The foundation of
Yardley (Map One)
Our district was the northenmost part of Arden, that great tract of wood and
heath and bog which covered the south-eastern half of the Midland Plateau
and its southern environs. Nothing is known of its pre-history. Two thousand
years ago this was a border zone, a no-man's-land between the Coritani
tribal group of the East Midlands and the Cornovii of the West Midlands. The
long occupation of Britain by the Roman Empire probably affected Arden very
little: no known Roman road crosses Yardley. Doubtless the ridgeway (see
below) was in occasional use, but how much, by which peoples, and where they
lived, and to what extent the forest had been cleared before the first known
settlers arrived, are matters for conjecture.During the 7th
century Hwiccans, descendants of West Saxon invaders, moved north into our
area along ancient tracks and crumbling Roman roads. A small group came down
beside the marshes of the Cole, along a dry ridgeway that is still in use -
as Highfield / Fox Hollies Roads, Broad Road, Fox Green, Dalston, Yardley
and Church Roads. They may have been former residents of Beoley, which had
Yardley as a 'member' in the Domesday Book, but the linking of these two
most distant properties of Pershore Abbey may have had no more significance
than that the 'radman' of Beoley also collected the taxes of Yardley.
North of a crossing track that descended to a ford the Hwiccans found a
densely wooded tract. Whether this deterred them for a short time we cannot
guess, but perhaps a game trail provided a way onward. A mile north they
came out on to the open sandy ridge-end. The Cole wound below, and on two
sides were boggy streams. Forest to east and south completed natural
boundaries. Here was a suitable site for a settlement, high and dry, already
cleared or easily clearable. Springs at the drift edges provided ample
water, the brooks could be dammed for fish and stock-ponds, the air and
heath and forest supplied food and materials in plenty. The Stich Brook
bisected the high ground. Its meadows were drier and often more usable than
the wide expanses of bog beside the Cole. The first open fields to be
ploughed and fenced against animals overlay the ridge-end, and the farmers
made their separate homesteads at its edges. There was no village.
This account of the initial settlement of north Yardley is conjectural
but not without justification. The ridgeway would be the only feasible
access route. The slopes were densely wooded and the riverside much too wet
for travel. That the colonists did advance beyond the formidable barrier of
Church End's forest and lay claim to north Yardley and later to another
drift patch beyond the woods to the east, Lea Village, is certain. If they
had not done so ours would not have been a Hwiccan colony but Anglian. At
the same time as Saxons were entering the Plateau from south and east,
Anglian immigrants were advancing from north and west. The latter were to
establish Birmingham and Aston (which included the later Bordesley and the
Bromwiches) and Maccaton (Mackadown, Sheldon's predecessor) as Yardley's
neighbours. They would have settled Yardley too if Hwiccans had not claimed
it first. The Cole provided a convenient and indisputable boundary between
two not dissimilar peoples, two kingdoms Mercia and Hwiccia (Wigornia) and
two shires and bishoprics.
That settlement was peripheral about the fields is equally certain. Farm
sites once founded for good reasons of geology and water supply, tend to
remain in use for centuries. Some of ours may like Mackadown Farm in Sheldon
have been in occupation since Bronze Age times. Finding no justification for
the early establishment of Yardley Village, or indeed any nucleated hamlet,
and noting that ancient dwellings like Field House, Flaxleys, Hill House,
Yardley Farm, Church Road Farm, Cocks, and Blakesley Hall, surround the open
fields, we can be fairly confident that these are original sites going back
at least twelve centuries. It is currently being claimed that the strip
system of agriculture in great fields is not the natural outcome of
successive years of clearance and sharing of each new piece, but is a later
development. If so, a scatter of farms bout the fields, each cultivating a
compact patch of cleared land close to the house would be the logical
arrangement.
Boundaries (Map Four)
As already noted, the Cole forms a natural barrier, requiring no labour for
its provision and maintenance, and it separates Yardley from other manors
for more than seven miles. But the whole manor cover 11˝ square miles. There
were no more than sixty inhabitants when Domesday Book was written, and
there were probably fewer four centuries earlier - so how could so few lay
claim to and hold on to so much land (if indeed the whole was in single
ownership as it had certainly become by AD 972)? In that year Gyrdleahe was
confirmed as a property of the Abbot of Pershore: the Charter refers to five
'households', which perhaps included an average of a dozen related persons.
If these all lived about Yardley Fields, on some of the sites listed above,
it is hard to understand their ability to claim the great wooded and heathed
tract to the south. It seems necessary to assume that there was sparse
colonisation of the whole of Yardley by related groups, perhaps in more than
five dwellings, each 'household' being the extended family of a patriarch
who were not all living together.
Three proper names come down to us in the boundaries which the Charter
records: these were Leommannicgweg and Dagardingweg (the ways of Leommann's
and Dagard's folks) and Mund's dean. Only Dagard(a) is thought to have been
a denizen of Church End: Pool Lane (Broadstone Road / Pool Way) was perhaps
his 'way'. Were the people living on various sites about the open fields
members of his family alone? Were other households at Lea Hall, at Tenchley
(Stockfield/Acocks Green) and farther south? We can only guess.
On Church End's east side the border with Maccaton was less well-defined.
The names used below are modern: the map shows names of AD 972 and 1609.
North of the Coventry Road a glacially-transported boulder later called the
Gilbertstone provided a marker, then a rill parallel to Elmcroft Road led
the boundary into and down the Smarts Hill Brook to the marshy confluence
with the Lyndon Green Brook, and up that brook to a spring source (Oak
Well). Moat Lane, Bilton Grange Road, Duncroft Road/Charlbury Crescent,
might be described as modern perambulation tracks. The ends of Vibart and
Farnol Roads (when made pre-1931 they stopped at the then city boundary), a
line thence across Sedgemere Road, west of Partridge Road, the line of
Broadstone Road and Pool Way continued across Kents Moat Park to the
Garretts Green Lane/Outmoor Road junction, thence a line east of and
parallel to Heynesfield Road, complete the border to the Cole. Several
boulders were used to mark points along the boundary, notably the Shire
Stone on Sedgemere Road. Because urbanisation of the border area was carried
out in the 1930s, after Sheldon had joined Yardley in the City of
Birmingham, several modern streets ignore the ancient bound. It can still be
established where dips indicate former watercourses. (See my 'Boundaries of
Yardley' for a detailed examination of the boundaries during a thousand
years.)
Introduction
Preface
Geology and natural vegetation, and relief and
drainage
The foundation of Yardley, and Boundaries
Old names, and old roads
Norman to medieval times, and St. Edburgha's church
Owners of Yardley
Old buildings
Open fields, and Tudor and Stuart times
The river Cole
Georgian times
The nineteenth century
Churches and schools
The twentieth century
Thirty-five years, and Principal sources
Maps |
