title: Paris in World War II

text: Finding food soon became the first preoccupation of the Parisians. The authorities of the German occupation transformed French industry and agriculture into a machine for serving Germany. Shipments to Germany had first priority; what was left went to Paris and the rest of France. All of the trucks manufactured at the Citroen factory went directly to Germany. (Later many of these trucks were cleverly sabotaged by the French workers, who recalibrated the dip sticks so that the trucks would run out of oil without notice). The greatest share of shipments of meat, wheat, milk produce and other agricultural products also went to Germany. What remained for the Parisians was strictly rationed, following the creation on 16 June 1940 of the "Ministère de l'agriculture et du ravitaillement" (Ministry of Agriculture and Supply), which began to impose a system rationing as early as 2 August 1940, as per "Décret du 30 juillet 1940": bread, fat, flour products, rice, sugar; then, on 23 October 1940: butter, cheese, meat, coffee, "charcuterie", eggs, oil; in July 1941: and as the war went on: chocolate, fish, dried vegetables, (like peas and beans), potatoes, fresh vegetables, wine, tobacco... Products could be bought only upon presentation of coupons attributed to specific items and on the specific week in which they could be used. Parisians (and all the population of France) were divided into seven categories depending upon their age, and allotted a certain amount of each product each month. A new bureaucracy, employing more than nine thousand city employees, with offices at all schools and the city hall of each "arrondissement", was put into place to administer the program. The system resulted in long lines and frustrated hopes, since promised products often never appeared. Thousands of Parisians regularly made the long journey by bicycle to the countryside, hoping to come back, with vegetables, fruit, eggs and other farm products.


title: Paris in World War II

text: The rationing system also applied to clothing: leather was reserved exclusively for German army boots, and vanished completely from the market. Leather shoes were replaced by shoes made of rubber or canvas (raffia) with wooden soles. A variety of "ersatz" or substitute products appeared, which were not exactly what they were called: "ersatz" wine, coffee (made with chicory), tobacco and soap.


title: Paris in World War II

text: Finding coal for heat in winter was another preoccupation. The Germans had transferred the authority over the coal mines of northern France from Paris to their military headquarters in Brussels. The priority for the coal that did arrive in Paris was for the use in factories. Even with ration cards, adequate coal for heating was almost impossible to find. Supplies for normal heating needs were not restored until 1949.


title: Paris in World War II

text: Paris restaurants were open but had to deal with strict regulations and shortages. Meat could only be served on certain days, and certain products, such as cream, coffee and fresh produce were extremely rare. Nonetheless, the restaurants found ways to serve their regular clients. The historian René Héron de Villefosse, who lived in Paris throughout the war, described his experience: "The great restaurants were only allowed to serve, under the fierce eye of a frequent control, noodles with water, turnips and beets, in exchange for certain number of tickets, but the hunt for a good meal continued for many food-lovers. For five hundred francs one could conquer a good pork chop, hidden under cabbage and served without the necessary tickets, along with a liter of Beaujolais and a real coffee; sometimes it was on the first floor at rue Dauphine, where you could listen to the BBC while sitting next to Picasso."


title: Paris in World War II

text: The restrictions and shortage of goods led to the existence of a thriving black market. Producers and distributors of food and other scarce products set aside a portion of their goods for the black market, and used middle-men to sell them to customers. The bars of the Champs-Élysées, and other parts of Paris, became common meeting places between the middle-men and clients. Parisians bought cigarettes, meat, coffee, wine and other products which frequently neither the middle-man nor the customer had ever seen.


title: Paris in World War II

text: Due to the shortage of fuel, the number of automobiles on the Paris streets dropped from 350,000 before the war to just under 4,500. One customer, sitting on the terrace of a café on the "Place de la Bourse", counted the number of cars which passed between noon and twelve-thirty: only three came by. Older means of transportation, such as the horse-drawn "fiacre" came back into service. Trucks and automobiles that did circulate often used gazogene, a poor-quality fuel carried in a tank on the roof, or coal gas or methane, extracted from the Paris sewers.


title: Paris in World War II

text: The metro ran, but service was frequently interrupted and the cars were overcrowded. Three thousand five hundred buses had run on the Paris streets in 1939, but only five hundred were still running in the autumn of 1940. Bicycle-taxis became popular, and their drivers charged a high tariff. Bicycles became the means of transport for many Parisians, and their price soared; a used bicycle cost a month's salary.


title: Paris in World War II

text: The transportation problems did not end with the liberation of Paris; the shortage of gasoline and lack of transport continued until well after the war.


title: Paris in World War II

text: One of the greatest art thefts in history took place in Paris during the Occupation, as the Nazis looted the art of Jewish collectors on a grand scale. Great masterpieces in the Louvre had already been evacuated to the châteaux of the Loire Valley and the unoccupied zone, and were safe. The German Army was respectful of the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and refused to transfer the works in French museums out of the country, but the Nazi leaders were not so scrupulous. On 30 June 1940, Hitler ordered that all art works in France, public and private, should be "safeguarded". Many of the French wealthy Jewish families had sent their art works out of France before leaving the country, but others had left their art collections behind. A new law decreed that those who had left France just before the war were no longer French citizens, and their property could be seized. The Gestapo began visiting bank vaults and empty residences, and collecting the works of art. The pieces left behind in the fifteen largest Jewish-owned art galleries in Paris were also collected, and transported in French police vans. In September, a new organization, the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce ("Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg") was created to catalog and store the art. It was moved to the "Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume", a building in the Tuileries Gardens used by the Louvre for temporary exhibits. More than four hundred crates of art works were brought to the "Jeu de Paume" by "Luftwaffe" personnel, unpacked and cataloged. Hermann Göring, the head of the "Luftwaffe", visited the "Jeu de Paume" on November 3 and returned on the 5th, spending the entire day there, picking out works for his private collection. He selected twenty-seven paintings, including works by Rembrandt and Van Dyck owned by Edouard de Rothschild, as well as stained glass windows and furniture intended for Carinhall, the luxurious hunting lodge he had built in the "Schorfheide" Forest, in Germany. Another Rothschild-owned painting, "The Astronomer" by Vermeer, was reserved for Hitler himself. Fifteen railroad boxcars full of artworks were sent to Germany with Göring's personal train. Göring visited the "Jeu de Paume" twelve more times in 1941, and five times in 1942, adding to his collection.


title: Paris in World War II

text: Confiscations continued at banks, warehouses and private residences, with paintings, furniture, statues, clocks and jewelry accumulating at the "Jeu de Paume", and filling the whole ground floor. The staff at the "Jeu de Paume" cataloged 218 major collections. Between April 1941 and July 1944, 4,174 cases of art works filling 138 boxcars, were shipped from Paris to Germany. Much of the art, but not all, was recovered after the war.


title: Paris in World War II

text: While some painters left Paris, many remained and continued working. Georges Braque returned to Paris in autumn 1940 and quietly continued working. Pablo Picasso spent most of 1939 in a villa in Royan, north of Bordeaux. He returned to Paris and resumed working in his studio on "rue des Grands Augustins". He frequently received visitors at his studio, including Germans, some admiring and some suspicious. He had postcards made of his famous anti-fascist work, "Guernica", to hand out as souvenirs to visitors, and had serious discussions of art and politics with visiting Germans, including writer Ernst Jünger. While his work was officially condemned as "degenerate", his paintings continued to be sold at the Hôtel Drouot auction house and at the Galerie Louise Leiris, formerly Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler's. German treasurer officials opened Picasso's bank vault, where he stored his private art collection, searching for Jewish-owned art they could seize. Picasso so confused them with his descriptions of ownership of the paintings that they left without taking anything. He also persuaded them that the paintings in the adjoining vault, owned by Braque, were actually his own. Other "degenerate" artists, including Kandinsky and Henri Matisse, who sent drawings up to Paris from his residence in Nice, were officially condemned but continued to sell their works in the back rooms of Paris galleries.


title: Paris in World War II

text: A few actors, such as Jean Gabin and film director Jean Renoir chose, for political or personal reasons, to leave Paris, but many others remained, avoided politics and focused on their art. These included the actor Fernandel, the film director and playwright Sacha Guitry, and the singers Édith Piaf, Tino Rossi, Charles Trenet and Yves Montand. The jazz musician Django Reinhardt played with the "Quintette du Hot Club de France" for German and French fans. In 1941, Maurice Chevalier performed a new revue in the "Casino de Paris": "Bonjour Paris". The songs "Ça sent si bon la France" and "La Chanson du maçon" became hits. The Nazis asked Chevalier to perform in Berlin and sing for . He refused but did perform for French prisoners of war in Germany, and succeeded in obtaining the liberation of ten prisoners in exchange.


title: Paris in World War II

text: The writer Colette, who was 67 when the war began, worked quietly on her "mémoires" in her apartment at 9 "rue du Beaujolais", next to the gardens of the Palais-Royal. Her husband, Maurice Goudeket, a Jew, was arrested by the Gestapo in December 1941, and although he was released after a few months through the intervention of the French wife of the German ambassador Otto Abetz, Colette lived through the rest of the war years with the anxiety of a possible second arrest. In 1944, she published one of her most famous works, "Gigi".


title: Paris in World War II

text: The philosopher and novelist Jean-Paul Sartre continued to write and publish; Simone de Beauvoir produced a broadcast on the history of the music hall for Radio Paris; and Marguerite Duras worked at a publishing house. The actress Danielle Darrieux made a tour to Berlin, in exchange for the liberation of her husband, Porfirio Rubirosa, a Dominican diplomat suspected of espionage. The actress Arletty, the star of "Les Enfants du Paradis" and "Hôtel du Nord", had a relationship with Hans Jürgen Soehring, a "Luftwaffe" officer, and gave the famous riposte to a member of the FFI interrogating her after the Liberation: "My heart is French, but my a-- is international." '


title: Paris in World War II

text: Some places in Paris were frequented by homosexual actors and artists; notably the swimming pool in the Bois de Boulogne. The actor Jean Marais was officially harassed for his homosexuality, and the actor Robert-Hugues Lambert was arrested and deported, most likely because of his relationship with a German officer whom he did not want to name. He was murdered at the Flossenbürg concentration camp on 7 March 1945.


