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Communications
Yardley lies
between Birmingham and the towns to the south and east, so that all
communications with these have to cut the narrow width of the parish: there has
never been an important route along its length. The main roads to Coventry,
Warwick, and Stratford, which cut the parish into its four administrative
quarters, were maintained by statutory labour supervised by the Overseers of
Highway, but maintained very poorly. Coventry Road was particularly bad. There
were only footbridges across the Cole, whose approaches and fords were
impassable after rains and dangerous in flood.
The Birmingham and Edgehill Turnpike
(Stratford Road) and the Birmingham and Warmington Turnpike (Warwick Road) were
instituted in 1725, with tollgates at the 'Mermaid' junction, at Greet Mill,
Cole Bank (probably School Road junction), and at Acocks Green. Coventry Road
was turnpiked 20 years later with a tollgate at the 'Swan'.
Greet Mill ford remained in use, so
presumably there was still no wain bridge at first: in 1777, after the
rebuilding of the mill, a brick bridge was placed over the tail-race. Eleven
years earlier, Greet Bridge on Warwick Road, a 'substantial stone bridge' shown
on Beighton's map of 1725, was largely washed away by floods. When re-built in
1777 it had four arches, the two central ones carrying a causeway on an island
between two arms of the river. For failing to repair later damage the Yardley
Overseers were indicted in 1817, and the bridge was then restored. It was
rebuilt over a single channel in 1902, as was the Stratford Road bridge in 1914.
Hemill (Hay Mill)
Bridge on Coventry Road was named on a map of 1675, but is unlikely to have been
more than a footbridge. Thomas Telford undertook an essential reconstruction of
the Turnpike about 1820, and the building of a road bridge, as well as the
abandonment of the holloway near the top of Red Hill may date from that time.
Mile-stones had to be provided after 1745: none of them has survived in Yardley,
and 18th century miles were variable lengths, but they should have been seen
near the 'Swan', Greet House, Tyseley, Acocks Green, Sparkhill, Greet Mill, Hall
Green School, and Six Ways. Turnpike revenue was not always up to expectation -
the Acocks Green tollgate expected to take a pound a day (Coaches 1s 6d, Wagons
1s) in 1793, took less than £293 that year. By 1817 there were 5 daily coaches
on the Stratford Turnpike. Coaching inns were well-placed along the highways -
the Mermaid, Dolphin, Spread Eagle, Bull's Head, Old Crown - and there were
smithies at Greet, Tyseley, near Six Ways and the Swan, as well as three in
Church End: in the mid-19th century about 30 people were engaged in services to
horse-traffic through and in Yardley.
The River Cole has never been usable
except by the smallest flat-bottom boats. But about 1795 travel by water across
Yardley became possible when the Warwick and Birmingham Canal was cut through
the Stockfield Ridge and a corner of Acocks Green Field. High brick bridges and
a short tunnel under Yardley Road were constructed, and at two wharves (Wharf
Road and off Yardley Road) Black Country coal was unloaded. The canal was
complete to the Oxford Canal by 1799 : there were flyboat services, and Yardley
tiles were dispatched to Birmingham and elsewhere. By 1803 the Stratford Canal
was open from Kings Norton to Kingswood, with a wharf at Yardley Wood where
Dudley coal, lime and iron for local use were unloaded. Iron flyboats plied for
a time. The canal reached Stratford and the Avon Navigation in 1816.
Robert Stephenson's London & Birmingham
Railway was opened in 1838, and Yardley had its station, at Stichford, from
1844. Of more concern to most of the parish, because of its central crossing,
were the Oxford Railway and its local station at Acocks Green which was built in
1852. After the abolition of turnpikes in the 1870s there were horse-buses to
the Swan, and steam trams reached Sparkhill by 1885. Twelve years later there
were electric trams to the common boundary of Birmingham, Yardley, and Kings
Norton, on Stoney Lane, after the city and Yardley Rural District Council had
jointly remade that road: on Stratford Road to the Cole: and on Coventry Road to
the Swan: but the nearest terminus to Yardley village was Bordesley Green until
1928, and Warwick Road did not have trams until 1916. The narrow street through
Greet had a single track with signal lights at each end. The terminus was at the
junction hamlet of Westley Brook, which was thereafter developed as the
'village' of Acocks Green. The older settlement near the 'Dolphin', approached
by a very narrow stretch of Warwick Road, did not have a tram service.
In 1907 the North Warwickshire Line was
constructed from the Oxford (G. W. R.) line at Stockfield to the Cole Valley and
Stratford. An earlier plan by another company would have brought a railway
through Sparkhill, with a station at Baker Street. Tyseley Station was built on
the G. W. line in 1906, and Hall Green and Yardley Wood Stations opened the next
year on the NW line. Tyseley Goods Yard served the new industries that grew up
between the canal and railway After World War I, and the NW line brought
industries to Shaftmoor (Spring Road Halt 1919) and the Cole valley north of
Yardley Wood.
The City of Birmingham absorbed Yardley in
1911, and the next year took control of all tramways through the district. In
1914, the Coventry, Stratford, and Formans Road bridges were replaced: at Greet
Mill site the country and millrace brick bridges were removed, a central channel
was made and spanned by two brick and stone arches, and the tram tracks were
extended to Robin Hood. Under
the 1914 Development Plan, sleeper tracks on central reservations between two
carriageways were begun beyond the existing ribbon building: the only tram
routes through Yardley on which this could be done were Stratford Road from Highfield to the
boundary, and the extension of Bordesley Green East to Stechford (1928). Other
double-track roads were begun during the 1920s and 1930s - notably the ancient
ridgeway, School Road - Highfield Road - Fox Hollies Road - Stockfield Road -
Stoney Lane; and also Yardley Wood, Warwick and Coventry Roads, and Robin Hood
and Brook Lanes: but existing buildings, wartime delay, and post-war cost, have
left these schemes in a most unsatisfactory state of incompleteness, causing
bottlenecks and accidents to the far greater traffic than the completed highways
were expected to bear.
In the early 1920s as it was realised
that the narrow lanes and awkward intersections of Yardley were unsuitable for
further tram services, Corporation motor buses were introduced: two fatalities
on Yardley Wood Road by Lady Mill site in 1924 made clear the need for early
improvement of the worst roads. In 1926 the Outer Circle bus route provided the
first ever communication along the length of Yardley, from Kings Heath to
Stechford: Yardley village, always isolated hitherto and having no part in the
spectacular development of better-served districts, was now close to a bus
route, with the result that private building began around it. The 24 bus,
linking the tram terminus at Stoney Lane to Warstock, the 1A between Moseley and
Acocks Green, were among the earliest of the new, more flexible services. The
growth of municipal housing in Billesley, Yardley Wood, Pitmaston, Gospel Farm,
Acocks Green, Fast Pits, Hobmoor, and later Glebe Farm and Lea Hall; and private
development in Hall Green and 'South Yardley', brought new bus routes, numbering
22 in 1964, serving all parts of the ancient parish.
Lea Hall Station was opened on the L.
M. S. line in 1937. Trolley buses replaced the Coventry Road trams in the early
1930s, and the route was extended to the city boundary. Diesel buses replaced
the trolleys in 1951, having already taken the place of the Stratford and
Warwick Road trams in 1937. Having reached its peak about a decade ago (i.e.
1954, a decade before this article was written), public transport is now
beginning to decline, with the growth of private vehicle-ownership. As of 1964,
passenger services have been suspended on the NW line and Lea Hall Station on
the L. M. line has been closed. Bus services may be expected to decline also as
losses on them continue. The congestion at the 'Swan' crossing was relieved by
the underpass made at vast expense.
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