| Amenities
Yardley Rural District Council had first leased and then bought
(1898) Broom Furlong from the Charity Trust for use as a cemetery.
The Trust had given several pieces of land to the Council for
public open spaces, but of these only one (Sparkhill Park, 1904)
had been opened when they passed to Birmingham. The others were
brought into use, and other pieces acquired, during the next two
decades. Among the former were Formans Road and Fox Green Recreation
Grounds: the latter included Fox Hollies Park and schools playing
fields at Tibbotts Green (off Shirley Road) and Oakhurst, north
of Broom Hall. A tiny addition to these was Wynford Road Recreation
Ground, a fragment of Nether Heyne Field. The river plan was carried
out in Swanshurst and Church End Quarters before public access
between Stratford and Warwick Roads was finally made in the 1980s.
Allotments were always a feature of rural Yardley, and there used
to be were eighteen patches in the central Quarters, the largest
being at Deep More and between Formans Road and Weston Lane.
Public Baths were opened on Sparkhill in 1931. The Council
House was already in use as a library, and in the 1930s new library
buildings were erected at Acocks Green and 'South Yardley'. They
were both set back on building lines which permitted road-widening
: enlargement of the Green about the tram terminus began in 1929
with cottage demolitions. Similar work in preparation for the
widening of Yardley Road had swept away Rose Cottage and others.
There had been few purpose-built shop rows before Hall Green Parade,
1913, and conversions of villas and terraces have continued to
the present. Rebuilding of older premises was less common than
wholly new rows and new centres, notably that at Fox Hollies.
Old inns were rebuilt or re-furbished - the Dolphin (replaced
by Aldi 1991), the third Swan (replaced by offices in the 1990s),
Waggon & Horses, Horseshoes - while along the tram and bus
routes and at their termini palatial pubs appeared. The two New
Inns, the Gospel Oak, Good Companions (demolished in the 1990s),
and Robin Hood are examples. In the late 1930s there were seven
cinemas hereabout - Piccadilly, Springfield, Rialto, Robin Hood,
all on Stratford Road, the Tyseley and Warwick, and the Adelphi
on Red Hill. By then several new bus services had been provided
- 31, 3lA, 32, and 36 - for the council house estates, and both
tram routes had been taken over by buses: those on Warwick Road
travelled to the Olton boundary. A halt had been made at Spring
Road on the North Warwickshire Line in 19l9. A large bus depot
was built at Fox Green.
Refuse disposal locally was by dumping and burning at the boundaries
hereabout until the Destructor was built in James Road: its concrete
bridge over the canal replaced the humped brick arch leading to
Hay Hall Cottage and the mill. Deposits of clinker in the meadows
north of the canal, and between it and the railway have raised
the level to that of the embankments, so that now the brook, river,
and head-race lie deep in spectacular gorges.
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