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Industry
The small factories on Sarehole Road were started during World War I. There
was to be no further industrial growth in what was designated a residential
suburb, except for Newey Goodman, already established earlier and no spoiler
of the amenities in its pleasant grounds. The Webb Lane premises found other
users, and light industry appeared at Warstock between the Wars. Those
relics of rural industry the watermills all went out of use within a few
years of each other, and farming activity lingered for a time.
Between the Wars
Sale of the Taylor land from 1913 enabled the City to move into the Quarter,
the largest area of undeveloped land country in Yardley. 470 acres were
bought for housing estates, and between the wars the farmhouses fell one
after another - Billesley c. 1923, Quagmire and Trittiford two years later,
Trittiford Mill Farm and Ivyhouse (Brook Lane) c. 1930, Little Sarehole
1935, Brook Farm the following year. The 'Battles' Estate opposite
Swanshurst Park was completed in 1923 and Billesley largely within the next
two years. The houses were non-parlour cottages in twos, fours, and sixes,
the earliest being no-nonsense rows, but some blocks were designed to look
like Tudor or Stuart mansions with projecting wings and eaves. Yardley Wood
Estate was built between 1926 and 1930. No attempt was made to give a
village character to these new villages. They had no central green, and no
focal point. Shops and amenities were usually peripheral, there were
cul-de-sacs but far too many through roads, and the street patterns were
complex. On the intended extension of Highfield Road a library and clinic
were opened in the 1930s.
In contrast to the sweeping curves of council streets, the
privately-developed ones were straight or only gently-curved, often
following old hedge-lines. Oldhouse, Oaklands, Barton's Lodge, and other
farms were demolished: a few like Sarehole, Coldbath, and Yew Tree lingered
as dwellings only.
Yardley lacked riverside and north-south roads. A 65-feet wide road was
planned to go from Highfield Road to the Warwick Road, and in the late 1920s
Cole Valley Road joined up with the extended Sarehole Road. Baldwins
Lane/Shirley Road and the Outer Circle route were improved, and dual
carriageways were made or provided for. On Yardley Wood Road and others the
building-line was set back for all new houses. The city's largest traffic
island was made at Six Ways.
In the 1930s a new council estate appeared between Brook Lane and Trittiford
Road, and there were new semi's on and off Wake Green Road (a new road was
made south from Sarehole Farm, the old one being left to return to nature,
as it was too close to the Cole for development), off Brook Lane, off
Billesley Lane, and at Warstock, Bradnock Close was built on the site of
Ivyhouse Farm. Wheelers and Barn Lanes, Phipson Road, Hayfield, Woodlands,
and Mackenzie Roads and the roads round St. Agnes' Church were all built or
completed in the 1920s and 1930s. Shops continued to spread along the
Stratford Road: small groups appeared at strategic points elsewhere.
The first post-war estates, except for the prefabs on park edges and small
off-street sites were like those of the 1930s - Greenstead off Springfield
Road for example. The first multi-storey blocks were built on the new
Hollybank Road beside Billesley Common, and these were to be the only
municipal towers in the Quarter, apart from the few which replaced bombed
terraces on a small site off Stoney Lane. Later municipal estates - Coldbath
Farm, Brompton Pool, Trittiford Mill, Braceby Drive, for example, are of
short rows with small gardens or open fronts and garages.
Public Transport
Horse buses plied from Birmingham to the Mermaid in the 1870s. By 1885 steam
trams had reached Sparkhill, a depot being built on the site of the present
Salvation Army Citadel. A few years later lines were laid to Knowle Road.
Further extension had to await rebuilding of the narrow humped bridges over
the former millrace and the disused river channel. Meanwhile Birmingham had
taken in Balsall Heath from Kings Norton (1891) and wished to lay lines
along Stoney Lane to what was then the city boundary, opposite Esme Road.
There used to be a cast-iron sign indicating that Birmingham, Yardley Rural
District, and Kings Norton and Northfield Urban District met there. Trees
survive which once stood beside the Spark Brook by there. It was at that
time a dismal trickle, its bed a dump for rubbish, so, largely at City
expense, the lane was remade and widened over a culvert in which the brook
ran from then on. The boundary ran down the middle of the lane until the
enlargements of 1912. In 1896 the first trams - electric ones - arrived at
the farthest point they were ever to reach on that route.
In 1907 the G.W.R. constructed the North Warwickshire Line from Tyseley to
Stratford. It came across the central ridge in a cutting. A station was
opened at the Stratford Road and a halt at Highfield Road, the latter
becoming Yardley Wood Station eleven years later. From the opening of the
line it was obvious that Hall Green would become a popular commuter
district. The 1913 advertisements for Southam Road's first houses referred
to the nearby station and to the projected tramway extension. This had
followed immediately after the making of the present Cole bridge, and by
1914 one could ride on an electric tram as far south as the Bull's Head.
When track work resumed in 1928 the lines were laid on sleeper tracks along
central grassed reservations, with a wide carriageway on either side, to the
boundary at Shirley.
The lanes of the Quarter, like those elsewhere in Yardley, were quite
unsuitable for trams - and little better for buses. The 1 and 1A routes were
served by open-topped petrol buses from 1920 after road surface and lighting
improvements along Wake Green and College Roads. An early service from
Stoney Lane tram terminus to 'The Valley' on Yardley Wood Road caused deaths
in 1924, when two girls were killed at Coldbath Bridge, where the hedged
lane was narrow, steep, and sharp-bending. The road there was hurriedly
widened, raised, and straightened, and a compulsory stop was put at the
brook culvert. In 1926 the Outer Circle bus service began (though it did not
go right round the city until 1928), along Brook Lane, Coldbath Road,
Swanshurst Lane, Cole Bank Road, and so out of the Quarter by an awkward
dog-leg into School Road. Improvement work on this route included the
rebuilding of the Cole bridge by Sarehole Mill. Other services traversing
the Quarter by the decade's end were the 13, 13A, 24, 29 and 29A.
Beyond the Outer
Circle, a Ring Road was planned to go through more open country. Wheelers,
Brook, and Robin Hood Lanes and Highfield Road were part of this. During the
1930s unemployed men were engaged in the clearance of land on the line of
this road, which was to be a dual carriageway throughout with islanded
intersections, as were the Stratford, Priory, and Yardley Wood Roads. This
work involved the destruction of many great trees and a number of farmhouses
and cottages. In the late 1930s and late 1940s trams were replaced by diesel
buses on all routes. When World War II brought an almost immediate end to
road works, Highfield Road was completed from Four Ways to the Cole, but the
other roads were single carriageways bordered by green swaths - and so they
remain, except for Priory Road, improved almost to the boundary. By decision
of the West Midlands Council, the sixty-year-old scheme will never be
resumed. The approach ramps for the new bridge by which Highfield Road was
intended to cross the Cole before sweeping on up the opposite bank to join
the widened School Road are already four decades old, and should soon
qualify for preservation as ancient monuments. High Bridge is still as
narrow as when first built, though the companion bridge on Yardley Wood Road
was replaced before World War II.
Introduction
Geology, Natural vegetation, and relief and drainage
Early settlement, and Saxon beginnings
Boundaries, Domesday Yardley, and Moats and
earthworks
Medieval times, and Ancient roads
Perambulations
Old houses, Local government, and Tudor to Georgian
times
Families and houses
Georgian times
Bridges, Watermills, and the Stratford Canal
The Tithe Map
Churches, and Schools
Yardley Rural District, The City of Birmingham, and
Urbanisation
Industry, Between the Wars, and Public transport
Swanshurst Quarter in 1979, and Short bibliography
Maps |
