The Victorian half-century, 1850 to 1900
By 1860, when the next Tithe Map appeared, the railway to Oxford
and Banbury had been built; banked high over Cole and canal, and
trenched through the ridge, which was spanned by four bridges.
A station at Acocks Green was built in the year of the line's
opening, 1852. In 1878 it was renamed Acocks Green and South Yardley:
is this the first use of the misnomer? Consequent building of
large villas in debased Georgian (some still standing) occurred
just south of the station, on Sherbourne Road and Sherbourne Drive:
these were the homes of the first of those wealthy fugitives from
Birmingham whose modern descendants live in open-plan luxury at
Dorridge and Kenilworth. Similar houses of slightly later date
still stand on the south side of Warwick Road opposite St. Mary's
church, and others (mostly demolished) stood on both sides of
the turnpike east of Westley Brook. Large terraced villas were
built on Flint Green Road. On Stockfield Road a few new buildings
included Stockfield Hall, while on Yardley Road north of the station
the old field-track had The Beeches, a mansion in Rustic Tudor
style and Yew Tree Cottages. The yellow-brick Congregational Church
on Warwick Road (1860) was built of imported material, as was
the sandstone St. Mary's (1866), but most later churches are of
local brick. The L.N.W. Line had still brought little change to
Church End, although Stichford had had a station since 1844. Yardley
village had spread along its north-south axis, having now 55 buildings,
but was to develop little more. On the summit of Church Field,
Redhouse and the villa (now the 'Yardley Arms ') had been built.
Coventry Road was still only sparsely settled. 'East' Greet
had grown little, though Greet House (not to be confused with
Greet Manor House) had appeared on the valley side. 'West' Greet
was being developed, haphazardly and individually, on Warwick
Road about Albion Road. On Sparkhill, in the acute angle between
the turnpikes, there was an open scatter which continued to Wake
Green and included about 80 buildings. James Place (1856) was
built on Avon Street. From Hall Green Hall to the Bull's Head
on Stratford Road there were enough houses (21) to justify the
name of 'The Hamlet' which was applied to that part of Fox Hollies
Road. On Shirley Road there were 11 buildings.
At High Bridge on the Stratford Canal, Christ Church, Early
English style in sandstone (1849), the Vicarage and National School,
faced two almshouses (all c. 1857). About the north end of Billesley
Common 38 houses now clustered, and there were 22 in the south-west
corner of the parish. On Wake Green the brick-and-stone Gothic
pile of Spring Hill College for Congregational Ministers had been
built (1854). Its name was not local, but that of the earlier
site in Birmingham. Nearly all the new buildings of this period
were single ones, separate dwellings: there were relatively few
terraces. No back-to-back houses were ever built in Yardley.
Of the urban features of the last hundred and fifty years there
are increasingly substantial remains to the present. The 1880
Tithe Map does not reflect the growth of population in two decades
(150%) and can be ignored as being probably based on the earlier
survey. However the first edition of the O.S. 6-inch map (1885-6)
does show the expected increase of dwellings for a population
of about 13,000. (It rose in the decade after 1881 from 9,745
to 17,141). Development is most notable in the corner enclosed
by the Spark Brook and is clearly an extension of built-up Bordesley:
between Stoney Lane, Durham Road, Fernley Road and Warwick Road,
there were a dozen new streets of terraces, which absorbed several
old cottages, and some off-street rows. The cottage rows of Albion
and Bertha Roads and Hermon Row were perhaps the oldest, built
in the 1870s, and next were Avon, Bard, Shakespeare and Stratford
Streets on the slope of Sparkhill. James Place and Perseverance
Place (1870) on Avon Street, Somersault and Coleman Cottages on
Baker Street (1869-70 ) were to be incorporated into continuous
lines of not dissimilar dwellings in the next decade or so. Some
parts of this district give the impression of the back-streets
of a small country town. St. John's Church, opened in a corrugated
iron building in 1878, was rebuilt as now in local brick eleven
years later. The School, on the farther slope of the hill, dates
from 1884, but there had been a Church School on the site from
1856.
