and which is now occupied by Highclare School. He died aged 80 in 1902.

See HOLBECHE

See WARDEN AND SOCIETY

The prominent and influential Addyes family of Great Barr and Sutton Coldfield are mentioned in local archives from about 1597 in relation to Addyes School and Clothing Charity and many property transactions.

Thomas Addyes Snr of Maney was Warden of Sutton in 1633 , his will was dated 1660 and he and his wife were buried together at Sutton on 29th August 1670. His two sons Thomas Jnr and William were somewhat different characters.

William was said to be a lunatic who in 1668 cut off the head of a Jane Bayley a servant of the Addyes household. This must have been of some embarrassment to his brother Thomas ( Warden 1642 and 1657) whose son John in that year followed his father as Warden of the town (and who in 1674 served a second term as Warden and who in 1675 was appointed a Trustee of the Grammar School ).

In October 1678 Thomas Addyes of Maney bought from Walter Peyton ( a person of that name was Warden in 1623) the property described as ‘ four acres of Park meadow heretofore a house and mill called Blade Mill’. It seems that Addyes rebuilt the mill before 1695, as in that year he let out ‘the Blade Mill in the Park’ on a 22 year lease.

He died in 1700 and his will and inventory show that his two storey house at Maney had nine bedrooms. His will mentions six children and his inventory of goods was valued at £312 including 300 sheep. In addition he held property in Gt Barr, Aston, Perry Barr and Sutton Coldfield including ‘ those meadows called Park Meadows and the Blade Mill being and lying in Sutton Park with all pooles, dams, streams and watercourses’

His son John continued the family’s good fortunes. Before 1682 he had acquired Moor Hall ( built by Bishop Vesey). When he died in 1706 his will and inventory indicated that Moor Hall was a three storey mansion containing twenty rooms. His inventory was valued at £789.

John eldest son, another John b. 1684 did not marry and on his death in 1762 the estate fell to John Hackett his great nephew ( and grandson of Ann Addyes b.1689 sister of John b.1684 who had married Richard Scott of Little Aston in 1712 and whose daughter Mary Scott had married Andrew Hackett of Moxhull )

Thus the Addyes dynasty of Sutton ceased

See PARK HOUSE

See HACKETT

Advowson was a right of patronage; the right to appoint a nominee to a vacant ecclesiastical office.

The donative Advowson relative to the parish of Holy Trinity gave the owner the right to appoint Rectors to the very valuable benefice in Sutton Coldfield.

The church held an endowment of glebe land granted by the Earl of Warwick in about 1300; the 1671 Valuation of Sutton gave the annual value of these fields as £120, equal to the value of the Langley Hall estate and greater than those of New Hall and Moor Hall. The Rectors of Sutton were very comfortable financially.

The Sutton Advowson was held until the 16th century by either the Earls of Warwick or the Crown until in 1559 Elizabeth 1 sold it commercially.

The later purchase of the Advowson by Rev John Riland led to the Riland Bedford dynasty, a series of Rectors from that family covering a period of over 300 years.

When the new parishes of Walmley, Hill and Boldmere were created out of Holy Trinity parish in the 1850 the Rector as patron presented the new parish priests.

Since 1907 the right of presentation to all Sutton parishes has been held by the Bishop of Birmingham.

SEE RILAND and RILAND BEDFORD

The name Allport appears frquently in the archives and history of Sutton.

John Alport of Maney was a man of some significance who appears in connection with several property transactions in the 17th century.. He was Warden of the town in 1653 and 1670.. In the 1671 valuation of Sutton the house and land of John Alporte is valued at £38, the tenth highest valuation in the list. His son William followed his father as Warden in 1679 and 1694.

In 1729 an Edward Allport was hung on Gibbett Hill follwing his conviction for the muder of John Johnson a London silk dyer on the Coldfield common.

In November 1762 a William Allport was hunting hares in Rectory Park when he fell off his horse and was killed.

