The boundaries of Yardley in 1843
Following the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836, it was necessary to have very
accurate maps of each Parish, so that the exact acreage of every piece of land
could be determined for the purpose of assessing the rent charge which was to
replace the ancient tithe.
The maps, drawn on a scale of 10 inches to a mile which permitted even the
smallest enclosure to be shown, the accompanying Schedules, and sometimes the
detailed Perambulation of Bounds, which were produced in our area during the
early 1840s, are of the greatest value for students of the historical geography
of the Parishes. The Yardley map shows every watercourse, field division, road,
lane, track, building, quarry, canal and railway. There are very few names, but
every piece of land is numbered, and named in the schedule. The old open fields,
very recently enclosed, may be traced because of their different numbering from
their neighbours. (The open field systems of Greet and Lea, earlier enclosures,
are lost except for those pieces of them which retain the name). There is no
Perambulation for Yardley, hence the lane names used in the Tithe Map sections
of the Boundary Comparison may not be those used in 1847.
For this study, the bounding features of Yardley and its seven neighbouring
Parishes have been plotted on a single map from the Tithe Maps and Schedules:
this has proved less rewarding than was hoped, because so few names refer to
topography, and location names arc usually related only to the farm which
contains them - e.g. Far Close, Great Leasow, Home Piece. It is indeed notable
how few of the 1609 names survive in any form. Of about 200 fields on both sides
of the boundary from the Spark anti-clockwise to Lea Hall, only 17 are
recognisably those of 1609: they are instanced in the Boundary Comparison which
follows. The chief value of the Tithe Map for this study has been its scale and
accuracy, which have permitted plotting of the 1609 features with some
confidence, despite the changes of name, and have assisted conjecture about the
972 landmarks. Among the details indicated by field-names are four ancient
moats, at 'the (Haunch Brook) Valley' on Yardley Wood Road, then Wildays Lane:
in Moat Lane: on the boundary just south of Warwick Road: and Kents Moat in
Sheldon. Not far from the boundary are the moated sites of Broom Hall, Hiron
Hall, Moat Farm on Coventry Road, the Allestrey moat behind the church in
Yardley village and the possibly moated Bulley Hall. Also worthy of note is the
number of farms whose buildings have been put right up to the boundary: outside
Yardley there are The Haunch, Warstock, Langley, Gilbertstone, and Lyndon;
within our Parish there are Bulley, Hollybank, Steelfields, and The Lea. It is
suggested that in some cases at least these are not ancient, but are among the
newest farms, formed on the edges of the various manors when all other land was
taken, from the mid-12th to the late l4th century.
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