The early 19th century
In the absence of any surviving survey of this sort for 1766 or
any previous century, there is no means of producing a complete
picture of Yardley until the period of accurate map production.
The name, the church and village, and those parts of the boundary
which are also the shire borders, are shown on maps from 1586,
but until the l8th century, the scale is rarely greater than one
inch to four miles, and the few details shown are inaccurate.
The first One-Inch map of Warwickshire, Henry Beighton's, was
surveyed in 1722-5: it includes some features of the Worcestershire
promontory, but cannot be used to provide information about Yardley
as a whole. Not until the Ordnance Survey of 1812-17 was the entire
parish subjected to careful mapping, and it is from that late
date only that a comparative study of its development can be made.
This essay is based on all available maps from 1833, when two-inch
scale fair drawings were made from the first O. S. field-sheets,
to the present: on the author's investigation of vanished and
surviving buildings from earlier periods: and on a street-by-street
survey begun by a small group in 1965, completed by the author
a year later.
As the two-inch drawings are available in Birmingham only on
photostats and are difficult to interpret in detail, the following
chapter is derived from the first O.S. one-inch map, published
in 1834 but recording the survey of twenty-one years earlier.
While lacking some details of the larger-scale map, the one-inch
includes more names and is easier to read.
Road-names used throughout this essay are the modern ones.
In the map-study, every building named is so recorded on the map
then being examined. The number of buildings recorded in brackets
for a named area is usually that counted within a half-mile radius
of the central site, and is approximate: it necessarily includes
dwellings, farm buildings, inns, smithies, workshops, kilns, and
all other structures, and is given solely to provide comparisons
of building densities.
Yardley's population in 1812-17 was about 2,000, increasing
at a rate of 2% per annum. The average density of population was
170 to the square mile. The greatest concentration of buildings,
a relative term in a Parish having a fairly uniform pattern of
dispersed settlement, was the village alongside St. Edburgha's
Church. There were about 40 structures including Blakesley Hall
and May Cottage on the periphery. Eastwards of the untenanted
moat behind the church there was a complete absence of building
to the boundary. (Queens Road Park, with faint ridge-and-furrow
markings, and a copse on the site of the infilled moat, and the
Municipal Sports Ground have maintained this open area to the
present.)
Lesser groupings shown on the map in Church End Quarter are
'Lea Village' (not named) north-east from Lea Hall (13): at Stichford
(16) about the un-named Yew Tree junction: and a smaller wider
scatter in the half-square mile between Cole Hall and Pool Lane
(now Broadstone Road) (30). Single farms or other establishments
are Field House, Yardley Mill, Fast Pits, Smarts Hill: and there
is a disconnected scatter along both sides of Coventry Road (25).
Development is peripheral to Yardley Fields and Lea Field. From
other sources some of the buildings can be identified. Thus in
Yardley village, apart from church and school, there are known
to have been stables, and a smithy, an inn, four kilns, cottages
and a farm, almshouses, a lock-up, and a vicarage. But in the
absence of such knowledge for the whole parish, there is no point
to isolated naming except of buildings still standing or recently
razed.
In the other three Quarters of Yardley, a definite pattern
of settlement is even less easy to discern on the map. The sprinkle
of building was relatively densest from Spark Brook over Spark
Hill to Showell Green (about 40): there was a small group just
above normal flood level on both sides of the Cole at Greet (about
20), the eastern hamlet being presumably associated with Greet
Manor House there: scatters are found on Warwick Road at the Westley
Brook ford and near Acocks Green House (28): on the ridgeway,
Fox Hollies Road/Highfield Road, from Hall Green Hall to Tritterford
(27): on Amington Road, which ended at cottages now demolished:
on Waterloo and Yardley Roads to Field Gate Farm (23): on Stockfield
Road and about Arden Road, bordering the open fields (2l). No
building was shown on Yardley Road from Field Gate to Fox Green,
since it was then merely a field-bounding track between Acocks
Green and Stock Fields. On the Stratford Road between Shaftmoor
Lane and School Road there were 17 buildings. On the east side
of the Cole valley, in the un-named (and indeed nameless) area
about Slade and Scribers Lanes were 14, while along the west side,
on Priory and School Roads, there was a certain concentration
(35) bordering Yardley Wood Common, and a minor one along the
north edge of Billesley Common, from Bulley Hall (mis-named Billesley
Hall) to Yardley Wood Road (20).
Individual named buildings in Greet Quarter were Kite House,
New Inn, Hay Hall and Mill, Stockfield House, and Broomfield Hall.
In Broomhall Quarter were Tyseley House (Hall or Farm), Fox Green
(House), Irons (Hirons) Hall, Fox Hollies (Hall), Shaftmoor (Farm),
Greet Mill (Greetmill Hill Farm), Bushmoor Barn, and Broom Hall.
Swanshurst Quarter had Greet (Manor House), Sarehole, Lady (not
named) and Titterford Mills; Grove Farm, Green Bank, Sarehole
(Hall or Farm), White House (site of Billesley House), Billesley
Hall (Bulley Hall), Billesley and Quagmire Farms, Hillclose, Longfield
and Paradise Farms, Ivy House (on Slade Lane), Derbyshire's, Barton's
Folly (Barton's Lodge) and Handes Barn. Swanshurst Farm was marked
but not named, as were other farms and houses like Bloomers (Lea
Hall Farm), Pool Farm, Ivyhouse (Brook Lane), Tyseley and Ashleigh
Granges, Titterford, Tatterpool, Cole Bank and Gospel Farms, and
Cateswell.
Some other features of the 1838 map are: The Acocks Green tollgate
but no others: New Inn, named, and inns marked at Four and Six
Ways on Stratford Road, but no other known ones: the Workhouse
on Coventry Road: and tile works, south of Stichford on Station
Road and on 'Red Hill' opposite Deykins Road. Topographical names
include Yardley Field, Greet and Billesley Commons, and Yardley
Wood. Hall Green is given equal prominence with Yardley in lettering
size, presumably because of its chapel, since it is not even a
hamlet. Fords and road bridges are correctly shown but not footbridges
on the former. Streams and pools are shown accurately, and moats
are drawn and so named on Moat Lane and by the church. The apparent
mis-naming of the former Allestrey Hall moat as Kents Moat (further
mis-copied onto later maps as Rents Moat) is presumably due to
the positioning of the name and the omission of the Kents Moat
symbol above it. Only one canal wharf is shown, that at the end
of Wharf Road, on the Warwick Canal. Features found on the two-inch
drawing but not on the one-inch map are: field divisions apparently
hedges with large trees at intervals: the supposedly still open
fields of 1817 actually enclosed, but Wake Green, Billesley Common,
and Yardley Wood still common land: Swans Farm (Swanshurst) and
Tatterpool Farm (Titterford House) named, also Cowford Hall (site
at corner of Church Road/Lea Hall Road) shown near a ford on Yardley
Brook: and shaded Turnpikes with marked milestones. Stratford
Road was clearly then regarded as the London road, as its stones
(on the map and presumably on the ground) showed distances from
the capital - 113 miles at Green Bank.
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