The mapping of Yardley's boundaries
The first printed maps showing Yardley were those of Worcestershire and
Warwickshire by Christopher Saxton, published about 1576 on a scale of ¼ inch to
1 mile. These, the Anonymous Map of Warwickshire of 1603, and the John Speed
maps of both counties published in 1610, may be considered together as they are
all based on Saxton's survey. In each, Yardley is shown
as a wooded thumb-shaped peninsula thrusting into Warwickshire, roughly bisected
by the River Cole: it appears to include part of Bordesley and most of Little
Bromwich. That this is inaccurate the 1609 Presentment shows. Besides failing to
observe that Yardley and its County did not possess the left bank of the Cole
north of Spark Brook (not mapped), Saxton placed Yardley church near the river
at Glebe Farm, and overlooked the Solihull lodgement west of the Cole. These
errors, permissible in a pioneer survey, were repeated on many later maps: the
Anonymous and Speed are scarcely more correct, and in the latter's
Worcestershire Yardley is twisted northwards so that a street-plan of Worcester
may be accommodated in the map corner. Tree-symbols are placed on all these maps
in seemingly arbitrary fashion, and cannot be used to draw any conclusions about
the woodland in the manor, except that in the south it appears to be largely
continuous with Norton Wood, which is named, so that the Elizabethan description
of Yardley as ‘secluded in a great wood’ seems accurate enough for an approach
from the south. The 1603 map is interesting in its showing Coventry, Warwick,
and Stratford Roads quite accurately.
One of John Ogilby's strip-maps in 'Britannia' 1675, Plate 50, shows Coventry
Road and the boundaries of Yardley at Gilbertstone and Hemill (Hay Mill) Bridge.
Sir William Dugdale's 'Antiquities of Warwickshire' contains a map on a scale of
3 inches to the mile, but despite his claim to have rectified and added to 'the ordinarie maps', giving special attention to rivers, his Yardley is even more
incorrect than Saxton's, the Cole being very much distorted and displaced: the
later editions after the first in 1656 are not corrected.
It is noteworthy that reference is being made largely to maps of
Warwickshire, of which Yardley was always geographically a part: its own county
seems to have lacked cartographers interested in this remote corner. Thus it is
from Henry Beighton's Mapp of Warwickshire, first published in 1725 on a scale
of 1 inch to a mile, a comparatively accurate and finely detailed map, that we
obtain the first useful evidence about Yardley's boundaries on the east side of
the Cole. (See the accompanying enlargement of Beighton's map). Though
Beighton's survey was not quite so accurate as he claimed - his Yardley cannot
be made to coincide with the O.S. 1 inch 2nd Series, some features being ¼ mile
out of position - yet there is sufficient detail and accuracy in adjacent
features to confirm that Yardley in 1725 was the same as in 1911: and it is
reasonable to suggest that Beighton may be cited as evidence for the
identification of the 1609 boundaries as made in this study. The various
watercourses and the relation of the boundaries to them are confirmed, thus
lending support to some of the conjectures made about the 972 boundaries. As
stated elsewhere, there had been a boundary revision with Sheldon in 1717, which
seems to have been alongside Sheldon Park, and Beighton shows the new line
beside a fence: his survey was made in the early 1720s.
Later map-makers copied Beighton, including his errors, but the standard of
cartography rose during the l8th century: there were new county surveys, and
also estate plans on a large scale, which showed every selion and ditch. In
Yardley the Taylor estates were surveyed in 1807. The Ordnance Survey was
established in 1791, and its survey of our area took place between 1812 and
1817. Field mapping was on a 2 inches to a mile scale, and the original sheets
showed field divisions: neither these nor the printed maps, the First Edition of
the One-Inch Series, published in 1833, show parish or other boundaries. The
Second Edition did show them (c.1880), but before then the production of large-scale Tithe Maps had made boundary definition easy.
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