| Georgian Yardley
Henry Beighton's 'Mapp of Warwickshire', surveyed 1722-5, shows
the bounding features of Yardley, the three highways across it,
and the intersections of lanes therewith. These can be identified,
and so a provisional map of the manor can be drawn, with the addition
of lanes which must have existed then to serve the known farms,
fields, and mills. Old names we can attribute from other sources
are Well and Breach Lanes (Warwell and Clay Lanes), Dogge Lane
(Hazelwood Road), Lyddstree Lane (Spring Road) , Riddings Lane
(formerly Scotts Lane: Reddings Lane), Hay Hall Lane, Daisy Lane
(Kings Road), Foulmore Lane (Formans Road), Woodcock Lane, Green
Lane (Dolphin Lane), Fox Green Lane (Broad Road), Flint Green
Lane (Road), Rushall Lane (Stockfield Road), Tyseley Lane, Mad
Cat Lane (Graham Road), and Wharf Lane (after 1795: Wharfdale
Road). Mansfield Road commemorates the family which owned Pinfold
House and sixty-four acres thereabout. Westley Road bears the
corruption of Whisley Brook's name.
The highways were those to Coventry, Solihull, and Henley.
The two last gained their present names during the l8th century.
When first turnpiked, in 1726-7, they became the Birmingham to
Warmington, and the Birmingham to Edge Hill Turnpikes respectively.
The name 'Stratford Road' became more usual after 1816 when Stratford
became the terminus of a canal, a horse-tramway, and the improved
Avon Navigation.
Early improvements after turnpiking were not drastic: the worst
holes were infilled, holloways on the Coleside slopes were raised
and ditches were dug, the labour still being performed by parishioners
on their begrudged 'statutory days'. Their resentment of the unpaid
work they had to do to ease foreigners' travel across Yardley
was hardly lessened by their privilege of using the turnpikes
between tollgates without payment, and the poor quality of their
work reflected this! Tolls were increased by a half in 1770-1
to pay for such essential improvements as straightening sharp
bends, lessening steep gradients, and making entirely new stretches
of road where the old ways were especially bad. I believe but
cannot prove that the original line of Warwick Road was along
Quality Lane (Arden Road). The holloway near the top of Red Hill,
where the Coventry Road traffic had worn a narrow gorge twenty-five
feet deep, was eventually abandoned: but this may not have been
done until Thomas Telford re-made the road as part of his Holyhead
Road, sixty years after the first company was formed to maintain
the road (1745).
There were tollgates at the Swan, at the Mermaid junction and
opposite the Dolphin, at Cole Bank (School Road Hall Green) and
at Shirley. After 1745 there were milestones - opposite the Workhouse,
which stood on the corner of Holder Road, and at Gilbertstone,
one hundred and five and one hundred and four miles from London
respectively, at Green Bank on Stratford Road (one hundred and
thirteen miles); and at Seeleys Road and Stockfield Road on the
Warwick Turnpike. Those last two showed the distance from the
start of the road at the Mermaid - one and two miles - which would
seem to indicate that this was never a highway to and from the
capital as the others were. The taking of tolls at the gates was
'farmed' by the Companies: in 1793 someone paid £365 for
the right to collect tolls at Acocks Green Gate, but took only
£293 in his year - an indication of the road's unpopularity.
There were bridges across the streams by this time - Westley Brook
1722, Tyseley Brook 1758 - but Stratford Road was preferred.
The methods of MacAdam and Telford transformed road-making,
and in the early 19th century the smooth if narrow and dusty highways
permitted the use of light, fast coaches: there were five daily
to and from Stratford in 1817. They stopped at inns like the Bull's
Head to take on and set down passengers, but not at the gates,
which were swung wide when the guard's horn warned the keeper
not to delay his coach. Known smithies were at Greet, Tyseley,
Six Ways (Robin Hood), the Swan and the New Inn. At the Mermaid
a weighbridge was installed to check heavy waggons before they
were allowed to cross the humped bridges over the brooks.
Cole bridges were the responsibility of the Quarters' Overseers,
and they were arraigned in 1776 for failing to restore Greet Bridge
on Warwick Road, practically destroyed by flood ten years before.
The new bridge had arches across the central island between two
channels, so that water would not pile up against the causeway
and destroy the bridge like its predecessors. As we learn from
Aris's Birmingham Gazette, the turnpikes were infested by footpads
and highwaymen, who waylaid many a traveller. It was in an attempt
to track down these and other town-spawned criminals that the
Yardley Association for the Prosecution of Felons was formed in
1785. There was never a gibbet on our turnpikes as there was at
Washwood Heath, which may suggest that the Association was not
very successful.
By the end of the 18th century the name of Tenchley was no
longer in use, and the main fields were called Stock(stile) Field
and Acocks Green Field. The south end of the former was now Crabtree
Field, and that part of the latter which lay west of Yardley Road
was called Little Field. The strips, five and a half yards wide,
went west to east, right down to the bank of Westley Brook. There
were hamlets still at the Swan and the Pinfold, at Westley Brook
where Shirley Road and Westley Roads (modern names) met the Turnpike,
and by the Dolphin tollgate near the boundary. Otherwise the central
Quarters were enclosed into the crofts and pieces of the comparatively
few large farms, save where squatters clustered at the reduced
common edges.
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