Distance: 4.9 miles
Difficulty of the terrain: medium
Get the route via: Ordnance Survey Maps or download the gpx. file from Dropbox
Walk in Sutton Coldfield north Birmingham from Boldmere in the south to Four Oaks in the north of the town across Sutton Park, a vast public park that is also a deeply historic National Nature Reserve.
The Story
Route Notes
Getting Back
Amongst Europe’s Largest Public Parks
Sutton Park sprawls across 2,400 acres of northern Birmingham. Most of it is maintained, not as a typical, carefully manicured municipal park, but as a kind of woodland. This suits its origins in the 12th Century when the land was granted by the monarch to the Earl of Warwick who used it as a deer park. Although the land had been a deer park long before that, having been thought to have been used since the 9th Century by the Mercian royal family as a hunting ground. The landscape therefore is typical of the chase lands, especially Cannock Chase, which characterise the parts of south Staffordshire and northern Walsall Borough immediately north west of Birmingham.
As municipal parks go Sutton Park is thought to be one of the largest in Europe. It is seven times the size of Hyde Park, and ranks alongside Munich’s Englisher Garten, York’s Strays and Newcastle-upon-Tyne’s Town Moor (the latter two of which are far smaller than 2,400 acres), amongst the continent’s great, open, semi-wild civic green spaces. The park is so large that it is home to herds of cattle who wander the park keeping the grass short.
Since 1997 Sutton Park’s large ecologically significant expanse of chase style woodland has been designated a National Nature Reserve. Placing it on the same footing as Kinder Scout the Peak District’s highest mountain, parts of the Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire and the spectacular limestone cliffs (created through centuries of quarrying) at Wren’s Nest in Dudley.
Which is not to say that in addition to the huge number of visitors from in and around Birmingham that Sutton Park draws throughout the year, that the park does not have a substantial human history, as well as a natural one. A section of the famed Roman Ryknild Street, which one ran from the Cotswolds to South Yorkshire, has been discovered running along the western flank of the park. Famously the road’s course has been lost across urban Birmingham and it is at Sutton Park that it remerges.
Not that the Romans were the earliest dwellers of the site which now comprises Sutton Park. Ancient arrow heads and other items, from prehistoric times, have been found by archeologists. While the numerous pools and ponds which dot the park like Bracebridge Pool, Powell’s Pool and Blackroot Pool, were created between the 15th and 18th Centuries to turn the wheels of now vanished industrial watermills. Between 1887 and 2003 Sutton Park had a lido but this closed initially temporarily in 2003, with subsequent vandalism rendering it inoperable. In the years since its site has been allowed to transform naturally into a marshy area for the benefit of the park’s teeming wildlife.
The railway line from Walsall to Water Orton bisects Sutton Park and opened in 1879. Up until the mid-1960s passengers were carried on the route and Sutton Park had its own station for daytrippers. Currently the line is freight only, allowing freight trains to bypass central Birmingham and the Black Country, but the West Midlands Combined Authority has a long-term objective of reopening the route to passengers, albeit probably without a station in Sutton Park returning. Which is not to say that this line is the only railway connected to Sutton Park. From 1907 until 1962 Sutton Park was home to a 15 inch gauge miniature railway. Upon closure the line was dismantled but the engines, rolling stock, and engine shed remain to this day under the care of the organisation which looks after Tysley historic locomotives works.
Route Notes
Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox
I create the Walk Midlands routes via Ordnance Survey Maps Explorer enabli
This walk in north Birmingham from Boldmere to Four Oaks across the Sutton Park National Nature Reserve begins from Wylde Green Railway Station on the Cross City Railway Line.
Exit the station by the exit to the north up onto Highbridge Road. Turn left here, and cross the road beside the United Reform Church, to reach Boldmere Road.
Turn right here walking along Boldmere High Street past the shops to reach the side of Jockey Road.
Taking care, because it is quite busy, cross Jockey Road and walk straight along the residential road on the far side.
Soon you reach the side of Monmouth Drive which you cross to head down to reach the entrance to Sutton Park.
Enter Sutton Park, taking care to avoid cars making their way to and from the car parks, passing Powell’s Pool, with its sailing club and sea scouts, and the Miller & Carter restaurant which overlooks it.
Follow a tarmac driveway, with a path alongside it, deep into Sutton Park.
Continue along the tarmac path as it curves to the north west.
Presently you pass a memorial plaque at a place where several paths meet beside a large expanse of grass and continue walking straight ahead.
Entering a section, akin to a driveway on a country estate, shaded with trees, you reach a metal gate on your right.
Turn through this gate and walk straight along the edge of a large grassy field.
On the far side pick up a path through thick trees on the left which leads to a footbridge across the freight railway line which bisects Sutton Park.
On the far side turn right and follow the path around Bracebridge Pool, past a restaurant beside it, and then back into the woodland.
Head left following an uneven path marked by broken down board walks through the boggy woodland on the northern side of the pool.
Leaving the trees turn right and pick up a wide path heading towards the northern edge of the park.
Upon emerging from the trees near a footgate out of the park onto Streetly Road, walk straight ahead to leave the park.
Once on Streetly Road turn right and cross the road to head down Crown Lane, which turns into Four Oaks Common Road on the far side of Walsall Road, to reach Butlers Lane Railway Station on the Cross City Line.
This is where the walk ends.
Getting Back
Butlers Lane Station is served by two trains per hour in each direction every day of the week. Northbound services run to Lichfield Trent Valley, which lies on the Trent Valley portion of the West Coast Mainline for services north towards Stafford, Liverpool and Manchester, and south towards Rugby, Milton Keynes and London. Southbound services run to Bromsgrove on weekdays and Saturdays and Redditch on Sundays calling at all Cross City Line stations including Birmingham New Street for services across the West Midlands and beyond on the way.