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The eleventh and twelfth centuries
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The Eleventh
Century
By 1013 the work of King Edgar's charter was done, England was split up into
vaguely familiar shires and was ready for the next great upheaval in its
history. With 1066 came the Norman invasion, and with it a period of great
expansion for Yardley. The population of England as a whole went from 1,500,000
at most in 1086 to 6,000,000 by 1300. Yardley was no exception to the rule and
the population began to skyrocket. The rising population had to be supported and
with no national market or export system each isolated area had to increase its
production to feed its own population.
Land was cleared and farmed, and new paths and tracks began to be laid down.
Ancient tracks were widened and made permanent as hunters followed the herds
which made them, and traders followed in the footsteps of the hunters. With
continued use these tracks became main routes. In Yardley the main road north
followed the direction of the modern day Church Road and the impassability of
the route over boulder clay and what is now called Smarts Hill Brook led to the
road being lifted up on the 'long causeway'.
The eleventh century also sees the next official written documentation of
Yardley. The Domesday Book groups Yardley with Beoley, still under the Abbey of
Pershore and lists its population as 8 villeins, 10 boarders, and one radman.
So, if we take into account that these men were living in households along with
their families the total population would have probably been somewhere between
35- 0. We do need to be careful with the Domesday Book however as it puts the
expanse of woodland in the area of Yardley and Beoley as 40 sq. miles. While it
is true that much of the area was wood the entire district of the place is only
19 sq. miles, so it is quite clearly exaggerated.
The
Twelfth Century
With the Doomsday Book finished, official records of the area go very quiet. The
political climate of the country did not give the best basis for accurately kept
records with a period of civil war between King Stephen and Empress Matilda and
her son being quickly followed by the tumultuous reigns of Richard I (notable
for his absence from his realm) and the reign of his much vilified brother King
John. However we do know that the population was still rising, and as such, so
was demand not only on farmland but also on other social amenities. The Normans,
in an attempt to put their stamp on their new country had sponsored a massive
rebuilding programme of ecclesiastical buildings and as a result, in the second
half of the century, comes the first mention of a chapel in Yardley .While we
have no documents surrounding the building or consecration of the chapel, in
1165 the Abbot of Tickford put in a claim for the rights to administer the
chapel on behalf of the parish of Aston.
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The meaning of Yardley, and
Yardley in the tenth century
The eleventh and twelfth centuries
The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
The nineteenth and twentieth centuries
The twenty-first century
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