| Houses and families
Most of the tenants in the early Middle Ages took their surnames
from their dwelling-place: the local exceptions were the Sparks
and the Hawes, who are remembered in a brook and a district. The
only other names to have joined them are those of the Acocks,
the Foxes, and (?) the Flints. The Tibbotts are forgotten, and
the mighty Greswolds, corruptions of whose name survive in north
Yardley, have only the name of an adopted heir (who added an 'e')
as a memorial in Springfield and Acocks Green streets. Whether
the Hirons gave or took their name is uncertain: their home is
commemorated in a municipal estate street, and the family is still
going strong hereabout after more than six centuries.
John Akoc, 1420, is the first recorded local member of another
family which has not died out but has left the area. Their home
was near the Warwick Road/Woodcock Lane corner, and the last building
on the site, referred to in 1649, was demolished some years ago.
In the 15th Century Thomas Est gained Hay Hall by his marriage
to Marion de la Haye, last of her line, and the Greswolds also
acquired large Yardley estates by marriage. Their houses were
Greet Hall and Shaftmoor: the former was the manor house of Greet,
so-called, a moated site near the Cole on Warwick Road, and the
latter a three-gabled Tudor house on Shaftmoor Lane. The last
building on the Greet Hall site was the 18th century Manor Farm,
replaced fifty years ago by the Greet Inn, and a garage occupies
the site of Shaftmoor on the steep part of Shaftmoor Lane leading
up from the Shaftmoor pub. For two centuries after the Greswolds
moved to Malvern Hall in Solihull, Shaftmoor was the home of the
Steedmans.
It is likely that all the early houses were protected by a
moat against attack by robbers or small bands of soldiers: because
drift does not hold surface water, it would be necessary to line
the ditches with puddled clay. Most moats were large enough only
to contain a house and garden, but Broom Hall had an oval one
enclosing an acre or so, which presumably served as a stock-pound.
When Tyseley Hall was rebuilt two centuries ago (some three hundred
years after the Tyseley family had disappeared from record), the
moat was abandoned. The large new farm, its brick buildings grouped
on three sides of a yard in what was becoming the local style,
was erected seventy yards north of the silted moat. Both sites
are today enclosed within the oval of Holcombe, Wetherfield, and
Mayfield Roads. Some of the sheltering trees have survived the
farm's demolition in the 1920s. Hiron Hall, the l5th-l6th century
building, was not pulled down until its successor had been built
alongside: the west side of the moat was infilled for this. Oaklands
School now occupies the moat site: the Georgian hall stood on
the north side of the 1920s Starcross Road.
The way the area looked in the later
Middle Ages is summarised on this map.
The Tudor period was a time of growing timber scarcity and
costliness, due to the relentless clearances of many centuries.
There are several 'riddings' in Yardley (one gives us Reddings
Lane), to recall these. New houses in Elizabeth's Reign were open-framed
'chequerboard' construction, which used little timber, or were
built of brick. Though tiles had been a continuing product hereabout,
brick-making had been a lost art until necessity revived it. As
Yardley was wholly built on clay, thinly covered at best, there
was no shortage of raw material! The large areas of plaster infilling
of chequerboard houses tended to blow out in high winds, so they
were usually replaced by brickwork sooner or later. Thus the now
lost Field Gate Farm off Yardley Road by the canal, which as the
name implies was built beside the gate of Nether Heyne Field,
and Stockfield Farm, demolished in the widening of Stockfield
Road in the early 1930s: if still standing, the house would block
the south-bound carriageway at Denham Road corner. It was in late
Tudor or early Stuart times that Hay Hall was encased in red brick,
diaper-patterned with imported blue. The gables may still be seen,
in the side view from Redfern Road, betraying its original timber
construction beneath the bricks.
Several vanished buildings wore probably first erected during
the l7th century, among them Broomfield Hall (Woodcock Lane/Clay
Lane junction), Rose Cottage on Yardley Road (South Yardley Library
site), and the Swan Inn. There have been earlier ones: the Stuart
inn lasted until the 1890s, and there have been two other Swans
more or less on the same spot since. Greet House, not to be confused
with the Hall, stood on the slope overlooking Greet hamlet for
three centuries from the 1620s, near the top of the postwar Sunfield
Grove. Two recently razed cottages on Amington Road were of similar
age.
The long Georgian period saw much rebuilding, addition, and
new building. Langley Hall, Greet Mill Hill (Shaftmoor Lane),
Gospel Farm (site of Gospel Oak), Sandpits (Shirley Road opposite
the playing fields), Pool Farm (near the Round Pool in Fox Hollies
Park, Redstone Farm, and the cottages on Shirley Road, are some
examples. After a fire in 1810, when Miller Gill's eight workmen
helped Dr. Gilboy's servants with water from the millpool, the
whole front of Hay Hall had to be rebuilt. A Regency porch and
large sash windows were installed, but gables appropriate to the
original 15th century hall were built. The Hall had escaped destruction
by fire in 1791, when the so-called 'Church and King' rioters
from Birmingham were bent on burning the homes of many prominent
Dissenters. The then tenant, one Smith, had succeeded in buying
them off. Yardley's squire lost both his Halls, at Bordesley and
Moseley. The King family were at Hay Hall, as at Gospel Farm and
Broomhall, in Victorian times - hence Kings Road. Waterloo Farm
and the surviving mansion nearby were built in the 1820s, and
of similar age are the cottages on Arden Road. Stockfield Hall,
opposite Rushey Lane until a few years ago, and the mansions by
Acocks Green Station, were perhaps the last in the Georgian style.
The abodes of the wealthy thereafter, fugitives from the reeking
town, where their money was made, wore fancy dress and had fancy
names. Fox Hollies (the Foxes had acquired it in 1649) which had
been an inn, and a centre for local entertainments, was bought
by Zaccheus Walker III, merchant: in the 1860s he rebuilt the
house in Osborne Italianate at great expense, with stables and
kennels. The Stuart house on Warwick Road (corner of Wharfdale
Road) was barge-boarded, tastelessly enlarged, and inaccurately
titled 'Tyseley Grange' by J.C. Onions, a county councillor. Jumbled
monstrosities like Gilbertstone (Tangyes) and The Beeches on Yardley
Road provided local amusement and employment. Old inns like the
Spread Eagle and Dolphin on Warwick Road were festooned with Victorian
decorations. An earlier and happier example of a house brought
into line with current taste was the Pinfold House, whose Stuart
gables were hidden a century later by a Georgian stucco facade
and sides: they may still be seen at the back, however!
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