The 1874-5 Trades Directory of Francis White provides some
information about commercial premises, though it is not necessarily
a complete record and locations are not always given. Post offices,
one at a farm and the rest in shops, are listed on Coventry Road
and at Stechford, Yardley, Acocks Green, Greet (?) and Ha1l Green.
There were 20 inns and 6 beerhouses dispersed about the parish.
Acocks Green had most shops (17), followed by Sparkhill (11) and
Greet (6): there were 4 on Coventry Road, 3 at Yardley Wood, 2
at Hall Green, and 5 others making a total of 48 shops. Only one
of these was certainly in Yardley village.
East Greet was unchanged except for the Greet and Burbury Brickworks
which were beginning to excavate the valley side. Clay pits were
henceforward few but large: rural Yardley was pock-marked with
more than a hundred small clay or gravel pits, which were to be
infilled with domestic refuse. The quadrilateral between Formans,
Stratford, Fernley, and Percy Roads was being developed piecemeal
in mostly uniform terrace blocks of narrow tunnel-back houses,
large 3-storeyed ones at the top and steadily smaller ones towards
the bottom, from the 1870s to the 1900s. The Percy Road industrial
area had begun with an umbrella factory.
Wake Green now had a church, St. Agnes' (1884), daughter to
St. Mary's, Moseley, and new streets were being laid out round
it. Mansions were appearing on Yardley Wood and Wake Green Roads
in extensive grounds and unlovely styles. There were humbler terraces
on Windermere and Coldbath Roads and Prince of Wales Lane. Otherwise
there was no development in Swanshurst: Hall Green and Yardley
Wood Board Schools served wide areas of farmland.
Turnpike abolition in 1876 had cleared the way for public transport
to extend from Birmingham, but there were other obstacles. Thus,
while steam trams has reached the summit of Sparkhill by 1885,
the humped and narrow Cole bridges could not carry tracks: there
were only horse buses to the Swan until 1904 and to the centre
of Acocks Green until 1922. The trams to Sparkhill and Heybarnes
made rural Yardley and its pleasant river easily accessible for
townsfolk. The large new and rebuilt inns like the Mermaid and
its near neighbours, and the Plough and Harrow at Hay Mills bridge,
the Bull's Head on Red Hill, the Swan in Victorian Tudoresque,
and the Britannia at Tyseley, catered for Sunday trippers. 'Happy
Valley', between the Stratford Canal and Chinn Brook at Yardley
Wood, was reached from Alcester Lane's End tram terminus. There
were to be no transport services anywhere near Yardley village
until 1926.
Villas spread from Flint Green along Broad Road, behind which
St. Mary's School was built in 1874. There was similar growth
about the Methodist Church on Shirley Road opened eleven years
earlier: and on Arden and Summer Roads, Victoria Road (west side),
Sherbourne Road, Station Road down to the open brook, and a new
road which bypassed it, Dudley Park Road, though this was only
partly built-up. A pattern was being established (to be completed
only in the 1930s) of old lanes and a few new streets whose development
enclosed large pieces of land used for nurseries, orchards, allotments,
sports grounds etc. There were lowlier terraces on Tyseley Hill;
3-storey terrace villas facing a row across narrow Stockfield
Road; a hamlet on Warwick Road nearby that included 'The Grange'
(1889), a smithy, and the Pioneer Cabinet Works; and cottage rows
on Spring Road: but all these were at the limits of the commuter
suburb henceforth to be commonly called Acocks Green. North of
the station, Yardley Road was the axis of mansion building, with
development on Malvern and Elmdon Roads and the Avenue down to
the brook, on Francis Road and on Dalston and Augusta Roads. But
growth was sporadic, clearly generated by the railway and bounded
by the canal. Facing Pinfold House and a brewery and smithy on
Mansfield Road, were tunnel-back terraces of the 1890s. Yardley
Cemetery, already in use, was bought by the Rural District Council
and extended in 1886.
