Of the 51 houses built in his native town by Bishop John Vesey in the 1530s, only a few remain to this day. They continue to be a subject of interest, as different owners and tenants occupy those that remain, and that interest was renewed most recently by the online sale of the unoccupied house at High Heath in December 2022, when it was auctioned for a minimum price of £1. Here the latest information is presented about what is known of the fate of some of those houses that were lost in the last century as well as recent attempts to identify other buildings still standing which may incorporate elements of one of the original houses.
Stella Thebridge MBE retired as a librarian in 2020, having spent a proportion of her career in research work as well as working in a range of libraries. She moved to Sutton Coldfield in 1986 and started worshipping at Holy Trinity Parish Church where she became very interested in the history of the church and the town of which it is an integral part.
When the church underwent a major re-ordering programme in 2016 to increase both the comfort and accessibility of the old building, she found herself leading a project enabled by a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to enable both research into the church’s history and a stewarding programme for the church to be open more often for visitors. She wrote and edited two new publications for the church – a guidebook and a full history (published by The History Press), building on previous written histories which had been lovingly compiled in pre-Internet times but did not have the benefit of the wider availability of information today, nor the options afforded by modern publishing. Stella is a member of several of the local history interest societies in Sutton Coldfield – the Local History Research Group, the Archaeological Society, The Friends of Sutton Park Association and the Civic Society as well as being a committee member of both Warwickshire Local History Society and a member of the recently formed Sutton Coldfield Heritage Network which principally oversees the programme of local events and activities during the Heritage Open Days / Birmingham Heritage Week period in September each year.