title: Paris in World War II

text: The Germans made a continual effort to seduce the Parisians through culture: in 1941, they organized a festival of German music by the Berlin Philharmonic at the Paris Opera, a play from the Schiller Theater in Berlin at the "Théâtre des Champs-Élysées", and an exhibit by the German sculptor Arno Breker.


title: Paris in World War II

text: The French film industry, based in suburbs of Paris, had a very difficult existence due to shortages of personnel, film and food, but it produced several genuine masterpieces, among which: Marcel Carné's "Les Enfants du Paradis" ("Children of Paradise") which was filmed during the Occupation but not released until 1945.


title: Paris in World War II

text: From the very beginning of the Occupation, Jews in Paris were treated with particular harshness. On October 18, 1940, the German occupation authorities decreed, in what is known as the "Ordonnance d'Aryanisation", that Jews would have a special status and be barred from liberal professions, such as commerce, industry, thus affecting lawyers, doctors, professors, shop owners, and also be barred from certain restaurants and public places, and that their property was seized. On May 23, 1942, the head of the Anti-Jewish section of the Gestapo, Adolf Eichmann, gave secret orders for the deportation of French Jews to the concentration camp of Auschwitz. On May 29, 1942, all Jews in the Occupied Zone over the age of six were required to wear the yellow Star of David badge. In July, Jews were banned from all main streets, movie theaters, libraries, parks, gardens, restaurants, cafés and other public places, and were required to ride on the last car of metro trains. On 16–17 July 1942, on Germans' orders, 13,152 Jews (4,115 children, 5.919 women and 3,118 men) were rounded up by the French police. Unmarried persons and couples without children were taken to Drancy, some 20 kilometers north of Paris, while 8,160 men, women and children comprising families went to the "Vélodrome d’Hiver" ("Vel' d'Hiv'") stadium, on "rue Nelaton" in the 15th arrondissement, where they were crowded together in the heat of summer, with hardly any food, water and no hygienic facilities for five days before being sent to Drancy, Compiègne, Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande internment camps, preludes to the Auschwitz extermination camp. The roundup was considered a failure by the Germans, since they had prepared trains for 32,000 persons. Arrests continued in 1943 and 1944. By the time of the Liberation, it was estimated that 43,000 Jews from the Paris region, or about half the total population of the community, had been sent to the concentration camps, and that 34,000 were murdered there.


title: Paris in World War II

text: Many Parisians collaborated with the Government of Marshal Pétain and with the Germans, assisting them with the city administration, the police, and other government functions. French government officials were given the choice of collaborating or losing their jobs. On September 2, 1941, all Paris magistrates were asked to take an oath of allegiance to Marshal Petain. Only one, Paul Didier, refused. Unlike the territory of Vichy France, governed by Marshal Pétain and his ministers, the document of surrender placed Paris in the occupied zone, directly under German authority, the "Militärbefehlshabers in Frankreich" (MBF). It stated: "The government of France will immediately invite all the French authorities and administrative services in the occupied territories to conform with the regulations of the German military authorities, and to collaborate with those in a correct manner." The prefect of the police and prefect of the Seine, reported to him, and only secondarily to the government of the French State in Vichy.


title: Paris in World War II

text: The Reich Security Main Office which oversaw the SS, SD and Gestapo worked closely with the French Police and its auxiliaries. It established the Carlingue (or French Gestapo) which was used to conduct counter-insurgency operations against the Resistance. Its cadre, which were mostly from the French underworld, operated from 93, "rue Lauriston". Many of its member were captured at the end of the war and executed. The Nazi security agencies also established Special Brigades under the Prefecture of Police in Paris, these units operated in accordance with the RHSA and the SS capturing resistance fighters and Allied agents, as well as rounding up Jews for deportation. Prisoners were routinely tortured by the Special Brigades.


title: Paris in World War II

text: The Germans supported the creation by Vichy France, on 28 February 1943, of a fascist paramilitary organization, the "Front révolutionnaire national", whose active police branch was called "Milice". Its particular function was to help the Germans in their battle against the Resistance, which they qualified as being a "terrorist" organization. It established its headquarters in the former Communist Party building at 44 "rue Le Peletier" and at 61 "rue de Monceau". The Lycée Louis-Le-Grand was occupied as barracks, and an officer candidate school was established in the Auteuil synagogue. The "Front révolutionnaire national" held a large rally on 11 April 1943 at the "Vél d'Hiv". At the time of the Liberation of Paris in August 1944, most of its members chose to fight alongside the Germans and many of them made their way to Germany (Sigmaringen) when Paris fell to the Allies. Those who did not leave were the target of the purge ("épuration") that followed.


title: Paris in World War II

text: The most notorious criminal of the period was Doctor Marcel Petiot. Petiot purchased a house at 21 "rue Le Sueur" in the 16th arrondissement, and under the name of "Docteur Eugène", pretended to be the head of a Resistance network that smuggled Jews from France to Argentina. He collected a large advance from his clients and then instructed them to come to his house, bringing their gold, silver and other valuables with them. After they arrived, he brought them to his consulting room, and, convincing them vaccination was required in order to enter Argentina, gave them a lethal intravenous injection, then watched their slow death in an adjacent room through a spyhole in the door. Afterwards, he cut up their bodies, put the pieces in the well, and dissolved them with quicklime. His activities attracted the attention of the Gestapo, which arrested him in 1943, thus allowing him to claim later that he had been a real member of the Resistance. His crimes were discovered after the Liberation in 1944, and he was charged with the murders of twenty-seven persons, tried in 1946, and sentenced to death. He went to the guillotine on May 25, 1946. The gold, silver and other valuables were not found when he was arrested. In search of the treasure, the house was carefully demolished in 1966, but no trace of it was ever found.


title: Paris in World War II

text: On 18 June 1940, Parisians listening to the BBC heard an obscure French brigadier General, Charles de Gaulle, in London, make an appeal ("Appel du 18 juin") to continue the resistance against the Germans. Very few heard the broadcast at the time, but it was widely printed and circulated afterwards. On 23 June, the German occupation authorities ordered all French persons to turn in any weapons and short-wave receivers they possessed, or face severe measures. Within Paris, opposition was isolated and slow to build. On 2 August, de Gaulle was condemned to death for treason, "in absentia", by Marshal Pétain's new government.


title: Paris in World War II

text: The first illegal demonstration in Paris against the Occupation took place on 11 November 1940, the anniversary of the end of the First World War, a day that usually featured patriotic ceremonies of remembrance. Anticipating trouble, the German authorities banned any commemoration and made it a regular school and work day. Nonetheless, the students of Paris "lycées" (high schools) circulated handbills and leaflets calling for students to boycott classes and meet at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier beneath the "Arc de Triomphe". The event was also announced on the 10th on the BBC. The day began quietly, as some 20,000 students laid wreaths and bouquets at the tomb and at the statue of Georges Clemenceau, on "Place Clemenceau", by the "Champs Élysées". This part of the day was tolerated by the French and German authorities. At midday, the demonstration became more provocative; some students carried a floral Cross of Lorraine, the symbol of de Gaulle's Free France. They were chased away by the police. At nightfall, the event became more provocative; some three thousand students gathered, chanting "Vive La France" and "Vive l'Angleterre", and invading "Le Tyrol", a bar popular with the "Jeune Front", a fascist youth group, and scuffling with police. At 6:00 pm, German soldiers arrived, surrounded the students, and closed the entrance of the metro stations. They charged the students with fixed bayonets, firing shots in the air. The Vichy government announced 123 arrests and one student wounded. The students arrested were taken to the prisons of "La Santé", "Cherche-Midi" and "Fresnes", where they were beaten, slapped, stripped, and made to stand all night in the pouring rain. Some students were threatened by soldiers pretending to be a firing squad. As a consequence of the demonstration, the Sorbonne University was closed, students were required to regularly report to the police, and the Latin Quarter was closely watched.


title: Paris in World War II

text: Another incident took place on 10 November; a 28-year-old French engineer named Jacques Bonsergent and his friends, coming home from a wedding, ran into a group of German soldiers in the blackout and got into a brawl. A German soldier was punched. Bonsergent's friends escaped, but he was arrested and refused to give the names of his friends to the Germans. He was held in jail for nineteen days, taken to court, charged with "an act of violence against a member of the German Army", and sentenced to death. Bonsergent was executed by firing squad on 23 December, the first civilian in France executed for resistance against the Occupation. In 1946, the metro station "Jacques Bonsergent" was named after him.


title: Paris in World War II

text: The first significant Resistance organization in Paris was formed in September 1940 by a group of scholars connected with the "Musée de l'Homme", the ethnology museum located at the "Palais de Chaillot". On 15 December, using the museum mimeograph machine, they published "Résistance", a four-page newspaper which gave its name to the movement that followed. The group was led by the Russian-born (French naturalized) anthropologist Boris Vildé. The first issue of the newspaper, proclaimed: "We are independent, simply French, chosen for the action we wish to carry out. We have only one ambition, one passion, one desire: to recreate France, pure and free." They collected information and established a network to help escaped French POWs to flee the country. They were not experienced conspirators, and they were discovered and arrested in January 1941. Vildé and the six other leaders were sentenced to death and executed by firing squad at Fort Mont Valérien, in the western suburbs of the city, on February 22, 1942.


title: Paris in World War II

text: Most of the resistance by ordinary Parisians was symbolic: encouraged by the BBC, students scribbled the letter V for "Victory" on walls, blackboards, tables, and on the side of cars. The Germans tried to co-opt the 'V' campaign, placing huge Vs. symbolizing their own victories, on the Eiffel Tower and the National Assembly, but with little effect.


title: Paris in World War II

text: From the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939, until June 1941, the Communists played no active part in the Resistance. The Vichy government and Germans allowed their newspapers to publish, and they made no mention of the patriotic demonstrations on November 11. But after Operation Barbarossa, the German attack on the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, they became among the most active and best-organized forces against the Germans. They remained hostile to de Gaulle, whom they denounced as a reactionary British puppet. On 21 August 1941, a 21-year-old veteran communist named Pierre Georges, who used the clandestine name "Fabien", shot a German naval officer, Alfons Moser, in the back, as he was boarding the metro at the Barbés-Rochecouart station. The Germans had routinely taken hostages among the French civilian population to deter attacks. They responded to the Barbés-Rochechouart metro attack by executing three hostages in Paris, and another twenty the following month. Hitler was furious at the leniency of the German commander, and demanded that in case of future assassinations, there must be one hundred hostages executed for every German killed. After the next killing of a German, forty-eight hostages were immediately shot by firing squad. From London, General de Gaulle condemned the Communist policy of random assassinations, saying the cost in innocent civilian lives was too high, and it had no impact on the war, but the random shooting of Germans continued. In retaliation, an estimated 1,400 hostages from the Paris region were taken and 981 executed by the German military at Fort Mont Valérien.


