Summary Site History

The site seems to be part of the 93 acres 3 roods and 36 perches of land given in November 1827 to the Warden and Society of the Royal Town of Sutton Coldfield by Sir Edmund Cradock-Hartopp of Clifton. This land included " 'two closes of land and the greater part of the third close of land (called 'The Moors') adjoining Sutton Park and to the New Forge Pool."

In exchange, the Warden and Society of the Royal Town of Sutton Coldfield gave Cradock-Hartopp 63 acres and 31 perches of Sutton Park ("a slip of land adjoining Four Oaks Park and the greater part of Lady Wood and land adjoining") to allow the then owner of Four Oaks Hall Estate "to create a more pleasing oval shape to his deer park".

The exchange also obliged Cradock-Hartopp, at a cost of £1000.00, to build a new entrance to the Park (the present Town Gate) and a new road (Park Road) linking the town to Sutton Park.

Sir Edmund Cradock-Hartopp had purchased Four Oaks Hall in 1792. When the Pudsey Estates (including nearby Langley Hall) were divided on the death of Henry Pudsey in 1686, his daughter Elizabeth and her husband Henry Folliott, 1st Baron Folliott of Ballyshannon, exercised their right granted in the Royal Charter of Sutton Coldfield to enclose up to 60 acres of Common land for a new house. Four Oaks Hall was designed by the architect and sculptor Sir William Wilson (a student of Sir Christopher Wren), who also built the 'Old Art School' building (next to Bishop Vesey's Grammar School) for himself and his new wife, Jane, the widow of aforementioned Henry Pudsey.

Henry Folliott died in 1716, and his widow, Elizabeth, continued to live at Four Oaks Hall until 1744. In 1751, the Hall was sold to Simon Luttrell (later Baron Luttrell of Luttrells Town and Earl of Carhampton) in 1751, and he rebuilt the Hall in the Palladian style. Four Oaks Hall was then sold in 1778 to the Reverend Thomas Gresley, who sold it to Hugh Bateman in 1785, who in turn sold it to Edmund Cradock-Hartopp in 1792.

Having at one point been in the ownership of the Pudsey family, the site is associated with a number of other important local families going back to the 13th century. These include:

the de Beresfords of Wishaw
Jesson of Langley Hall and Wishaw
Holte of Aston
Bracebridge of Atherstone, and
Digby of Meriden.

Following an earlier investigation in 1865 ("abandoned due to monetary pressure"), Sutton Coldfield Corporation appointed a Railway Committee in January 1872, and the Act of Parliament (35 & 36 Vict.) was passed later the same year. The line was staked out in May 1873, construction began in the Spring of 1875, and the 'Sutton Park Line' finally opened for business on the 1st July 1879. The contractor was Joseph Firbank, and the engineer for the Wolverhampton, Walsall and Midland Junction Railway was John Addison.