Image: The title page of ‘Sutton Park & other poems’, with drawings by H.H. Horton. Reproduced with the permission of Sutton Coldfield Library.
It is well-known locally that Sutton Coldfield is mentioned in one of Shakespeare’s plays – if only because this allusion inspired the name of a local pub. The reference occurs in Henry IV Part 1, Act 4, Scene 2:
‘Get thee before to Coventry,
Fill me a bottle of sack;
Our soldiers shall march through,
We’ll to Sutton Cofyl tonight.’
I remember the loud cheer that greeted these lines when, during an ‘O’ Level English class at Bishop Vesey’s Grammar School in 1975, we were reading the play aloud. The reference was taken up by other writers, including an unidentified poet who produced a work called ‘Mine Host’:
‘A portly knight, long years ago,
To Sutton Coldfield came;
A valiant soldier he, I trow,
John Falstaff was his name.’
Shakespeare, however, was far from the only writer to mention Sutton. In A Tour Through Ireland (1892) S. Reynolds Hole, Dean of Rochester, compares one of the lakes at Killarney to ‘the pool by Sutton Coldfield, one of the prettiest spots in England, whose tranquil loveliness is a refreshment and a blessing evermore to thousands of our weary artisans.’
Sutton Park inspired a number of lengthy poems. In 1841 a poem in three cantos called ‘Sutton Park Bazaar’ was published. The bazaar in question was held ‘amongst the almost unknown shades of Sutton Park’ to raise funds to build St. John’s Church in Walmley. In 1854 it was re-issued to raise funds to build St. Michaels in Boldmere. Here is an extract:
‘The light that breaks o’er Keeper’s spring,
The birds in Hollyhurst that sing …
In Nuthurst’s windings would you stray,
O’er the wild heath and lengthening way,
That leads to Rowton’s well.
Fellucid fount! What annual scores
Thy stream to cleanliness restores,
The scribbled post may tell!
How many Smithes and Joneses came
And left to thee thy votive name;
How many more had done the same
Only they could not spell.
By the gnarled oak of Bracebridge Pool,
Thence onward saunter through the wood,
Half sunshine and half shade,
And stay not till your feet have stood
On the green slope of sacred sod
Of beautiful Gumslade.’
The poem refers to the custom in the nineteenth century for people to bathe in the water at Rowton’s Well, which was believed to have health-giving qualities. In truth this cannot be described as great poetry; but its sale did help raise funds to build the two new churches. St John’s and St. Michael’s were completed in 1845 and 1857 respectively, each costing £3,000. Sir Robert Peel attended the consecration of St. John’s – a rare example of a Prime Minster visiting Sutton Coldfield.
Harry Howells Horton can fairly be described as the poet laureate of Sutton Park. He spent his early years in Sutton, being educated at Town School. Though he did not remain in the town as an adult, he continued to visit Sutton Park. Priced at 3s 6d, Sutton Park and other poems ran into three editions between 1844 and 1846. Horton’s verses were accompanied by a number of his own sketches of different scenes in the park. In style and approach the poem is clearly influenced by Oliver Goldsmith’s The Deserted Village (1770). There are many ruminations on social issues, notably poverty and drunkenness. Horton emphasizes that Sutton Park is a place where working people can find beauty and tranquility.
Let us take a walk with Horton through the park:
‘Now yonder swinging gate with ancient look,
Brings my lost footsteps to the babbling brook,
Whose spring with wooden rails round,
Just in the centre of the moistened ground;
Here Nature reigns in sweet poetic form,
Or bathed in light or weeping from the storm;
Oft has my pencil tried in vain to trace
The many careless beauties of the place;
Again I’ll sit on this bended tree,
And note, once more, each lovely form I see
The mossy green here wears a livelier hue,
As the spring water gently oozes through;
In single grandeur towers the lofty oak,
Whose ample trunk often tempts the woodman’s stroke;
The flowering thorn is here more beauteous seen,
Beside the holly with its darkened green.’
As he walks, Horton thinks of the Parson and Clerk:
‘Yon lonely inn to wintry winds exposed,
Where the lost traveller often has reposed.’
And then he comes across the Roman road:
‘There, traced by man, in crumbling ruins stands,
That pride of labour built by Roman hands;
Immortal relic of a work sublime,
Braving e’en now the hungry tooth of time.’
The poem ends:
‘And now, sweet Sutton, let me turn once more,
To the loved beauties ere my task be over;
May this fond tribute tell that thou hast been,
To me a joy, a refuge ever green
And help some votary of the muse to mark
The hidden traces of the once-loved park.’
Harry Howells brought out other books, including a long poem about Birmingham. He spent his life a clergyman in Birmingham and Staffordshire. Sutton Park and other poems is now scarce. Fortunately a copy of this extremely interesting poem survives in Sutton Coldfield Library.
Stephen Roberts, October 2021
Stephen Roberts is the co-author of The Victorian Working Class Writer (1999)