title: Paris in World War II

text: Acts of resistance in Paris became more dangerous. In the spring of 1942, five students of the "Lycée Buffon" decided to protest the arrest of one of their teachers. About one hundred students took part, chanting the teacher's name and throwing leaflets. The demonstrators escaped, but the police tracked down and arrested the five student leaders, who were tried and executed on February 8, 1943.


title: Paris in World War II

text: As the war continued, the Resistance was divided largely between the groups, followers of General de Gaulle in London, and those organized by the Communists. Thanks to pressure from the British, who supplied the weapons, and the diplomacy of one Resistance leader, Jean Moulin, who created the National Council of the Resistance ("Conseil National de la Résistance" (CNR)), the different factions began to coordinate their actions. In early 1944, as the Normandy invasion approached, the Communists and their allies controlled the largest and best-armed resistance groups in Paris: the "Francs-Tireurs et Partisans" (FTP). In February 1944, the FTP became part of a larger umbrella organization, the "Forces françaises de l'intérieur" (FFI). Following the Normandy invasion on June 6 (D-Day), the FFI prepared to launch an uprising to liberate the city before the Allied Armies and General de Gaulle arrived.


title: Paris in World War II

text: The Allies landed at Normandy on 6 June 1944, and two months later broke the German lines and began to advance toward and around Paris. German control over Paris was already breaking down. One hundred thousand Parisians had turned out on 14 July for a prohibited celebration of Bastille Day. German soldiers fired into the air, but the French police did nothing. On 10 August, half of the eighty thousand railroad workers in the Paris region went on strike, stopping all railroad traffic. On 15 August, the new German commander of Paris, General Dietrich von Choltitz, ordered that three thousand resistance members held in Paris jails be transferred out of the city. They were loaded into trains, 170 persons in each cattle car, and sent to the concentration camps of Buchenwald and Ravensbrück. Only twenty-seven returned. On the same day, the Paris police learned that policemen in the suburbs were being disarmed by the Germans; they immediately went on strike. In Paris, most of the electricity and gas were cut off, there was little food available, and the metro had stopped running.


title: Paris in World War II

text: On 19 August, against the opposition of de Gaulle's representative in Paris, Jacques Chaban-Delmas, the National Council of the Resistance and the Parisian Committee on Liberation jointly called for an immediate uprising. It was commanded by the regional leader of the Communist-led FFI, Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy. Chaban-Delmas reluctantly agreed to participate. Liberation Committees in each neighborhood occupied the government buildings and headquarters of collaborationist newspapers, and put up barricades in the northern and eastern neighborhoods, where the Resistance was the strongest. To the surprise of Henri Rol-Tanguy, the Paris police also joined in the uprising; a thousand policemen occupied the Prefecture of Police, the police headquarters on the "Île de la Cité".


title: Paris in World War II

text: At the time of the uprising, most of elite German units had left the city, but twenty-thousand German soldiers remained, armed with about eighty tanks and sixty artillery pieces. While the Resistance had about twenty-thousand fighters, they had only sixty hand guns, a few machine guns, and no heavy weapons. Nonetheless, on the morning of 20 August, a small group of Resistance fighters, led by Marcel Flouret, walked into the City Hall of Paris and demanded a transfer of operations. The building was then occupied by the resistance. Rol-Tanguy commanded the uprising from a bunker twenty-six meters beneath the statue of the "Lion de Belfort", "Place Denfert-Rochereau", which communicated with the catacombs. Parisians cut down trees and tore up paving stones to build barricades. Scattered sniping and street fighting broke out between the Germans, the "Milice" and the Resistance; prisoners were executed on both sides. The Resistance took weapons from fallen Germans, and even captured trucks and even tanks, but neither side had enough military power to defeat the other.


title: Paris in World War II

text: The Allies had originally planned to bypass Paris, to avoid street fighting and the necessity of feeding a huge population. However, when news of the uprising in Paris reached them, Generals Eisenhower and Bradley agreed to send the French 2nd Armored Division of General Leclerc to Paris, and sent the American 4th Armored Division to support them. The 2nd Armored Division set out early in the morning of 23 August with 16,000 men, 4,200 vehicles and 200 tanks. By the afternoon of the 24th, they were in the western and southern Paris suburbs. On 23 August, Leclerc had sent a small column of three tanks and eleven halftracks, commanded by Captain Dronne, to enter the heart of the city. By 9:00 pm. Dronne had reached the "Hôtel de Ville", where he was greeted by Georges Bidault, the head of the National Council of the Resistance ("Conseil national de la Résistance"), and André Tollet, commander of the Paris committee of liberation ("Comité parisien de la Libération"). Then he went to the Prefecture of Police for a meeting with de Gaulle's representative, Chaban-Delmas. The main force of Leclerc's 2nd Armored Division and the U.S. 4th Infantry Division entered the city on the morning of the 25th. There was fierce resistance near the Invalides and the École Militaire, in which some French soldiers were killed and tanks destroyed. By the end of the morning, the Germans had been overcome and a large French tricolor flag was hoisted on the Eiffel Tower.


title: Paris in World War II

text: General von Choltitz was an unrepentant Nazi, and had been ordered by Hitler to leave the city a "heap of burning ruins", but he also realized the battle was lost, and he did not want to be captured by the Resistance. Through the offices of the Swedish Consul-General, Raoul Nordling, he ignored Hitler's orders and arranged a truce. In the afternoon of the 25th he traveled from his headquarters in the "Hôtel Meurice" to the Montparnasse train station, the headquarters of General Leclerc, where, at about 3:00 in the billiards room of the station staff, he and Leclerc signed a surrender. Chaban-Dalmas and Rol-Tanguy, leader of the FFI, were also present, and it was suggested that Rol-Tanguy should also sign the surrender. Leclerc dictated a new version, and put the name of the FFI leader ahead of his own. The occupation of Paris was officially over.


title: Paris in World War II

text: De Gaulle arrived in Paris two hours later. He met first with Leclerc, complaining to him that Rol-Tanguy had signed the surrender. He then went to the Ministry of War, and insisted that the FFI leaders come to him, but in the end he went to the "Hôtel de Ville", where he gave a memorable speech to a huge crowd of Parisians, concluding:


title: Paris in World War II

text: "Paris! Paris humiliated! Paris broken! Paris martyred! But now Paris liberated! Liberated by herself, by her own people with the help of the armies of France, with the support and aid of France as a whole, of fighting France, of the only France, of the true France, of eternal France."


title: Paris in World War II

text: The following day, de Gaulle, on foot, towering over everyone in the crowd, led a triumphal march from the "Arc de Triomphe", down the "Champs-Élysées", to the "Place de la Concorde", then to the cathedral of Notre-Dame, where he took part in a Te Deum.


title: Paris in World War II

text: About 2,000 Parisians were killed in the liberation of their capital, along with about 800 Resistance fighters from the FFI and policemen, and over 100 soldiers from the Free France and U.S. forces.


title: Paris in World War II

text: During the liberation food in Paris was getting scarcer by the day. The French rail network had largely been destroyed by allied bombing so getting food into Paris had become a problem, especially since the Germans had stripped the capital of its resources for themselves. Many Parisians were desperate, and allied soldiers even used their own meagre rations to help. The allies realised the necessity to get Paris back on its feet, and pushed a plan for food convoys to get through to the capital as soon as possible. In addition, surrounding towns and villages were requested to supply as much of Paris as possible. The Civil Affairs of SHAEF authorised the import of up to 2,400 tons of food per day at the expense of the military effort. A British food convoy labelled 'Vivres Pour Paris' entered on August 29, and US supplies were flown in via Orléans Airport before being convoyed in. At least 500 tons were delivered a day by the British and another 500 tons by the Americans. Along with French civilians outside Paris bringing in indigenous resources, within ten days the food crisis was overcome.


title: Paris in World War II

text: Immediately following the liberation of the city, Parisians who had collaborated with the Germans were punished. Women who had been accused of allegedly sleeping with German soldiers had their heads shaved and were humiliated. Most of the accusers were men, and many of these women were targets of revenge, or a way that actual collaborators could take the focus off themselves. Some Parisians, including Coco Chanel, who had been living with a German officer, quietly left the country, and did not return for many years. 9,969 persons were arrested. A military tribunal was established for those who had collaborated with the German army and police, and a separate judicial tribunal was set up for economic and political collaborators. Of those arrested, 1,616 were acquitted, and 8,335 were found guilty. In the Seine department, the two tribunals sentenced 598 collaborators to death, of whom 116 were executed; the others, who had escaped from France, were condemned "in absentia".


title: Paris in World War II

text: The Liberation did not immediately bring peace to Paris; a thousand persons were killed and injured by a German bombing raid on August 26, the city and region suffered from attacks by German V-1 rockets beginning on September 3; food rationing and other restrictions remained in force through the end of the war, but the climate of fear had disappeared.


title: Paris in World War II

text: The political life of the city was gradually renewed, under the close watch of General de Gaulle. On August 27, the Council of Ministers held its first meeting at the "Hôtel Matignon" since 1940. In October, a provisional municipal council was established, but it did not formally meet until March and April 1945. The first issue of a new newspaper, "Le Monde", was published on December 18, 1944. On April 13, 1945, just before the end of war, a new ordinance set the date for the first municipal elections since the war began. They were held on 29 April, and for the first time French women were allowed to vote.


