| Travel through Yardley
When travel on land was so often difficult, all possible use was
made of watercourses. It is doubtful whether any of our streams
except the Cole would be navigable, but that river was once much
larger than forest clearance and modern drainage have made it.
Punt-like flatboats would be used in all but the driest summers,
and it is possible that rafts were sometimes hauled along the
larger tributaries. There were no roads in Yardley until the 18th
Century, only directions of travel. The ridgeway kept to the dry,
firm, gravelly summit, winding between the valley heads on both
sides: it served purely local needs until Greater Birmingham wished
to link its new suburbs with a bus service. Then parts of it were
to become a dual carriageway: the original route between the Heyne
Fields having declined to a mere footpath, Stockfield Road was
duly widened in part, though much of the planned highway remains
as it was in 1939.
Until such recent times the important routes through Yardley
were always those which linked the Avon towns with Birmingham,
and these crossed the manor only because it was in the way. Stratford
Road, or part of it, was recorded in 972. Both it and Warwick
Road were listed, though not so named in a boundary report of
1495, but it may be assumed that the latter had been long in use
by that time. Coventry Road was not named in the 972 Charter,
and appears in record in 1226: it became a well-used highway through
Yardley because for most of its length therein it kept to the
drift capping of the ridge. Stratford Road too wound across the
ridge, keeping clear of valley heads. But both highways had trouble
at the Cole valley edge. Red Hill was a notorious clay slope on
Coventry Road which there became a narrow gorge running with water
and mud, while Greet Mill Hill on Stratford Road was shorter but
steeper, and just as bad. But the latter was for centuries the
preferred way to the shire town as far as Hockley Heath, because
Warwick Road crossed six boggy valleys on its way to Solihull,
and three of these were in Yardley. Those who trod out this route
tried to find the firmest way, of course. They used the same Spark
Brook ford as did Stratford Road, kept to the drift across Greet
which gives that district its name (greot = gravel), made as directly
as possible up the slippery clay slope of Greet Hill, slogged
aross Tyseley Brook, and thankfully reached the gravelly top of
Tyseley Hill. Westley Brook awaited them, and they turned along
the east side of its valley before crossing Acocks Green.
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