Hay Mill had been rebuilt and greatly enlarged in 1865. Two
years earlier Thomas Horsfall, a partner in the wire-works, had
built a tiny chapel, also used as a school, at the end of the
Fordrough. He built St. Cyprian's Chapel, (enparished after five
years) over the Mill's side race in 1873. Amington Road, formerly
Tannery Lane, had been extended to the mill as Speedwell Road,
bordered by mean terraces: and new streets - George, Francis,
Redhill, and Arthur Roads - in addition to the north end of King's
Road, were being patchily built up with narrow-bayed terraces
during the 1880s. Industry was spreading along the canal: apart
from the long-established Tannery (Muscott's) there were three
brickworks just north of the waterway, and a foundry and the Vanguard
Works south of it. Clearly the housing growth in Hay Mills was
the result of industrial activity, beginning with the introduction
of steam power at the mill: this was no overspill from Birmingham,
for the town extended only as far as Victoria Park, so that it
cannot be compared. with Spark Brook: nor was it a rural dormitory
suburb like Acocks Green or Stechford. It is in fact Yardley's
only example of a self-contained industrial village. From the
1880s it had a growing shop centre on Coventry Road, Redhill Board
School opened in 1892, and there were three inns. As terraces
spread up the hill in the 1890s, a tall block was built with its
cellars in the holloway that had been the old line of Coventry
Road before the turnpike. Hay Mills Police Station was built in
terracotta in 1903: it bears the device of Worcestershire amid
its baroque stonework.
Church End had little growth to show, except at Stechford as
it now came to be called (another railway nisnomer). All Saints'
Mission began work in 1878, the present church being opened twenty
years later. Mary Road was the first of the so-called 'Royal Roads'
to be developed, its detached villas dating from 1865 onwards
and having fishing rights in the Cole - which were then worth
having. After Victoria House (1865) and Gumbleberries (1874),
Victoria and Albert Roads were gradually built up. Though most
of the varied structures are of the 1880s and 1890s, Stechford
is of all Yardley districts the most mixed in date and architecture.
There has never been any large-scale development, never a proper
centre, since the two ancient hamlets, Lower Stichford, and Fieldhouse,
were at the extreme north and south ends of the old field-bound
track that became Albert Road, now hardly affected by the suburban
growth. For nearly a century spaces have been infilled to individual
taste, every decade being represented. A unique development was
Northcote Road, two plain terraces on railway land (1890). By
1900 Albert Road was built up very much as now. At the north end
tunnel-back blocks were being erected, those on the east side
incorporating an old barn and cottage. South of the railway, the
west side had a large laundry and a continuous but summary-defying
collection of 2-and 3-storey villas in ones, twos, and terraces,
and similar buildings faced them south of the church. Victoria,
Mary and Frederick Roads were built up in like fashion but not
fully, and peripheral growth had begun on Morden, Francis, Lyttleton,
Richmond and Stuart Roads. At the five-way junction where Field
House stood, the first part of the much extended school went up
in 1896, and a 'centre' including shops converted from recently-built
3-storey terrace houses had begun to develop there. Beside the
ramp by which Station Road climbed to the railway bridge (1865,
replacing a level-crossing) the old lane acquired cottages of
1835-40. One of these was the earliest Methodist meeting-house,
since replaced by a chapel in Lyttleton Road.
More mansions in extensive grounds - Grange, Grove, Croft -
adjoined Yardley village. Two inns, the Malthouse, a fire station
and the Cottagers' Institute (1882) were buildings not hitherto
recorded: the farm kilns had gone out of use due to competition
from rail-borne Welsh slate. East of Cole Hall, the Solihull Sanitary
Board's sewage works were in operation, the Acocks Green sewage
farm being closed in 1901.
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