title: Endgame (play)

text: Endgame, by Samuel Beckett, is an absurdist, tragicomic one-act play about a blind, paralyzed, domineering elderly man, his geriatric parents and his doddering, dithering, harried, servile companion in an abandoned shack in a post-apocalyptic wasteland who mention their awaiting some unspecified “end” which seems to be the end of their relationship, death, and the end of the actual play itself. Much of the play’s content consists of terse, back and forth dialogue between the characters reminiscent of bantering, along with trivial stage actions; the plot is held together by the development of a grotesque story-within-a-story the character Hamm is writing. An aesthetically profound part of the play is the way the story-within-story and the actual play come to an end at roughly the same time. The play’s title refers to chess and frames the characters as acting out a losing battle with each other or their fate.


title: Endgame (play)

text: It was originally written in French (entitled "Fin de partie") and was translated into English by Beckett himself . The play was first performed on April 3rd, 1957 at the Royal Court Theatre in London in a French-language production. Written before but premiered after "Waiting for Godot", it is arguably among Beckett's best works. The literary critic Harold Bloom called it the greatest prose drama of the 20th century, saying "I know of no other work of its reverberatory power", but stated that he could not handle reading it in old age for its harrowing, barebone existentialism . Samuel Beckett considered it his masterpiece as the most aesthetically perfect, compact representation of his artistic views on human existence, and refers to it when speaking autobiographically through Krapp in "Krapp's Last Tape" when he mentions he had “already written the masterpiece”. .


title: Endgame (play)

text: Samuel Beckett said that in his choice of character's names, he had in mind the word "hammer" and the word "nail" in English, French and German respectively, "clou" and "nagel".


title: Endgame (play)

text: Beckett was an avid chess player, and the term endgame refers to the ending phase of a chess game. The play is dimly visible as a kind of metaphorical chess, albeit with limited symbolic meaning. Hamm at one point says "My kingdom for a knight-man!". Hamm, limited in his movement, resembles the king piece on a chess board, and Clov, who moves for him, a knight.


title: Endgame (play)

text: Clov enters a dreary, dim and nondescript room, draws the curtains from the windows and prepares his master Hamm for his day. He says “It’s nearly finished,” though it is not clear what he is referring to. He awakes Hamm by pulling a bloodstained rag off from his head. They banter briefly, and Hamm says “It’s time it ended.”


title: Endgame (play)

text: Eventually, Hamm’s parents, Nell and Nagg, appear from two trash cans at the back of the stage. Hamm is as equally threatening, condescending and acrimonious with his parents as with his servant, though they still share a degree of mutual humor. Hamm tells his father he is writing a story, and recites it partially to him, a fragment which treats on a derelict man who comes crawling on his belly to the narrator, who is putting up Christmas decorations, begging him for food for his starving boy sheltering in the wilderness.


title: Endgame (play)

text: Clov, his servant, returns, and they continue to banter in a way that is both quick-witted and comical yet with dark, overt existential undertones. Clov often threatens to leave Hamm, but it is made clear that he has nowhere to go as the world outside seems to be destroyed. Much of the stage action is intentionally banal and monotonous, including sequences where Clov moves Hamm’s chair in various directions so that he feels to be in the right position, as well as moving him nearer to the window.


title: Endgame (play)

text: By the end of the play, Clov finally seems intent on pursuing his commitment of leaving his cruel master Hamm. Clov tells him there is no more of the painkiller left which Hamm has been insisting on getting his dose of throughout the play. Hamm finishes his dark, chilling story by having the narrator berate the collapsed man for the futility of trying to feed his son for a few more days when evidently their luck has run out. Hamm believes Clov has left, being blind, but Clov stands in the room silently with his coat on, going nowhere. Hamm discards some of his belongings, and says that, though he has made his exit, the bloodstained rag “will remain”.


title: Endgame (play)

text: "Endgame" is an expression of existential angst and despair and depicts Beckett’s philosophical worldview, namely the extreme futility of human life and the inescapable dissatisfaction and decay intrinsic to it. The existential feelings buried in the work achieve their most vocal moments in lines such as “It will be the end and there I'll be, wondering what can have brought it on and wondering... why it was so long coming,” and “Infinite emptiness will be all around you, all the resurrected dead of all the ages wouldn't fill it, and there you'll be like a little bit of grit in the middle of the steppe,“ in both of which Hamm seems to contemplate the sense of dread awakened by the obliterating force of death.


title: Endgame (play)

text: "Endgame" is also a quintessential work of what Beckett called “tragicomedy”, or the idea that, as Nell herself in the play puts it, “Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.” Another way to think about this is that things which are absurd can be encountered both as funny in some contexts and horrifyingly incomprehensible in others. Beckett’s work combines these two responses in his vast artistic vision of depicting not a segment of lived experience but the very philosophical nature of life itself, in the grandest view, as the central subject material of the play. To Beckett – due to his existential worldview – life itself is absurd, and this incurs reactions of both black mirth and profound despair. To Beckett, these emotions are deeply related, and this is evident in the many witty yet dark rejoinders in the play, such as Hamm’s comment in his story, “You’re on Earth, there’s no cure for that!”, which both implies in a melodramatic fashion that being born is a curse, but sounds perhaps like a biting, bar-talk joke, such as telling someone “You’re Irish, there’s no cure for that!”


title: Endgame (play)

text: Samuel Beckett makes heavy use of repetition, in which certain recurrent short phrases or sentence patterns are spread out throughout the play and in various characters’ dialogue. Many of the ideas are conceptually, logically novel, almost reminiscent of Lewis Carroll, such as the play beginning with the ingeniously witty subversion of a rhetorical question “Can there be misery loftier than mine?” with the literal answer, “No doubt,” the sense of cleverness of design in the way the first thing Hamm requests after Clov has woken him up is to be gotten ready to go back to bed, and in the odd yet entrancing way in which Hamm describes the scene of his story with recourse to a wide variety of instruments such as a heliometer. Beyond this high degree of conceptual playfulness, the play is suffused, in characteristic Beckett fashion, with everyday expressions which are subverted and take on either mind-bending, absurd meanings and/or an existential resonance, as if lurking beneath the surface of our most common daily doings and parlance lies the unmistakable absurdity, or illogicality, of life and the world. One small example of many would be when Hamm asks “What time is it?” and Clov replies “The same as usual.”


title: Endgame (play)

text: Most key to the overall functioning of the play seems to be core aesthetic ideas, new explorations of form that were at work throughout Beckett’s oeuvre and very central to the foregoing "Godot" – a play in which almost nothing happens, plot-wise, and furthermore, as many elements or levels of narrative craft seem to take a null value – there is seemingly no character development, and the location is vague and very poorly defined. Although Beckett had a reputation for keeping mum about the ideas behind his work, he specifically had published a conversation he had with a painter detailing precisely this aspect of his aesthetic vision which he wanted people to know – that his work was a realization of there being “nothing to express, no way to express it”.


title: Endgame (play)

text: Overall, the value, or effect, or the play is a unique, hypnotic aesthetic experience which gives a kind of slow-burning existential catharsis. Being unconventional in form and material, it does not have a traditional Aristotelian catharsis, importantly because it does not seek redemption for its characters. Beckett, who understood and wrote about his understanding of tragedy as the pure depiction or expression of a sorry fate, created the ultimate negative art form. Thus, while many people suffer quietly from existential fear or horror, only in Beckett is this feeling provocatively confronted, rather than ameliorated or suppressed. To gaze so clearly into the depiction of something so tragic yet so true has the true effect of art, which is expression. The mere act of a singer lamenting a sad story is an aesthetic act in itself, a listener takes value in the sentimentality of the experience. The same is true for Beckett: merely to encounter the direct, pure expression of existential feeling is experienced as inherently rewarding. Beckett characterized his work by invoking the book of Ecclesiastes when defending the line “The bastard, he doesn’t exist!”, in reference to God, by saying, “It isn’t any different from saying ‘My God, why have you abandoned me?’” Therefore, clearly and unequivocally, for Beckett Endgame was an emotional, tragic yet affirming way of dealing with a perceived sense of spiritual abandonment in life and existence.


title: Endgame (play)

text: Much of Beckett’s core thought which is expanded on in Endgame is in his critical analysis of Marcel Proust, entitled “Proust”. In it, he explains his Schopenhauerian view of the human will endlessly chasing after momentary satisfaction that it can rarely if ever constantly attain, which lies behind the image of “grain upon grain” (moments in life and time) never amounting to “the impossible heap” (some fixed, non-transient accumulation or deposition of enduring value, in time).


title: Endgame (play)

text: Possible themes in "Endgame" include decay, insatiety and dissatisfaction, pain, monotony, absurdity, humor, horror, meaninglessness, nothingness, existentialism, nonsense, solipsism and people's inability to relate to or find completion in one another, narrative or story-telling, family relations, nature, destruction, abandonment, and sorrow.


title: Endgame (play)

text: Hamm's story is broken up and told in segments throughout the play. It serves essentially as part of the climax of "Endgame", albeit somewhat inconclusively.


title: Endgame (play)

text: Hamm's story is gripping for how the narrative tone it is told in contrasts with the way the play the characters are in seems to be written or proceed. Whereas "Endgame" is somehow lurching, starting and stopping, rambling, unbearably impatient and sometimes incoherent, Hamm's story in some ways has a much more clear, liquid, fluid, descriptive narrative lens to it. In fact, in the way it uses run-of-the-mill literary techniques like describing the setting, facial expressions or an exchange of dialogue, in slightly bizarre ways, it almost seems like a parody of writing itself. Beckett's eerie, weird stories about people at their last gasp often doing or seeking something futile somehow seems to return again and again as central to his art. It could be taken to represent the inanity of existence, but it also seems to hint at mocking not only life but storytelling itself, inverting and negating the literary craft with stories that are idiotically written, anything from poorly to put-on and overwrought.


title: Endgame (play)

text: Extremely characteristic Beckettian features in the work, represented by many lines throughout the work, are bicycles, a seemingly imaginary son, pity, darkness, a shelter, and a story being told.


title: Endgame (play)

text: The play has postmodern features in that the characters recurrently hint that they are aware they are characters in a play.


