The nineteenth and twentieth centuries
The Nineteenth
Century
From this point on the physical changes in Yardley are much easier to chart as
improved mapping technology allowed the first accurate survey sheets with a
scale of 2 inches to I mile to be drawn up in 1812 17. In 1834 the 1st O.S. Maps
with a scale of 10 inches to I mile were released.
The population is also much better recorded. In 1800 it rose to 2,000 people, by
1861 it was 3,000, and by 1891 it hit 17,000. The break neck speed of increase
brought rows of terraced houses to the area. The same thing happened in
Birmingham and speed and expense, not planning, were of paramount importance;
suburbs splayed out along road and rail routes and began to merge with each
other. Conditions in the new developments were better than the slums they
replaced but not by much. Houses were crowded, poorly built and badly ventilated
but remained a fixture in the area for many years to come.
In the 1870ss the Albert Road Estate, the first commuter housing estate in
Yardley, was built. It was placed 5 minutes walk from Stechford station and
provided a way for skilled or semi-skilled city workers to live away from the
crowds. Most of its residents were middle class business owners or managers and
employed one or two servants, they were also mainly from Birmingham, with only
10% previously already living in Yardley.
These commuters needed reliable transportation and the nineteenth century saw
massive rail development. In 1838 the London-Birmingham railway opened and a
station was built at Stitchford in 1844. This station was replaced in 1882 by
one to the east, in the position it is now, the name of the new station was
misspelled as Stetchford and the mistake became adopted as the official name of
the area. Acocks Green Station, on the Oxford line was opened in 1852.
Thomas Telford also undertook an essential reconstruction of the Coventry Road
Turnpike in 1820 and regular horse buses began running from the Swan in the
1870s. It is likely that it was under Telford
that the bridge near the top of Red Hill was built. In 1885 Steam Trams began to
run in Sparkhill and by 1897 electric trams went down Stoney Lane, the Stratford
Road and the Coventry Road. In 1803 the Stratford Canal opened from Kings Norton
to Kingswood, including a wharf at Yardley Wood, and the canal reached Stratford
and the Avon Navigation in 1816. With the explosion of canals Yardley was on a
major industrial trade route from which it profited greatly.
After Marston Chapel ended St Edburgha's primacy in the area in 1704 a wave of
new churches were built in every part of the area including St Mary's in Acocks
Green,
Christ
Church in Yardley Wood and St Mary's in Moseley. Despite all this development
Yardley was still relatively rural and the Artist F. H. Henshaw (born 1807)
painted numerous studies of the rural surroundings while he lived at 'The
Cottage' in Green Lane, Small Heath.
The Twentieth Century
By 1907, while officially it was not, much of Yardley could be considered a
suburb of
Birmingham.
It had a population of 58,000 and contained 13,640 houses. In 1906 and 1907
Tyseley, Hall Green and Yardley Wood all got railway stations and it was the
lack of such a station which helped Yardley village itself stay so rural as long
as it did.
All areas of old Yardley continued to grow and in 1911, after a bitterly fought
debate, it was officially absorbed into Birmingham. While many residents had
fought to stay out of Birmingham,
at the point of absorption Yardley had no refuse incinerator, no electricity
supplier, and gas and water were already being supplied by Birmingham
Corporation. 1,325 Yardley children were schooled in Birmingham schools and many
residents were dissatisfied with the local council, which admitted it would
rather keep rates low than improve the area.
Soon after the incorporation Birmingham Council began a road repairing scheme
and existing tram lines were extended to Robin Hood. In 1916 the Warwick Road
got a tram system and the station at Acocks Green sparked its growth into a
similar shape to today. While Yardley
Village would not get a tram station until 1928 developments in transport saw
more and more people moving to the suburbs and widening the gap between the
classes.
The real changes to the face of Yardley in the twentieth century however came
after 1921 when a building plan was unveiled by Birmingham City Council. 19
miles of road were to be widened and 10 miles of new roads to be built. There
were allowances for new parks, rail stations and amenities but limits were put
on the number of houses which could be built at 12 houses per square mile (15 in
some areas) to allay the fears of the local community that they were to be
swamped.
Through the 1920 s Stoney Lane, Yardley Road, Warwick Road, Coventry Road,
School Road, Fox Hollies Road, and Robin Hood Lane were extended to double track
roads but the position of existing buildings, war time delays and post-war costs
left them unfinshed, and the number of cars which would use the roads had always
been underestimated. With plans stalled it was soon realized that trams were
impractical for the narrow roads and they were replaced by the Corporation Motor
Bus. In 1926 the 11 bus route was opened and trams on the Coventry road were
replaced by trolleybuses in 1937 and diesel buses by the 1950s.
Under the 1921 plan housing estates became a feature of Yardley .The Lea Hall
Estate, built in 1936, had 3,486 houses and a shopping centre and included the
50,000th municipal house in Birmingham.
In 1939 rents in Yardley had been raised to put more money into poor relief, but
the rent payers, unable to afford it, went on strike. The mayor announced that
non-paid rents would be collected in furniture by bailiffs. In protest, on the
morning of the opening of the 50,000th municipal house rent strikers lynched an
effigy of a bailiff and took his coffin to the opening in a mock funeral. The
opening was continued as planned and the strike was forgotten when war broke
out.
Between the wars an industrial sector built up between the rail and canal routes
and Tyseley goods yard was opened to help cope with the volume of goods which
were travelling through the area. World War Two however stopped all of the
expansion which had been going on in the area and the sudden halt to
construction and the losses of war meant that 1946 saw another housing shortage
in Yardley. As the previous housing shortage had lead to terraced houses going
up, this one lead to the boom of the tower block, many of which are still with
us.
The twentieth century had a massive impact on the physical face of Yardley , and
so did it have an impact on the residents. As the area expanded and became more
and more a suburb of Birmingham
the traditional middle class, who did not wish to live close to the city moved
out further afield to areas such as Solihull. As others moved in the suburbs
grew and cars, along with commuters, became a part of everyday life, congestion
on the already ill equipped road worsened until 1965-7 when the Swan underpass
was built to ease the problem, the Swan Pub being demolished in the process.
The area was developed again in 1984 (the same year that the Coventry Road was
widened to six lanes) when the Midland Development Group decided to turn a
disused supermarket into the modem Swan Shopping Centre. The Shops were opened
by T. V. personality Larry Grayson on 18th November but a year and a
half later in 1986 the whole market was gutted by fire causing £2 million pounds
worth of damage and badly injuring two firemen. Traders opened stores outside
just a week later and the rebuilding was completed November of the same year.
Also in the 1980s Yardley gained a record-breaking building in the Old Brookside
flats. Officially opened by the Queen in 1981, the old people's home containing
68 flats was the largest complex for the elderly in Europe at that time.
While the twentieth century saw Yardley expand and gain hundreds of new
buildings it was also a period of great loss. As land was cleared for the new
developments numerous historical buildings were lost including several medieval
farms and the imposing Hall Green Hall to name just a few. However it was not
all bad. In 1951 work started to refurbish Blakesley Hall and it was reopened as
a museum (after sustaining damage in the war) in 1957. In 1969 the area around
St Edburgha' s was made a conservation area to protect the church and the
medieval trust school and in 1976 the road was closed to traffic and the area
awarded the 'outstanding' category.
Dozens of images from this century are available in numerous mediums. Thanks to
photographers such as Canon Cochrane and local artists like Florence Mare this
period of Yardley's history is documented very thoroughly, physically, as well
as in statistics and official records.
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