‘The Anchorage’ was an 18th century mansion standing on the Lichfield Road. In 1868 it was owned by Rev C B Greatrex* and in 1869 was sold to Richard Hurst Sadler (a solicitor and s/o Richard Sadler solicitor and "landed proprietor" of High Street, Sutton Coldfield) with a view to redevelopment. In the event the old house was retained and sold to Thomas Moxham a gunmaker and maltster (living High Street in 1871 & 1881 Census Returns and died 1886).
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. 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 [check Google maps with postcode B74 2NT, opposite Bishop Vesey's Grammar School).
Notes:
*This Rev. Charles Butler Greatrex was born in Abberley, Worcestershire, in 1821 the s/o Charles Butler Greatrex and Mary Ditchburn, and had an interesting life.
In April 1846, he emigrated to Quebec, returned to England almost immediately, and emigrated a second time to New York in November 1847. In about 1855, he was ordained by the Bishop of Lichfield and became the curate at Loppingham in Shropshire in 1861, the rector at West Camel in Somerset in 1881, a clerk in Holy Orders in Hope Baggot, Shropshire, in 1891, and died in Croydon in 1898. He was also a poet and writer:
"ABELL, F[rank] (i.e. Charles Butler Greatrex, 1832?–98). Greatrex, who also used the pseudonyms ‘Lindon Meadows’ and ‘Abel Log’, was born in Birmingham, the son of a lieutenant in the Royal Marines. On graduation from King’s College, London he took orders in 1855 after which he held a succession of livings, mostly in the West Country. A writing parson of the hearty Charles Kingsley* stamp, he published a number of volumes of humorous sketches, random tales and boister- ous verse. He also wrote (and himself competently illustrated) a successful novel, The Adventures Of Maurice Drummore (1884). This rollicking story of a Royal Marine evidently drew on his father’s experiences."
His father, also Charles Butler Greatrex (born Birmingham 1787) was listed in the 1851 Census as a "General Medical Practioner prior to 1815", when he was living on the High Street in Sutton Coldfield, and is also recorded as a First Lieutenant in the Royal Marines in the Army List for 1839 (having joined the RM on the 1st June 1810).
This elder Charles Butler Greatrex (doctor and soldier) was the s/o of yet another Charles Greatrex who was born 1760 and one time "druggist, dealer in tea, etc" at 33 Bull Street, Birmingham, and his wife Susanna [unknown surname].
This will be your Susannah Greatrex, but I can't find anything else on her except that she is listed in 'The History of Warwickshire' by William West (1830) as "GREATREX, Mrs Susan, Sutton Coldfield", page 583.
Looks like she died in early 1838, and I would suspect that 'The Anchorage' was property that came through her blood line.
See:
http://www.brumagem.co.uk/ac_Anchorage-Road_Sutton-Coldfield_Birmingham.htm
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