title: Endgame (play)

text: The play was premiered on 3 April 1957 at the Royal Court Theatre, London, directed by Roger Blin, who also played Hamm; Jean Martin was Clov, Georges Adet was Nagg and Christine Tsingos was Nell. In the early 1960s, an English language production produced by Philippe Staib and, directed by Beckett with Patrick Magee and Jack MacGowran was staged at the Studio des Champs-Elysees, Paris. Other early productions were those at the Cherry Lane Theatre, New York, 28 January 1958, directed by Alan Schneider with Lester Rawlins as Hamm, Alvin Epstein as Nagg and Gerald Hiken playing Clov (a recording of the play, with P. J. Kelly replacing Epstein, was released by Evergreen Records in 1958); and at the Royal Court directed by George Devine who also played Hamm, with Jack MacGowran as Clov.


title: Endgame (play)

text: After the Paris production, Beckett directed two other productions of the play: at the Schiller Theater Werkstatt, Berlin, 26 September 1967, with Ernst Schröder as Hamm and Horst Bollmann as Clov; and at the Riverside Studios, London, May 1980 with Rick Cluchey as Hamm and Bud Thorpe as Clov.


title: Endgame (play)

text: In 1984, JoAnne Akalaitis directed the play at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The production featured music from Philip Glass and was set in a derelict subway tunnel. Grove Press, the owner of Beckett's work, took legal action against the theatre. The issue was settled out of court through the agreement of an insert into the program, part of which was written by Beckett:


title: Endgame (play)

text: Any production of "Endgame" which ignores my stage directions is completely unacceptable to me. My play requires an empty room and two small windows. The American Repertory Theater production which dismisses my directions is a complete parody of the play as conceived by me. Anybody who cares for the work couldn't fail to be disgusted by this.


title: Endgame (play)

text: In 1985 Beckett directed "Waiting for Godot", "Krapp's Last Tape" and "Endgame" as stage pieces with the San Quentin Players. All three productions were grouped together under the title "Beckett Directs Beckett", and the production toured Europe and parts of Asia.


title: Endgame (play)

text: In 1989, a TV movie production was filmed with Stephen Rea as Clov, Norman Beaton as Hamm, Charlie Drake as Nagg and Kate Binchy as Nell.


title: Endgame (play)

text: In 1992, a videotaped production directed by Beckett, with Walter Asmus as the television director, was made as part of the "Beckett Directs Beckett" series, with Rick Cluchey as Hamm, Bud Thorpe as Clov, Alan Mandell as Nagg and Teresita Garcia-Suro as Nell.


title: Endgame (play)

text: A production with Michael Gambon as Hamm and David Thewlis as Clov and directed by Conor McPherson was filmed in 2000 as part of the "Beckett on Film" project.


title: Endgame (play)

text: In 2004, a production with Michael Gambon as Hamm and Lee Evans as Clov was staged at London's Albery Theatre, directed by Matthew Warchus.


title: Endgame (play)

text: In 2005, Tony Roberts starred as Hamm in a revival directed by Charlotte Moore at the Irish Repertory Theater in New York City with Alvin Epstein as Nagg, Adam Heller as Clov and Kathryn Grody as Nell.


title: Endgame (play)

text: In 2008 there was a brief revival staged at the Brooklyn Academy of Music starring John Turturro as Hamm, Max Casella as Clov, Alvin Epstein as Nagg and Elaine Stritch as Nell. New York theatre veteran Andrei Belgrader directed, replacing originally sought Sam Mendes at the helm of the production.


title: Endgame (play)

text: The British theatre company Complicite staged the play in London's West End with Mark Rylance as Hamm and Simon McBurney (who also directed the production) as Clov. The production also featured Tom Hickey as Nagg and Miriam Margolyes as Nell. The production opened on 2 October 2009 at the Duchess Theatre. Tim Hatley designed the set.


title: Endgame (play)

text: In 2010, Steppenwolf Theatre Company staged "Endgame". It was directed by Frank Galati and starred Ian Barford as Clov, William Petersen as Hamm, Francis Guinan as Nagg, and Martha Lavey as Nell. James Schuette was responsible for set and scenic design.


title: Endgame (play)

text: In 2015, two of Australia's major state theatre companies staged the play. For Sydney Theatre Company, Andrew Upton directed the production, featuring Hugo Weaving as Hamm and for Melbourne Theatre Company, Colin Friels starred in a production directed by Sam Strong and designed by visual artist Callum Morton.


title: Endgame (play)

text: In 2016, "Coronation Street" actors David Neilson and Chris Gascoyne starred in a staging of the play at both the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow and HOME in Manchester.


title: Endgame (play)

text: In 2019 the play was produced by Pan Pan Theatre at the Project Arts Centre in Dublin. The production was directed by Gavin Quinn and starred Andrew Bennett, Des Keogh, Rosaleen Linehan and Antony Morris. The production was designed by Aedin Cosgrove.


title: Endgame (play)

text: In 2020 the Old Vic in London produced a version with Alan Cumming, Daniel Radcliffe, Jane Horrocks and Karl Johnson the play in a double bill with "Rough for Theatre II".


title: Endgame (play)

text: Dublin's Gate Theatre staged the play in 2022. Directed by Danya Taymor, Hamm was played by Frankie Boyle and Clov by Robert Sheehan, with Seán McGinley and Gina Moxley as Nagg and Nell.


title: Endgame (play)

