John Taylor, Lord of Yardley, Major Landowner in Sheldon

I have made a fortune in my Birmingham factory. Five hundred people work for me in Union Street, making buckles, buttons, and snuff-boxes. I use my money to buy land in and around Birmingham, and I own nearly as much as there is in the whole of Sheldon manor: but much of my land is not in Sheldon but in Yardley, of which I am Lord of the Manor. My home used to be Bordesley Hall, but now I live in Moseley Hall. I often ride out to see my farms in Sheldon: my tenants are encouraged to improve their land, and so get better crops, by using lime and marl, and to plant root crops and then sell in Birmingham.

I can afford the expense, and shall get my money back in increased rents as the tenants make more profit. John Snape has been making careful surveys of all my estates, and is now drawing maps of them. A good deal of land is still being wastefully farmed in strips, and I intend to seek agreements with other land-owners to enclose the open fields, dividing them up into compact holdings on which new farms can be built. If we can't agree we may have to go to Parliament to sort it out, but that is very expensive for everyone involved.

Farms and cottages are being rebuilt in brick. Some of these farms can be big enough for many families of labourers, people who will lose their very small holdings and have to work for someone else. Orphan children are a problem in every parish, costing the rate-payers a great deal, but I am able to employ many of them in my factory in the town.

Lord Digby is lord of Sheldon, and he has made a deer park of the old West Hall demesne around Kents Moat. He and I, with the few other large land-owners, have to provide carts and men to maintain the roads of Sheldon. All tenants have by law to do some work on the roads every year, but the work is poorly and grudgingly done because it is unpaid and they can see little benefit to themselves as they never travel more than a mile or two. Lanes are deeply sunk and rutted, while fords across the brooks are often impassable. There is but one good road in the parish, and that is the Coventry Turnpike : there is a toll-gate by the Wheatsheaf Inn, where payment must be made for use of this highway.

Every year people leave Sheldon, mostly to work in Yardley or Birmingham, because they cannot find work in the parish. If all the land was enclosed, the meadows drained, the roads improved, and the new methods of farming used, there might be work and a good living for everyone but not everyone would farm the land. I am doing what I can to make the bare Sheldon landscape more pleasant, as well as more profitable, by hedge and tree planting. The trees give shelter to the fields as well as an eventual source of firewood.

Mr. John Taylor himself drives up in his carriage together with the surveyor of his new Sheldon estates, Mr. Snape. He is a very wealthy manufacturer in Birmingham, buying and improving land all round town. (Later to found Taylor and Lloyd's Bank, which became Lloyds Bank PLC) Arranges to take four orphan children as apprentices - usual way of getting them 'off the parish', reducing the heavy Poor Rate which all landed people had to pay.

Children walked down to the well-made Coventry Turnpike to see one of the mail-coaches flash by : horn in distance, gatekeeper ran from his house to swing tollgate wide open.

Coach on time to the minute. Return past rebuilt Mott House (former Lyndon Manor House), follow path from village to Cockshutt : south fields all enclosed now, small quadrilaterals mostly. Past windmill stump to hamlet of Garretts Green, two large farms and others on former common land.

In the village of Sheldon are now about 70 houses, farms and cottages with a total population of about 400 people who are spread around fields and along the little lanes. The centre of the village is by St. Giles Church, but less than half the people live close to the centre.

Most people earn their living on the farms where they earn about 1/- (one shilling = 5p.) per day, but that is quite a fair wage in this district.