| Yardley was still nominally a possession
of Pershore Abbey until the early 15th century, though its
tenants had long since given up paying the equivalent of the cost of a
mounted man-at-arms as rent. For three hundred years the Beauchamp family
held the manor, but having a score of others they rarely or never lived in
it, the estate being run by a bailiff. Several generations of the Limesi
family were sub-tenants and probably the only lords ever to be resident.
Soon after their line died out, about 1260, several claimants to the
manorial rights were all rejected by William de Beauchamp: it was he who by
marriage gained the Earldom of Warwick for his family. From the early 14th
century until 1478 Yardley was held directly by successive Earls (except
when Richard II granted it to the Dukes of Norfolk and Surrey in turn,
1396-9). Beauchamps were followed by Nevilles, including the all-powerful
'Kingmaker' and by George Duke of Clarence. After his execution the Warwick
estates including Yardley reverted to the Crown. Plantagenets, Tudors, and
Stuarts - eight monarchs in all - were successive lords of the manor.
Yardley was one of the properties granted to Catherine of Aragon in her
divorce settlement: a poignant reminder of her first marriage to Prince
Arthur is the north door of St. Edburgha's Church (see below). After her
death Yardley reverted to Henry VIII.
Though Yardley cannot compete with Kings Norton in length of royal
ownership, it was a Crown property for 138 years - until Sir Richard Grevis
of Moseley Hall bough it in 1629. Not all of Yardley was included in the
sale. The 'manor' of Greet was owned by the Greswolds, and other estates
were in different hands. After the eminence of Sir Richard, who held high
offices under James I, the Grevises were divided in the Civil War, and their
fortunes began a long decline. When Henshaw Grevis, last of his line,
succeeded in 1759, the sale of the estate barely sufficed to pay his
father's debts, and he was reduced to labouring. Seven years later the
lordship of Yardley and a thousand acres were bought by John Taylor of
Bordesley Hall, a very wealthy manufacturer and co-founder of what is now
Lloyds' Bank. Most of the Taylor estates were in the southern Quarters of
the manor, and the greater part of them was sold in and after 1913 for
housing estates and parks. As the purchaser of much of the land, the City
Corporation might be thought of as the present lord of Yardley, but the
title (which is a saleable commodity independent of land possession) was
never sold and its present holder is Jonathan Taylor or Lower Quinton near
Stratford. All manorial rights, vestigial as they were, came to an abrupt
end in 1940, so that the title is purely honorary.
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 |