text: Beckett, S., In Gontarski, S. E., & In Knowlson, J. (2019). The theatrical notebooks of Samuel Beckett: Volume II, Endgame.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: Sutton Coldfield or the Royal Town of Sutton Coldfield, known locally as Sutton ( ), is a town and civil parish in the City of Birmingham, West Midlands, England. The town lies around 8 miles northeast of Birmingham city centre, 9 miles south of Lichfield, 7 miles southwest of Tamworth and 7 miles east of Walsall.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: Sutton Coldfield and its surrounding suburbs are governed under Birmingham City Council for local government purposes but the town has its own town council which governs the town and its surrounding areas by running local services and electing a mayor to the council. It is in the Historic county of Warwickshire, and in 1974 it became part of Birmingham and the West Midlands metropolitan county under the Local Government Act 1972.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: The name "Sutton Coldfield" appears to come from this time, being the "south town" (i.e. south of Tamworth and/or Lichfield) on the edge of the "col field". "Col" is usually derived from "charcoal", charcoal burners presumably being active in the area.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: The earliest known signs of human presence in Sutton Coldfield were discovered in 2002–2003 on the boundaries of the town. Archaeological surveys undertaken in preparation for the construction of the M6 Toll road revealed evidence of Bronze Age burnt mounds near Langley Mill Farm, at Langley Brook. Additionally, evidence for a Bronze Age burial mound was discovered, one of only two in Birmingham with the other being located in Kingstanding. Excavations also uncovered the presence of an Iron Age settlement, dating to around 400 and 100 BC, consisting of circular houses built over at least three phases surrounded by ditches. Closer to Langley Brook (a tributary of the River Tame), excavations uncovered the remains of a single circular house surrounded by ditches, dating from the same period.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: Near to Langley Mill Farm is Fox Hollies, where archaeological surveys have uncovered flints dating from the New Stone Age. Amongst the finds in the area were flint cores and a flint scraper, which had been retouched with a knife. The presence of flint cores suggest that the site was used for tool manufacture and that a settlement was nearby. Additionally, a Bronze Age burnt mound was also discovered in the area.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: In his "History of Birmingham", published in 1782, William Hutton describes the presence of three mounds adjacent to Chester Road on the extremities of Sutton Coldfield (although now outside the modern boundaries of the town). The site, southwest of Bourne Pool (named "Bowen Pool" by Hutton), is called Loaches Banks and was mapped as early as 1752 by Dr. Wilks of Willenhall. Hutton interpreted the earthworks as a Saxon fortification but further archaeological work led Dr. Mike Hodder, now the Planning Archaeologist for Birmingham City Council, to believe that the site was an Iron Age hill-slope enclosure. Centuries of agriculture on the land has severely affected the visibility of the features, with the earthworks now only apparent in aerial photography.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: Further evidence of pre-Roman human habitation are preserved in Sutton Park. A major fire in the park in 1926 revealed six more mounds near Streetly Lane, excavations of which uncovered charred and cracked stones within them and pits below the two largest mounds. Although their date of origin is unknown, claims they were of Bronze Age origin were disproved. The mounds are now covered in rough heathland. The area around Rowton's Well has been the source of many archaeological discoveries such as flint tools, and in the 18th century, worked timbers were discovered near the well, suggesting a possible Iron Age timber trackway built across wet land, similar to others discovered elsewhere in the country. A burnt mound was also discovered in New Hall Valley.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: The presence of Romans in the area is most visible in Sutton Park, where a long preserved section of Icknield Street passes through. Whilst the road ultimately connects Gloucestershire to South Yorkshire, locally, the road was important for connecting Metchley Fort in Edgbaston with Letocetum, now Wall, in Staffordshire. The road is most visible from near to the pedestrian gate on Thornhill Road (OS Grid Reference SP 08759 98830), where the wide bank that formed the road surface is most prominent. Excavations at the road have showed that it was made from compacted gravel, never having a paved surface. Along each side are intermittent ditches, marked by Roman engineers, and beyond these are hollows where gravel was excavated to make the road surface. At least three Roman coins have been found along the course of Icknield Street through Sutton Park, as well as a Roman pottery kiln elsewhere in the town.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: Next to the Iron Age property at Langley Brook, the remains of a timber building and field system were discovered. Pottery recovered from this site was dated to the second and third century, indicating the presence of a Roman farmstead.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: Upon the Roman withdrawal from Britain to protect the Roman Empire on the continent in the fifth century, the area of Sutton Coldfield, still undeveloped, passed into the Anglo Saxon kingdom of Mercia. It is during this period that it is believed Sutton Coldfield may have originated as a hamlet, as a hunting lodge was built at Maney Hill for the purpose of the Mercian leaders. The outline of the deer park that it served is still visible within Sutton Park, with the ditch and bank boundary forming the western boundary of Holly Hurst, then crossing Keepers Valley, through the Lower Nuthurst and continuing on south of Blackroot Pool. Due to the marshy ground at Blackroot Valley, a fence was probably constructed to contain the deer, and the ditch and bank boundary commence again on the eastern side, on towards Holly Knoll.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: This became known as Southun or Sutton; "ton" meaning the town stead to the south of Tamworth, the capital of Mercia. Middleton is situated between the two. "Coldfield" denotes an area of land on the side of hill that is exposed to the weather.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: Sutone, as the manor became known, was held by Edwin, Earl of Mercia, during the reign of Edward the Confessor. Upon the death of Edwin in 1071, the manor and the rest of Mercia passed into the possession of the Crown, then ruled by William the Conqueror, resulting in Sutton Chase becoming a Royal Forest.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: The manor of Sutone was mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, where it was rated at eight hides, making it larger than all surrounding villages in terms of cultivated land.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: The manor remained in the possession of the Crown until 1135, when King Henry I exchanged it for the manors of Hockham and Langham in Rutland, with Roger de Beaumont, 2nd Earl of Warwick. The manor remained in the possession of the earldom of Warwick for around 300 years, with numerous exceptions. As Sutton Forest was no longer in the possession of the Crown, it became Sutton Chase.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: In 1242, when the manor was passed to Ela Longespee, the widow of Thomas de Beaumont, 6th Earl of Warwick, it was named as Sutton-in-Coldfield, and again noted as such in 1265 when Ela married her second husband Philip Basset. The manor of Sutton-in-Coldfield was once again in the possession of the earldom of Warwick when Ela exchanged it with William de Beauchamp, 9th Earl of Warwick, for the manor of Spilsbury in Oxfordshire. The first mention of a manor house attached to the manor of Sutton was mentioned in 1315 on a site named Manor Hill, west of the parish church.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: During the 15th century, Sutton Coldfield underwent a process of change due in part to the turbulent ongoings with the Earls of Warwick and their possession of the manor house. In 1397, Thomas de Beauchamp, 12th Earl of Warwick, was punished by King Richard II for being a member of the Lords Appellant. All his possessions were confiscated, including the land at Sutton, which was transferred to Thomas Holland, 3rd Earl of Kent. Upon King Richard II's death in 1400, Thomas de Beauchamp was returned his possessions, although he died the following year. In 1446, Henry de Beauchamp, 14th Earl of Warwick, died and the earldom was passed to his two-year-old daughter Anne; however, King Henry VI collected the profits of the land whilst Anne was in her infancy. Anne died in 1448, and the estate and earldom passed to her aunt Anne Neville, although this was contested by her three older half-sisters. In his "Itinerary", John Leland mentions that Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, and his wife, Anne Neville, are believed to have built a new manor of timber-frame construction, with a lease given by King Henry VI in 1460 to Edward Mountfort, suggesting that the manor was then occupied by the Mountfort family.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: Despite being occupied by Mountfort family, Richard Neville regained his power and land, but died in 1471. Normally, the land would have remained in the possession of his wife, but instead they were given to his two daughters and their husbands. However, the eldest daughter, Isabella, contested and obtained the remainder of the interests from her sister. Isabella died in 1476, leaving the manor in the possession of her husband, George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence. However, in 1478, he was attainted and executed, meaning that the manor was passed to his only surviving son, Edward Plantagenet, who was still an infant. The Crown held the lands due to Edward's age, but in 1487 granted the lands back to Anne Neville, 16th Countess of Warwick, since both of her daughters were now dead. She immediately gave the lands back; however, Sutton and other manors were given back to her in 1489. She died in 1492, with all the land returning to the possession of the Crown, with whom it remained until it was incorporated in 1528.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: The manor of Sutton was not the only manor house within Sutton, as the manor of Langley was noted as being in the possession of the de Bereford family of Wishaw as early as the mid-13th century. New Hall Manor is said to date to the 13th century also, and was mentioned in 1327 as being passed from William de Sutton to Robert de Sutton. It is believed to have originally been a hunting lodge. In 1281, Peddimore Hall was first mentioned when it was sold to Hugh de Vienna by Thomas de Arden. It is presumed that the land was given to the Arden family by one of the Earls of Warwick.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: It is not known exactly when the village of Sutton began to develop but in 1300, Guy de Beauchamp, 10th Earl of Warwick, was granted a charter by King Edward I to hold a market on each Tuesday and an annual fair on the eve of Holy Trinity in the village. Sutton did not establish itself as a market town like Birmingham was able to, and the market appears to have fallen out of use, as a new charter was later granted to Thomas de Beauchamp, 11th Earl of Warwick, for a market to be held on the same day, as well as fairs on the eve of Holy Trinity and the eve of St. Martin.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: During the 12th and 13th centuries, religious activities were carried out at the free chapel of Saint Blaise, constructed within the Sutton manor grounds. In the late 1200s, the town constructed its own parish church, the first incumbent of which was ordained in 1305. This later became Holy Trinity Church, and the only remaining features of the original church survive below the east window, where clasping buttresses are visible, a method of construction from the mid-13th century.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: Throughout the 15th century, Sutton Coldfield developed a military connection, due in part to Sir Ralph Bracebridge who obtained a lease for his lifetime from the Earl of Warwick for the Manor and Chase of Sutton Coldfield. In return, Bracebridge was required to assist the Earl with nine lances fournies and seventeen archers in strengthening Calais from French attack. As a result, Sutton Coldfield became an important training location for English soldiers during the wars between England and France. Butts were assembled within the town for archery training, and marks can still be seen in the sandstone wall on 3 Coleshill Street where archers sharpened their arrows. It is believed that 3 Coleshill Street is of medieval origin despite having a Georgian façade. Bracebridge is remembered as having dammed Ebrook to form Bracebridge Pool, now in Sutton Park, which he used for fishing.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: By the beginning of the 16th century, the town of Sutton Coldfield had started to decay as a result of the War of the Roses. The markets had been abandoned and the manor house itself was becoming dilapidated. Around 1510, the manor house was demolished by an officer to the Crown, who sold the timbers for a profit to Thomas Grey, 2nd Marquess of Dorset, who used them in the construction of Bradgate House in Leicestershire. It was during the period of decay that John Harman grew up, working at Moor Hall Farm in Sutton and then studying at Magdalen College, Oxford. He formed a friendship with Thomas Wolsey and started a career in the church, beginning with his appointment as chaplain at the free chapel of St. Blaize in his hometown in 1495. Harman continued to be promoted and became Chaplain to King Henry VIII, with whom he became friends. In 1519, Harman was appointed Bishop of Exeter and changed his surname to Vesey, thus becoming John Vesey.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: It was Vesey's respected position within the church and his friendship with the King that set about the start of a revival for Sutton Coldfield, spearheaded by Vesey. He had returned to the town in 1524 for the funeral of his mother to discover the town had further deteriorated. He decided to set up residence in the town again and in 1527 obtained two enclosures of land named Moor Yards and Heath Crofts, as well as of land for him to construct his own home named Moor Hall. In the same year, he established a grammar school in the southwest corner of the parish churchyard, where 21 people were appointed Trustees to maintain the building and employ a teacher. On 16 December 1528, through the interests of Vesey, Henry VIII granted Sutton Coldfield a Charter of Incorporation, creating a new form of government for the town which was named the Warden and Society of the Royal Town of Sutton Coldfield. The society consisted of 25 of the most prominent local inhabitants who elected a new Warden from within them. Vesey's brother-in-law, William Gibbons, became the first Warden. All the town's inhabitants over the age of 22 were permitted to elect members to the Society. The charter had also given the inhabitants permission to hunt and fish freely in the manor grounds, as well as build a house, enclosing up to , within the manor grounds. Throughout the length of the Society's existence, it was dogged by claims of corruption and malpractice from the town's residents.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: The donation by King Henry VIII of his hunting land to the residents of the town set the foundations for the preservation of the area now known as Sutton Park. Vesey cleared large tracts of the land of trees to allow residents to graze their cattle there for a small fee. He then enclosed wooded areas within the land, added gates and fencing around the park, and then arranged for the transfer of horses to the park at his own expense. Bishop Vesey also paid for the whole town to be paved, which in turn helped revive the markets. In 1527, he set about working on Holy Trinity Church, donating an organ in 1530 and then paying for the construction of two new aisles in 1533. In 1540, he approved the transfer of control of the grammar school to the Warden and Society, and gave the school land for its own use the following year. To help expand the town and protect its extremities, he constructed 51 cottages for the poor, including one at Cotty's Moor which was a hotspot for robberies of people using the roads. The stone walls of the former manor house were removed to assist in the construction of a bridge at Water Orton and another in Curdworth, at his own expense. In 1547, he purchased from the Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, and in 1549, from the Crown, numerous church properties including the chantry lands of Sutton Coldfield, and those in Deritend, Birmingham, before dying at Moor Hall in 1555. Vesey's legacy is clearly visible today, with Sutton Park largely unchanged since its enclosure, some stone cottages remaining, and the grammar school he established still operating under the name of Bishop Vesey's Grammar School. His tomb at Holy Trinity Church is accompanied by memorial gardens to the west of the church named Vesey Gardens.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: Moor Hall, Bishop Vesey's residence, was inherited by his nephew John Harman after Vesey's death. He sold the mansion to John Richardson, who died in 1584, leaving an infant son. A manor by the name of Pool Hall is first mentioned as being in the town in 1581, and in the following year, William Charnells leased it for 20 years to Henry Goodere, who transferred the rights to John Aylmer, Bishop of London, in 1583. Upon the Aylmer's death in 1594, the manor was passed on to his sons, who sold it to Robert Burdett in 1598. It is believed that the properties at 62 and 64 Birmingham Road were constructed around 1530, making it one of the oldest surviving buildings in the town. Nearby 68 Birmingham Road dates to the end of the 1500s.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: During the 16th century, the waters and pools within Sutton were exploited for industrial purposes and, following the death of Vesey, the town continued to prosper and expand. In 1510, two watermills under the ownership of William Weston were recorded, and upon the establishment of the park, he was forced to pay rent on them. Three other mills were recorded in 1576 after they were sold to two unnamed local men. In 1585, John Bull sold a water-fulling mill and two blade-mills, which would have been powered by water, to Edward Sprott. Four additional mills were recorded in 1588, and another two in 1595. A blade mill was constructed at Bracebridge Pool in 1597, on a site now occupied by Park House. Despite the growth of industry here, five pools in total were drained in the 16th century, although some were recreated later, including Bracebridge Pool and Keeper's Pool.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: The outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642 saw the Battle of Camp Hill at nearby Birmingham, which resulted in Birmingham being pillaged by Royalist forces. Despite the nearby action, Sutton Coldfield emerged unscathed, although it is known that it was visited by both Parliamentary and Royalist soldiers. It is claimed that during his escape from England in 1646, Charles II stayed for a night at New Hall Manor.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: On 26 July 1664, King Charles II renewed the royal charter for Sutton Coldfield, with the additional provision being made for the appointment of two members of the Society as capital burgesses and also as justices of the peace alongside the Warden.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: Following his trial and three-year suspension from preaching, the violently anti-Presbyterian Henry Sacheverell retired to New Hall, the home of his once-removed first cousin, George Sacheverell. Henry Sacheverell preached a vitriolic sermon at Sutton Church on Sunday 17 October 1714, which fuelled Birmingham's contribution to the nationwide rioting the following Wednesday, the day of King George I's coronation. It also appears that, whilst residing in New Hall, he helped ferment the anti-Presbyterian "Church in danger" riots of July 1715, when, according to a correspondent of George Berkeley, up to 4000 rioters gathered in Birmingham, twenty-eight rioters died, and no more than three Dissenters’ meeting-houses survived in Birmingham, Worcestershire and Staffordshire. The town became a temporary refuge in 1791, following the "Priestley Riots" in Birmingham. William Hutton, for example, whose house was attacked by protesters, decided to spend the summer in Sutton. However, local residents' fears of further rioting forced him to move permanently to Tamworth. Joseph Priestley is said to have stayed at the 'Three Tuns' following the destruction of his home in the riots, and his initial flight to Heath-forge, Wombourne.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: The manufacture of blades, gun barrels, spades, and spade handles, as well as the grinding of knives, bayonets, and axes, mainly at mills constructed at pools in Sutton Park and on the banks of Ebrook, became an important contributor to the town's economy in the 17th century. The blade mill at Bracebridge Pool fell out of use by 1678 and was destroyed; however, it was reconstructed by 1729. The creation of Longmoor Pool, caused by the damming of Longmoor Brook in Longmoor Valley, was approved in 1733 and carried about by John Riland, who built a mill there in 1754 with his co-tenant for the manufacture of buttons. Blackroot Pool was also constructed in around 1757 by Edward Homer and Joseph Duncomb. In 1772, the Warden and Society of the town gave a lease of 30 years to Thomas Ingram at the pool. The mill at Blackroot Pool was originally used for leather dressing, although later became a sawmill.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: Powell's Pool was created in 1730 as a millpond for Powell's Pool Mill, a steel-rolling mill. In 1733, a cotton-spinning machine was tested at the mill by John Wyatt with the help of Lewis Paul, helping to kickstart the creation of the UK's cotton industry in the 18th century. In total, Sutton Coldfield has had 15 watermills, 13 of which were powered by Plants Brook, and the remaining two using an independent water supply. There were also two windmills in the town, at Maney Hill and at Langley.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: A heavy storm caused the collapse of the dam holding back the waters of Wyndley Pool, which swept downstream and broke the banks of Mill Pool at Mill Street in July 1668, subsequently flooding and destroying many homes within Sutton Coldfield. Bracebridge Pool also broke its banks as a result of the storm on 24 July, causing lesser damage. Wyndley Pool was subsequently drained, although there is another pool within Sutton Park with the same name.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: Much of the damming in Sutton Coldfield was carried out using stone and gravel quarried from within the town. These quarries also supplied stone for construction elsewhere in the town, proving to be particularly profitable. The quarry that supplied material for the construction of Blackroot Pool in 1759 was in use until 1914.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: During the 17th and 18th centuries, the town prospered from the growth of industry and this led to improvements in the quality of life for the residents. They were now able to experience new luxuries such as seafood. Products were 10% more expensive in Sutton Coldfield than in neighbouring towns and villages. The town also grew, due in part to the wealthy industrialists of Birmingham seeing Sutton Coldfield as a suitable location for their country houses, away from the pollution of the larger town. A survey of the parish in 1630 reported that there were 298 houses, and this number had increased to 310 when another survey was conducted in 1698. Of these houses would have been 20 High Street, which was built around 1675. A survey of the parish in 1721 noted that the number of houses in Sutton Coldfield had increased to 360. In 1636, King Charles I imposed the ship money tax of £80 on the town, compared to £100 for Birmingham and Warwick, £266 for Coventry, and £50 for Stafford, reflecting the wealth of the town at the time. In 1663, an Act was passed to order and collect "Hearth Duty", which led to a subsequent survey of all houses in the country and the noting of all properties with hearths and stoves. The survey of Sutton Coldfield found that there were 67 hearths and stoves, of which 30 were attributed to two houses owned by the Willoughby family.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: Some of Sutton Coldfield's most prominent buildings were constructed or underwent changes during this time. For example, the current Peddimore Hall was constructed in 1659 by William Wood to a design by William Wilson, who took up residence in the town and married the widowed landowner, Jane Pudsey, in 1681. Her daughters disapproved of the relationship and she was forced out of her home at Langley Hall, resulting in Wilson constructing Moat House for the couple in 1680. Another of his works in the town was Four Oaks Hall, designed for Henry Folliott, 1st Baron Folliott, who was the husband of Wilson's stepdaughter. Along with the hall, Lord Folliott enclosed of woodland.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: In 1610, New Hall Manor was purchased by Henry Sacheverell, the family of which were prominent landowners throughout the country. Upon his death in 1620, the hall was inherited first by Valence Sacheverell, and then by George Sacheverell, his eldest son. Notable buildings that were constructed in the town during the 18th century include the Royal Hotel on High Street, which dates to circa 1750. The 'Three Tuns' public house, also on High Street, dates to the late 18th century, although it retains the cellars and foundations of an earlier building.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: The 1800s would prove to be another century of major change for the town, built upon the wealth it had generated in years before and the power that the Sutton Coldfield Corporation had. Dealing with a growing town, they sought to improve the quality of life for residents. The corporation was forced to fell trees within the town and sell the timber as means to fund the construction of schools and almshouses. In 1826, timber worth £1,116 3s. was sold. The first of these schools were founded during the 1820s. The corporation also constructed two almshouses in Walmley in 1828 and a further two adjacent in 1863. By 1837, there were ten almshouses in the parish under the ownership of the corporation, with others operated by charities.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: The town hall at the top of Mill Street began to deteriorate throughout the 1800s and the decision was taken to demolish it in 1854. The adjacent workhouse and gaol were renovated to become the new municipal offices, and this was reconstructed in 1858 until 1859 to better suit its purpose. The new offices were designed by G. Bidlake. A fire station was also constructed further down Mill Street.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: During the 1830s, municipal corporations were investigated due to corrupt practices within the House of Commons. These inquiries led to the passing of the Reform Act of 1832 and Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 which reformed boroughs nationwide. Despite the radical changes imposed by the Acts, the Sutton Coldfield Corporation was left untouched. It was not until April 1882, as a result of the Municipal Corporations Act of 1882, that Sutton Coldfield became a municipal borough. The old Corporation was replaced with a new structure consisting of a mayor, six aldermen and eighteen elected councillors. Six wards were created in the borough – Holy Trinity, Hill, Boldmere, Wylde Green, Maney, and Walmley – from which three councillors were elected.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: For the majority of the 19th century, people travelled between Birmingham and Sutton Coldfield by horse-drawn carriage, a journey that took around 80 minutes. Birmingham received its first railway in 1837 with a terminus at Vauxhall station, now Duddeston railway station. In 1859, an Act was passed for the construction of a railway line connecting Birmingham to Sutton Coldfield via Erdington. Construction commenced in 1860 on the line which passed through Vauxhall station, although by this time it was being used only as a goods station. The line opened on 2 June 1862 with Sutton Coldfield railway station being the terminus. An Act of Parliament for the continuation of the railway to Lichfield was passed on 23 June 1874, with construction starting in October 1881 and services beginning in 1884. The line was extended to Lichfield Trent Valley railway station on 28 November 1888.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: A proposed second railway line by the Wolverhampton, Walsall and Midland Junction Railway Company through Sutton Coldfield was met with opposition from residents who were concerned about the route cutting through Sutton Park. A meeting objecting to the proposal was held on 15 April 1872, however, construction was authorised on 6 August in the same year. The WWMJR company merged with Midland Railway in 1874 and construction commenced soon after. To calm objections from residents, Midland Railway promised cheap local coal and paid £6,500 for a stretch through Sutton Park. Services on the line began on 1 July 1879, with trains stopping at Penns (Walmley), Sutton Coldfield Town, and Sutton Park in the town, as well as at Streetly, Aldridge, and Walsall. Ultimately, the line connected the Midland Railway's Wolverhampton and Walsall Railway line to their Birmingham to Derby line.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: The railways quickly led to Sutton Coldfield becoming a popular location for day excursions and picnic parties for the residents of Birmingham, escaping the pollution of the city for the landscapes of Sutton Park. The 1863 edition of "Bradshaw's Guide" described Sutton Coldfield as "a place of no very particular note, beyond an occasional pic-nic excursion". In the Whit week of 1882, 19,549 people visited Sutton Park, with numbers dropping to 11,378 in the same week the following year. In 1884, there were 17,486 visitors, of whom 14,000 went on the Monday. In 1865, on a small eminence adjacent to Sutton Coldfield station, the Royal Hotel was constructed, hoping to capitalise on the new tourist industry the town was witnessing. The hotel was beset with financial difficulties and closed down in 1895, becoming Sutton Coldfield Sanatorium for a short period of time.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: As well as becoming a tourist spot, Sutton Coldfield also developed into a commuter town to Birmingham, as workers were able to live away from the pollution of the city and travel there by train. During the late 19th century, it was the wealthy manufacturers who moved to Sutton Coldfield, and it was not until the turn of the century that ordinary workers were able to move as well.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: In 1836, George Bodington acquired an asylum and sanatorium at Driffold House (now the Empire cinema), Maney, where he researched pulmonary disease.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: The first census of Sutton Coldfield took place in 1801. It recorded that the town had a population of 2,847. The following census of 1811 recorded that this had risen to 2,959 with 617 houses. This was partially down to the construction of barracks to the east to accommodate the Edinburgh and Sussex Militias, the 7th Dragoon Guards and a Brigade of Artillery. By 1821, the population had further increased to 3,426 and then to 3,684 in 1831. The census of 1881 revealed that the population had increased from 4,662 in 1861 to 7,737.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: The increasing population of Sutton Coldfield parish was recognised in the mid-19th century and new ecclesiastical parishes were created from it to better serve the residents of the communities that made up Sutton. The first ecclesiastical parish to be created was Walmley in 1846, with the recently completed St. John the Evangelist Church becoming the parish church. Hill became the next ecclesiastical parish in 1853, with its church being St. James' Church in Mere Green. Boldmere parish was created in 1857, with St. Michael's Church becoming its parish church. Holy Trinity Church was further extended with a north outer aisle and vestries in 1874–9.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: The construction of Shenstone Pumping Station in 1892 gave Sutton Coldfield its first tapped water supply. In 1870, W.T. Parsons began the publication of Sutton Coldfield's first newspaper "Sutton Coldfield News".