A William Alport married Hannah Curzon, daughter and heir of a Sutton farmer and in 1792 he built Cedar Court, Aldridge from where he operated a boarding school for young ladies. Their son Joseph emigrated to Tasmania where he became a lawyer.

More recently in 1881 William Allport ( born 1750 in Sutton , son of Henry) was a cab proprietor in Hackett Street, close to Sutton town station. The local volunteer fire brigade had no means of transport of their own . Allport was one of several local traders who provided horses as and when needed to draw the engine.

The business continued in Station Street ( formerly Hackett Street), adapting to the motor age, throughout the 20th century. Allport Truck Centre is now located at Fradley near Lichfield

Under the terms of the 1528 Charter the Warden and Society provided almshouses for the poor of the parish in Mill Street. These were demolished when effectively replaced by the Workhouse built in 1737 on the Mill Street site of the original Grammar School building.

Ten new almshouses were built in Mill Street and in Fox Hollies Road, Walmley with funds provided from the settlement of the Chancery Court action against the Corporation in 1825.

Almshouses at Walmley (Photograph copyright Graham Flint via Geograph)

In 1834 the opening of the Aston Union workhouse caused the Sutton workhouse to be redundant and it was closed, and the ‘guests’ were transfered to Erdington.

The workhouse building was later adapted to become Municipal Offices and today remains in use as commercial offices.

Further almhouses were built in Walmley in 1863. The Mill Street almshouses were demolished and the site has recently been used as a rather unprepossessing carpark.

‘The Anchorage’ was an 18th century mansion standing on the Lichfield Road. A long way from the sea its name suggests perhaps it was built for a retired nautical man.

In 1868 it was owned by Rev C B Greatrex and in 1869 was sold to Richard Hurst Sadler with a view to redevelopment. In the event the old house was retained and sold to Thomas Moxham a gunmaker and maltster.

Sadler proceeded with plans to develop the extensive fields to the west of the Lichfield Road and in 1870 laid out Anchorage Road roughly on the line of the Reddicroft path to Tamworth Road. Building plots were offered for sale, one of the sale conditions being that no house should cost less than £500. The properties built for middle class occupation were mostly individually architect designed , many in the Arts and Craft style. The architects included all the best of the local professionals including Bateman, Crouch and Butler and Bidlake.

Four houses were built in 1872/3. Wellington Terrace on the Lichfield Road was completed in 1885. The rest of the Anchorage Road house were erected between 1888 and 1913.

The article ‘ The Anchorage Road Estate’ by Janet Lilleywhite in ‘Scenes of Suttons Past’ published by the Sutton Local History Research Group provides much detail of this development.

The biggest house on the road , ‘Oakhurst’ built for George Lowe, became the local hospital maternity unit in 1946 ( it had four wards and fourteen beds) and remained so until 1967 when the new maternity block was built at Good Hope hospital.

Residential flats at Oakhurst, Anchorage Road (Photograph by Whatlep via Geograph)

Subsequently and not at all unusually Oakhurst was converted to apartments.

The old ‘Anchorage House’ was demolished and the new firestation was built on the site in 1963

Alfred Antrobus was a succesful Birmingham jeweller b.1834 who was a keen amateur naturalist who devoted his retirement to the study of botany and the culture of rare shrubs.

In 1872 he built himself a large mansion on Chester Road in the proximity of Baldmore Lake ( probably by then filled in ) which he named Fernwood Grange. He laid out the extensive grounds in the style of an arboretum.

He married Eliza Mountford at Kings Norton in 1859. Two children were born in Birmingham, The family moved to Sutton about 1865 and a further seven children were born there.

Their youngest son Roland a surveyor and estate agent who lived in Driffold, Sutton Coldfield inherited his fathers interests. He was a keen naturalistand a lover of Sutton Park ; he donated to the town the trees planted at the end of Keepers Pool. He was also a gifted watercolourist specialising in British birds. Roland died in 1962 age 84.

His father Alfred had died in 1907 aged 73 when Fernwood Grange was sold .

See FERNWOOD GRANGE