| Foundation and ownership
During the 7th
century Hwiccans, descendants of West Saxon invaders, moved north into our area
along ancient tracks and crumbling Roman roads. A small group came down beside
the marshes of Cole, along a dry ridgeway that is still in use - as Highfield /
Fox Hollies Roads, Broad Road,
Fox Green, Dalston, Yardley and Church Roads. They may have been former
residents of Beoley, which had Yardley as a 'member' in the Domesday Book : but
the linking of these two most distant properties of Pershore Abbey may have had
no more significance than that the 'radman' of Beoley also collected the taxes
of Yardley. North of a crossing track that descended to a ford the Hwiccans
found a densely wooded tract. Whether this deterred them for a short time we
cannot guess, but perhaps a game trail provided a way onward. A mile north they
came out on to the open sandy ridge-end. The Cole wound below, on two sides were
boggy streams. Forest to east and south completed natural boundaries.
Here was a
suitable site for a settlement, high and dry, already cleared or easily
clearable. Springs at the drift edges provided ample water, the brooks could be
dammed for fish and stock-ponds, the air and heath and forest supplied food and
materials in plenty. Stich Brook bisected the high ground : its meadows were
drier and often more usable than the wide expanses of bog beside the Cole. The
first open fields to be ploughed and fenced against animals overlay the
ridge-end, and the farmers made their separate homesteads at its edges. There
was no village.
This account of
the initial settlement of north Yardley is conjectural but not without
justification. The ridgeway would be the only feasible access route. The slopes
were densely wooded and the riverside much too wet for travel. That the
colonists did advance beyond the formidable barrier of Church End's forest and
lay claim to north Yardley and later to another drift patch beyond the woods to
the east, Lea Village, is certain : if they had not done so ours would not have
been a Hwiccan colony but Anglian. At the same time as Saxons were entering the
Plateau from south and east, Anglian immigrants were advancing from north and
west : the latter were to establish Birmingham and Aston (which included the
later Bordesley and the Bromwiches) and Maccaton (Mackadown, Sheldon's
predecessor) as Yardley's neighbours.
They would have
settled Yardley too if Hwiccans had not claimed it first. The Cole provided a
convenient and indisputable boundary between two not dissimilar peoples, two
kingdoms
Mercia and
Hwiccia (Wigornia) and two shires and bishoprics.
Although
Pershore Abbey held Yardley for more than two centuries as a direct possession
and retained residual rights in it for much longer, it seems to have made no
attempt to provide a chapel. Perhaps there was a timber preaching cross
somewhere as a meeting-place for occasional priestly visitations during journeys
between the Abbey and Maxstoke Priory, but no trace or record of it survives.
The manor was in the Bishopric of Worcester, established in the Hwiccan capital
in the late 7th century. But those who wished for regular blessings of the
church travelled to Aston four or more difficult miles away. That they did so we
may assume, because it was from Aston Church in Lichfield Diocese that a
chapelry was established in Yardley. Presumably the Yardleians built their own
small chapel, and priests from Aston officiated therein. Its dedication then or
later was to St. Edburgha (Ed-burra), grand-daughter of King Alfred, to whom a
chapel in Pershore Abbey had long been dedicated. It is reasonable to suppose
that the first timber chapel stood on or near the site of the present church -
so why was it built there? The usual custom was to build a church near the manor
house.
Yardley had few
resident lords, but the de Limesi family were probably living in a house within Yardley Park
moat during the 13th century, when the present church building was begun. The
moat may have been in existence when the first chapel was built in 1165: the
Beauchamps of Elmley were then the tenants of the manor, paying for it with 'one
knight's fee', and it was perhaps William de Beauchamp who had the moat dug as
protection for a house, either for himself or a steward. Why there? The site had
a poor water supply, being on uncapped clay, but that was probably the reason
for its choice: a moat dug in permeable drift has to be lined with puddled clay
to make it watertight. Whether there was a nearby rill, a tributary of Yardley
brook, to provide drinking water and replenish the moat cannot now be
discovered. Whatever the reason, manor house and church were built on a site
with disadvantages, as the few cottagers who settled nearby were to discover. An
outer moat, which provided greater protection and more fish, not to mention a
larger cess-pool, was infilled so long ago as to be untraceable today. No
excavation has been done on the platform, whose last house was untenanted after
1700.
Yardley was
still nominally a possession of Pershore Abbey until the early 15th century,
though its tenants had long since given up paying the equivalent of the cost of
a mounted man-at-arms as rent. For three hundred years the Beauchamp family held
the manor, but having a score of others they rarely or never lived in it, the
estate being run by a bailiff. Several generations of the Limesi family were
sub-tenants and probably the only lords ever to be resident. Soon after their
line died out, about 1260, several claimants to the manorial rights were all
rejected by William de Beauchamp: it was he who by marriage gained the Earldom
of Warwick for his family. From the early 14th century until 1478 Yardley was
held directly by successive Earls (except when Richard II granted it to the
Dukes of Norfolk and Surrey in turn, 1396-9).
Beauchamps were
followed by Nevilles including the all-powerful 'Kingmaker' and by George Duke
of Clarence. After his execution the Warwick estates including Yardley reverted
to the Crown. Plantagenets, Tudors, and Stuarts - eight monarchs in all - were
successive lords of the manor. Yardley was one of the properties granted to
Catherine of Aragon in her divorce settlement: a poignant reminder of her first
marriage to Prince Arthur is the north door of St. Edburgha's Church (see
below). After her death Yardley reverted to Henry VIII. Though Yardley cannot
compete with Kings Norton in length of royal ownership, it was a Crown property
for 138 years - until Sir Richard Grevis of Moseley Hall bought it in 1629. Not
all of Yardley was included in the sale: the 'manor' of Greet was owned by the
Greswolds, and other estates were in different hands. After the eminence of Sir
Richard, who held high offices under James I, the Grevises were divided in the
Civil War, and their fortunes began a long decline. When Henshaw Grevis, last of
his line, succeeded in 1759, the sale of the estate barely sufficed to pay his
father's debts, and he was reduced to labouring. Seven years later the lordship
of Yardley and a thousand acres were bought by John Taylor of Bordesley Hall, a
very wealthy manufacturer and co-founder of what is now Lloyds' Bank. Most of
the Taylor estates were in the southern Quarters of the manor, and the greater
part of them was sold in and after 1913 for housing estates and parks.
As the purchaser of much of the land, the City Corporation
might be thought of as the present lord of Yardley, but the title (which is a
saleable commodity independent of land possession) was never sold and its
present holder is Jonathan Taylor of Lower Quinton near Stratford. All manorial
rights, vestigial as they were, came to an abrupt end in 1940, so that the title
is purely honorary.
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