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: Sutton Coldfield was the focus of national attention in 1817 when a young woman named Mary Ashford was found murdered in the town. She had been attending a party in Erdington on the evening of 26 May 1817, and had left with Abraham Thornton and her friend Hannah Cox, who left Mary and Abraham. The following morning, her body was recovered from a water-filled pit by Penns Lane, Erdington. Thornton was quickly traced and arrested for her murder. At the trial, Thornton provided evidence that it was not possible for him to have killed Mary at the suggested time. As a result, the jury found him not guilty of her murder and rape, allowing him to walk free from the court.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: Public response to the acquittal was that of outrage and a private appeal was brought against the verdict by Mary's brother, William Ashford. Thornton was taken to London where he was tried at the King's Bench. When Thornton was called upon for his plea, he responded, "Not guilty; and I am ready to defend the same with my body." He then put on one of a pair of leather gauntlets, which his barrister, William Reader, handed him. Thornton threw down the other for William Ashford to pick up and thus accept the challenge, which Ashford did not do. By Ashford not accepting the challenge under the trial by combat laws, Thornton was freed, although by this time he gained a notorious reputation. In 1819, a bill was introduced and an Act passed to abolish private appeals after acquittals and also abolish trial by combat.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: In the 20th century, Sutton Coldfield continued to grow. The areas on the fringes of the district remained rural up until the end of World War I. As witnessed nationally, there was a house construction boom in areas such as Boldmere, Walmley, Erdington and Four Oaks. Again, the population increased rapidly. During World War II, Sutton Park and areas of Walmley were used as prisoner-of-war camps, housing German and Italian prisoners. After the war, Sutton witnessed a major redevelopment. The Borough Council commissioned Max Lock and Partners to draw up plans for the redevelopment of the town centre in 1960, with a preliminary report being delivered in May 1961 and a detailed report in 1962. The Parade in the town centre was almost completely demolished for the construction of a large new shopping centre named Gracechurch. In addition, shopping centres in Wylde Green and Mere Green were constructed causing considerable objection as many local landmarks were lost to the developers.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: In 1974, Sutton Coldfield became part of Birmingham when the metropolitan county of the West Midlands was formed. More recently, areas of the town centre have been pedestrianised.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: Plans for the proposed construction of five tower blocks for pensioners at Brassington Avenue in the town centre were abandoned in November 2015.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: On 1 March 2015, a new Sutton Coldfield parish council was formally incorporated. This handed over parish council powers from Birmingham City Council.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: In 1528, a charter of King Henry VIII gave the town the right to be known as "The Royal Town of Sutton Coldfield" and to be governed by a warden and society. The charter was secured by Bishop John Vesey. This unreformed corporation survived until 1885, when it was replaced by a municipal borough. Although the title "Royal Town" was still used, the municipality created in 1885 was not itself a Royal borough. However, the townspeople sometimes still use its historic 'Royal' title. This was confirmed to be allowed in 2014 after a two-year campaign by a local newspaper, the "Sutton Coldfield Observer", Andrew Mitchell MP, the Sutton Coldfield Civic Society and various local residents. On Thursday, 12 June 2014 government minister Greg Clark confirmed during a special adjournment debate in the House of Commons that "there is no statutory ban to the continuance of historic titles for other [non-governance] purposes" in the absence of a local governing structure using a historic name, and thus the use of the Royal title is not prohibited (although any such usage has a "lack of technical legal effect"). Following that confirmation, the newspaper renamed itself the "Royal Sutton Coldfield Observer".


