| Yardley in 1847
Following the Tithe Commutation Act large-scale accurate maps
were made of all the Yardley Quarters. They show every fence or
hedge, lane, track, and building. The 0.S. Field Drawing Sheets,
and the One-Inch First Edition based upon them, are earlier (1820s-30s),
but some of the detail on these is hard to make out and the land
divisions of the former are inaccurate. The 1847 Tithe Map and
the accompanying Schedule are mines of information, which the
Discovering Yardley Group dug for five years. The extent of open
fields and commons surviving at the time of enclosure a few years
earlier, the name of every close and piece, the owners and tenants
of land, and the identity of every farm, house, and cottage, have
all been extracted. Few names of 'fields', using the term in its
modern sense for any enclosed piece of land, are topographically
or historically interesting, as most refer to location in a particular
farm. Others are named after a barn, pit, or rickyard within or
nearby. Only the extensive Riddings, between Reddings Lane and
Tyseley Brook, and Chapel Hurst south of Tyseley Farm, tell of
vanished Arden. Stock Field is no more, being completely enclosed
into named pieces, but Acocks Green Field is still shown to have
strips at its north-east end.
We learn from the Schedule that half of Yardley's seven thousand,
five hundred acres was owned in 1847 by eleven people. The members
of the Taylor family, absentee squires, owned a seventh of the
manor, mostly in Broomhall and Swanshurst Quarters, and Henry
Greswolde one ninth. William Gilbey owned Hay Hall and three hundred
acres, of which Edward King was tenant: the latter also farmed
two hundred acres at Gospel House Farm, the property of the Wigley
Heirs. Their Hall Green Hall farm, one hundred and fifty-four
acres, was tenanted by William King, and a third member of that
family, John, was at Greswolde's one hundred and twenty-two-acre
Greet Farm. Benjamin Steedman farmed two hundred and twenty-one
acres at Shaftmoor, and Robert Holloway one hundred and forty-nine
acres at Moat Farm - both Greswolde properties. Richard Kemp rented
the Bull's Head and two hundred and ninety-three acres of Wigley
and Taylor land. The Rev. J. Ryland's one hundred and forty-seven
acres at Tyseley Farm were rented by Benjamin Parkes.
The chief landowners, notably Greswolde and Taylor, had obtained
Enclosure Acts (1833-46) which enabled them to enclose the remaining
two hundred acres of open fields, whose strips were owned by forty-one
people, and six hundred acres of common. The land was apportioned
in quadrilateral pieces among the owners of strips: the poorest
could not afford to fence and ditch their small shares, and so
sold out to wealthier neighbours. The proceeds of the sale of
the commons went to reimburse those who had met the cost of promoting
the Bills: the same men had bought the former commons, so that
they were paying themselves. The Taylors thus acquired Yardley
Wood and Billesley Commons. Only those who had documentary rights
to use of the commons had any claim to a share of the land or
the profit from its sale: thus squatters on the common edges lost
all but their gardens, and had to pay rent for their plots.
A consequence of enclosure was the improvement of former tracks.
Yardley Road became a thirty-foot highway, and the coming of the
railway station on it a few years later ensured ensured its becoming
the main road through Yardley rather than Stockfield Road. The
old ridgeway, Wynford Road, was to be merely a footway, four feet
wide.
For a summary of how the area looked
a decade after the survey, go to this map.
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