A row of almshouses was built beside the
Trust School about 1800. New Bridge, the present one, was a decade later.
The churchyard was enlarged in 1833. The Napoleonic Wars and the Corn Laws
thereafter kept the price of grain high and farming profitable. Many farms
were rebuilt as groups of substantial brick and tile structures, as the maps
show. Yardley Farm (1837) is the only one in the whole manor to survive
intact. The large farmhouses provided quarters for family and single workers
and there were garrets for workers' families over some of the outbuildings.
The Tithe Commutation Act, which substituted money rents based on acreage
for tithes in kind, made accurate large-scale maps essential. Those for
Yardley of 1843, each Quarter separate to a scale of 12 inches to the mile,
are finely drawn, showing every building, close, lane and track. They give
us an accurate picture of Yardley for the first time, though the First
Edition of the O.S. One-Inch Map published a few years earlier is not
despised. Final enclosures having followed an Act of 1833, the whole parish
was now in individual ownership: because the newly-enclosed pieces were
numbered differently from those mapped around them, it is possible to
identify them. The extent of the open fields at enclosure is shown on Maps 1
and 3. Only patches of Stichford and Church Fields had survived in Church
End, though there were commons elsewhere.From the Schedule we learn that
Squire Taylor owned Hillhouse Farm; Rev. Gwyther owned Glebe Farm; Henry
Greswold land about the Turnpike, Wash Mill and Farm, Blakesley; Margaret
Steward Bachelors Farm; the Earl of Digby Lea Fields and Cowford Hall. The
villa which became the Yardley Arms Inn and the cottages by there like those
on Old Stoney Lane beside the Station Road ramp, post-date enclosure. Lanes
improved as part of the Act were Yardley Fields Road, Stoney Lane, and Cole
Hall Lane. A lane near the Lyndon border was made into a private drive to
Old Gilbertstone in 1846, being replaced by what is now Manor House Lane (it
led to Lyndon Manor House, demolished in the 1960s).
Robert Stephenson's London to Birmingham Railway was opened in 1838. It
cut through Church End's ridges, between Lea Hall and Bloomers, north of
Cowford Hall and south of Stud Farm and Hillhouse, was banked over the
Yardley Brook valley and level at Stoney Lane. High brick bridges over the
great trenches were built for Lea Hall, Church Lane, and Hillhouse, and an
underbridge for Dead Man's Lane (Crossfield Road). Rent was paid to the
Vicar for the crossing of Glebe Farm land. Stechford Station (a railway
clerk misspelled Stichford, and the name stuck) opened in 1844: the level
crossing was replaced by a ramp and overbridge 21 years later.
There was no rush to build and live in what could now be called 'commuter
country'. Advertisements for riverside plots in Saint Mary's Road (Mary
Road) stressed that they enjoyed fishing rights in the Cole, then a trout
stream, in addition to fresh air and freedom from town epidemics. A few
villas appeared - Victoria House 1865, Gumbleberries 1874, for example, and
a grid of streets was sporadically developed. Two hamlets grew, Lower
Stichford with an inn and smithy near the Cole bridge (Upper Stichford was
on the Castle Bromwich side), and Five Ways by Field House Farm. It is not
proposed to tell the detailed story of suburban growth in Church End here:
see my 'Urbanisation of Yardley' for this. Herein I shall generalise and
simplify, as has been done on Map 10.
In 1820 when for the last time the manorial Courts Leet and Baron were
held, in the Trust School, Yardley's population exceeded 2,000. It is now a
hundred times as great. Having exported people for much of its history the
parish became an importer from the mid-19th century. The Oxford
Railway and Acocks Green Station were opened in 1852, initiating a 'railway
suburb' thereabout. Yardley Village was midway between the stations:
mansions were built about but not in it, by wealthy families who owned
carriages and created private parks. Building society villas for
professionals and tradesmen came too along the Turnpike and the old lanes.
Last were artisans' terraces on new streets. Among the mansions were The
Grange (Hoskins - Church Road), The Grove (Ashmores - Vibart/Farnol Roads),
The Croft (Barrows - Cranfield Grove), The Oaks (Iliffes - Charminster
Avenue), Rockingham, Yardley House (Turners - Hythe Grove), and Wisteria
Villa (Hedges - Five Ways). There were a score or more smaller named houses.
At Blakesley were the Clementses, at Old Gilbertstone, and Kite House the
Thornleys, and at Newbridge the Parsonses. New Gilbertstone, built in 1874
for the Tangyes was a Gothic monstrosity. Kite House was rebuilt as
Gilbertstone Grange, for this was the period of fancy houses with fancy
names as bogus as the architecture. Hay Mills developed as an industrial
village of terraces on both sides of the Coventry Road, and 'South Yardley'
about the Swan was a similar development of the 1880s, like railside
Stechford.
Public transport was the reason for Yardley's development as a Birmingham
suburban area: without it the distance would have discouraged settlement.
After Turnpike abolition in the 1870s, horse-buses plied along the Coventry
Road to the Swan. In 1897 the City of Birmingham Tramways Company began a
service of steam tramcars from Hay Mills to the Swan, which was then
rebuilt. The humped Cole bridge prevented connection with the lines from the
town to Small Heath: after its replacement in 1904 the link was made and
open-topped two-deck electric cars trundled up Red Hill, powered by a
generating station where Colliers premises are now. Two years later the
Company was bought out by the Corporation of Birmingham Tramways Dept. There
was never an extension of the lines beyond Church Road. To cater for
tram-borne townees on summer evening outings, large ornate pubs were built
or rebuilt, like the Plough and Harrow and the Bull's Head.
Yardley Rural District Council was established in 1895, taking over the
functions of the Local Board. Its headquarters were on Sparkhill, the
population centre of Yardley, not in the rural village. The Solihull
Sanitary Authority, which included the parish, laid a sewer down the Yardley
Brook valley to Colehall. The farm was bought for filter beds and the house
became the offices. Later the sewer was extended to Minworth Main
(Birmingham, Tame and Rea District Drainage Board). Stechford Bridge was
rebuilt jointly by Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Birmingham in 1894-5.