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: The town and borough were ceremonially part of Warwickshire until 1974, when it was amalgamated into the City of Birmingham and the metropolitan county of the West Midlands. The formal Mayoral chains of office are now on display in Birmingham Council House.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: Sutton Coldfield forms the Sutton Coldfield parliamentary constituency, the largest Parliamentary Constituency in Birmingham whose Member of Parliament (MP) since 2001 has been Andrew Mitchell (Conservative). Within the City of Birmingham metropolitan borough, it comprises the wards of Sutton Four Oaks, Sutton Mere Green, Sutton New Hall, Sutton Reddicap, Sutton Roughly, Sutton Trinity, Sutton Vesey, Sutton Walmley & Minworth, and Sutton Wylde Green. The ward of Erdington ceased to be part of the constituency in 1974 due to the Local Government Act of 1972. Sutton Trinity ward was created in June 2004, at which time the then other three wards' boundaries were changed. From 5 April 2004, it has been a council constituency, with many local services managed by a district committee made up of all Sutton's councillors.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: In 2015 the eligible electorate within the Royal town's boundary were asked whether they wished to be governed by an independent Town council. The result of the election was that almost 70% were in favour of a Sutton Coldfield Town Council. Work is now ongoing in the Birmingham City Council to create a new council and decide which powers to transfer. The first parish council election took place on 5 May 2016.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: Sutton Coldfield borders New Oscott, Erdington, the district of North Warwickshire , Aldridge and Tamworth in Staffordshire. The area in general is regarded by its own populace as one of the most prestigious locations in the Birmingham area and even in Central England; a 2007 report by the website Mouseprice.com placed two Sutton Coldfield streets amongst the 20 most expensive in the United Kingdom.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: The northern stretch of the Birmingham city sandstone ridge culminates at Sutton Coldfield. Plants Brook rises in the area of Streetly and flows through Sutton Park and directly beneath the town centre, then Plants Brook briefly flows through Erdington, notably Pype Hayes Park before returning to Sutton and culminating at Plantsbrook Nature Reserve on the Erdington / Walmley border at Eachelhurst Road.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: The main shopping centre is the Gracechurch Centre, built in 1974. For a number of years this centre was called The Mall. The complex includes a multi-storey car park. As a result of investment, the appearance of the shopping centre was improved in 2006 which included the installation of a glass roof above one of the walkways and the removal of a public square to form a cafe and extra retail units. There are now plans to construct a food court above Bishop's Court in the shopping centre. The shopping centre was formerly home to three bronze sculptures that depict, respectively, a boy and a girl on rollerskates, a boy with a dog, and a boy and a girl playing leapfrog, which have been moved to Rectory Park.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: A second shopping centre was named the Sainsbury Centre until Sainsbury's closed their store; the name was later changed to "The Red Rose Centre". The centre has its own multi-storey car park with access from Victoria Road.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: Sutton Parade is a continuation of Birmingham Road and Lichfield Road (though there is a bypass for traffic). New Hall Walk is a row of shops built behind The Parade in the late 1990s. The company that manages the site also manages several of the shops on the Parade built at the same time. It has its own large outdoor car park. Opposite the Red Rose Centre, behind New Hall Walk, is a single floor, indoor market facility known as the In Shops.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: There are several local shopping parades serving the suburbs of Sutton, including "The Lanes" Shopping Centre in Wylde Green, at Walmley, and at Boldmere Road.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: Football-wise, Sutton Coldfield is represented by Sutton Coldfield Town F.C., which was founded in 1879 and also to Paget Rangers F.C. who share their ground at Coles Lane. Golf is a major sport in the town, which is home to numerous golf clubs and courses. In the south of Sutton Coldfield is Walmley Golf Club and Pype Hayes Golf Course. There are also Aston Wood Golf Club, Moor Hall Golf Club, Sutton Coldfield Golf Club, Little Aston and Boldmere Golf Club. Nearby is The Belfry, a hotel with a renowned golf complex whose Brabazon course has hosted the Ryder Cup several times.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: Sports facilities, including swimming pool and 400m athletics track, are located at Wyndley Leisure Centre, on the edge of Sutton Park. This was opened in 1971 by Ethel E. Dunnett. The nearby youth centre was opened in September 1968. Parts of Rectory Park is leased to Sutton Coldfield Hockey Club, Sutton Coldfield Cricket Club and Sutton Town Football Club.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: A number of local cricket clubs play in the Sutton Coldfield area. Walmley, Sutton Coldfield and Four Oak Saints.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: In 2022 Sutton Coldfield hosted the Triathlon for the 2022 Commonwealth Games, which took place in Sutton Park.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: The area is home to Sutton Park, one of the largest urban parks in England. It has an area of and is used as part of the course for the Great Midlands Fun Run, sponsored by the Sutton Coldfield Observer. The park is a national nature reserve and a Site of Special Scientific Interest. New Hall Valley, which separates Walmley and Maney, is the location of New Hall Valley Country Park which was opened formally on 29 August 2005. It has an area of and within it is New Hall Mill which is one of only two working watermills in the West Midlands.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: The mill is privately owned but is open to the public several times a year. There are also several nature reserves including Plants Brook Nature Reserve, in Walmley, and Hill Hook Nature Reserve. On the border between Sutton Coldfield and Erdington is the extensive Pype Hayes Park and adjacent golf course, with the park falling within Tyburn ward but the golf course in Sutton New Hall.


title: Sutton Coldfield

text: Sutton Coldfield has been an affluent area in the past leading to the construction of manors and other large houses. Several have been renovated into hotels such as the New Hall Hotel, Moor Hall Hotel, Moxhull Hall Hotel, and Ramada Hotel and Resort Penns Hall. Peddimore Hall, a Scheduled Ancient Monument near Walmley, is a double-moated hall used as a private residence. Demolished manor houses include Langley Hall, the former residence of William Wilson and Four Oaks Hall, designed by William Wilson. William Wilson is also known to have designed Moat House and lived in it with his wife, Jane Pudsey. It is Grade II* listed.