| Public transport
Canal flyboats continued to serve the needs of Yardleians travelling
to Birmingham or Warwick until the mid-19th century. Turnpike
improvements, notably those of Telford on the Coventry Road c.
1815, had brought fast, regular, and punctual stage-coach services.
In 1847 construction of the Oxford to Birmingham Railway began.
Crossing the Rea valley by a great blue-brick viaduct, its tracks
were at ground level across Small Heath and the Golden Hillock
above Danford. The Warwick Canal was spanned by a high iron bridge,
then Spark, Cole, and Hay Mill head-race by earthen bank and brick
culverts. A deep cut had to be made through Tyseley Hill, Stockfield,
and Crabtree Field: five bridges, high narrow structures of local
brick, were built to maintain rights of way. Yardley Road was
raisod to take it over the lines. Rowe Leasowe Lane went under
the bank made for the crossing of Kineton Green Brook. The first
station after Snow Hill and Bordesley was 'Acocks Green &
South Yardley', opened with the line in 1852: this was probably
the first use of the misnomer. Yardleians could now travel in
a few minutes right to the centre of Birmingham, and the future
of Acocks Green as a commuter suburb was ensured.
Counties having largely taken over road maintenance, tollgates
were no longer manned, and horse-buses could ply without payment
along the former turnpikes. They came from 'town' to Sparkhill
and the Swan and the Spread Eagle. By 1885 Company steam tramcars
had reached as far as the Cole on Stratford Road, and Victoria
Park on Coventry Road: after the toll bridge at Hay Mill had been
replaced in 1903 tracks were laid up Red Hill, and they had reached
the Swan a year later - not only tracks but overhead cables too.
Electric-powered cars replaced the hated steamers as soon as a
generator station had been built near the terminus (the former
Colliers site). Within Birmingham the lines belonged to the Corporation,
and the various Companies' rolling stock was acquired as their
leases expired. The lines through Yardley were bought after the
Rural District joined the City, so that all public transport was
thenceforward owned and operated municipally.
The humped bridges at Greet Mill on Stratford Road were replaced
by one over a new central channel in 1913, and the following year
tramcars reached Hall Green. The tracks moved on to the boundary
at Shirley in 1928, being from Four Ways (Fox Hollies Road/Highfield
Road junction) placed on a central reservation between two carriageways.
Warwick Road required so much widening, straightening, raising,
draining, and rebridging before tramlines could be laid that the
work was still in progress during World War One. Along the narrowest
part of the road through Greet, only a single track could be laid:
it was controlled by red and green lights at either end, probably
the first traffic lights to be installed on a city road. By 1916
the lines had reached Broad Road, and no further work was done
for six years. Then the tracks were extended to the Shirley Road
junction: because of the narrowness of Warwick Road therefrom
trams never reached the City boundary hereabout, the terminus
being made on the junction green just beyond the culverted Westley
Brook.
Meanwhile there had been railway development which was drastically
to alter the appearance of Hay Hall, Stockfield, and Tyseley farmlands,
not only by its own works but in what it brought. In 1906 the
Great Western Railway, successor to the Oxford Company, began
construction of a line to Stratford. This line, which was intended
to bring the dairy produce of Arden speedily to the ever-growing
city, had been planned by another company some years earlier,
but there was nowhere that the line could be thrust through the
inner suburbs without much demolition of property. The G.W.R already
had such a line in use and now planned to use it, suitably widened,
as far as Tyseley Hill: thence a new line would cut through the
hill, curving between Tyseley Farm and the terraces of Acocks
Green, continuing south through Hall Green and Yardley Wood. By
late 1907 the line was in use, its many stations including those
below Stratford and Highfield Roads. A junction station was built
at Tyseley, and in the meadows of Manor House Farm sidings and
engine sheds were built, Tyseley Brook being diverted to accommodate
them. Wharves were provided below Tyseley Grange, and beside Kings
Road. In Birmingham a second viaduct paralleled the first, and
a new terminus was built on the site of the old Public Offices
in Moor Street. Many extra tracks were laid across Small Heath,
the cutting through Crabtree Field was greatly widened, and Acocks
Green Station was rebuilt in 1907.
Sheldon was added to Birmingham in 1931, and public transport
was needed to the new boundary two miles east of the Swan. Trams
were now out of favour, because they held up other traffic, notably
in Bordesley, so in 1933 electric-powered trolley-buses replaced
them along the entire Coventry Road route. A layby was made on
the site of Heybarnes Farm close to Hay Mill bridge.
After World War One the City had been able to give attention
to the task of linking the large peripheral areas of suburb and
farmland acquired in 19l1-12. There was difficulty even in choosing
which narrow lanes to use for the intended circular routes, and
the provision of tramlines could not even be considered. When
in c. 1923 the first suburb-joining motor-bus service, between
Acocks Green and the City centre via Edgbaston, Moseley, and Springfield
was started, the Yardley part of the route, perticularly Shaftmoor
Lane, was in urgent need of tarmacadamising, draining, kerbing,
and lighting. It was not until 1926 that the route chosen for
the Outer Circle 11A service was considered to be adequate. This
had perforce to go through all the centres of population and shopping:
neither on Stratford or Warwick Road was a direct crossing possible.
Plans for a dual carriageway along the whole route, and for a
ringway which would enable traffic to avoid the worst areas of
congestion were being carried out slowly from the late 1920s,
and were advanced during the Depression when roadworks provided
employment. Thus in our area, Highfield, Fox Hollies, and Stockfield
Roads were widened in part, while Stratford and Coventry Roads
became highways worthy of a huge city here and there. Another
far-sighted scheme to bypass Acocks Green was the making of Olton
Boulevard from the Cole to the boundary at Olton via Fox Hollies.
All these works were abandoned in 1939. The Stockfield and Yardley
Road bridges were completed in good time, but not the Spring Road
railway bridge needed for this scheme, and the Boulevard is not
even begun between Greet Inn and Reddings Lane.
Since the war public transport has been the victim of private
transport: the economical tramcar has given place to the diesel
motorbus on all routes, but this both suffers from and helps to
cause the increasing congestion of traffic. Hugely expensive works
like the Swan underpass and the Coventry Expressway make ever
less likely the completion of inter-war plans for easement of
traffic flow through Yardley.
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