A Hundred Years Ago

A walk through our area, not yet known by the single district name of our title would be pleasant, if dusty, in the high summer of a hundred years ago. The scenery would be familiar enough, looking much like the rural Midlands we know. There are neatly laid and trimmed hedges, scythed verges, and deep ditches bordering potholed lanes. (Several of these public roads were narrowed and improved following the final enclosures three decades ago.) We see few stands of large trees, but oaks and elms grow in old hedgerows. The fields are small quadrilaterals, many having ponds in their corners : these are former marl-holes and pits, the clay having been dug our for spreading on the gravely topsoil to increase its fertility or for brick-making in farmyard kilns.

The rural peace is broken only by bird-song, the cackle of hens, the occasional bellow from a discontented cow, or the sound of a shotgun. There are game-birds, rabbits, and hares in plenty. The Cole is clear and well stocked with fish, as are the millponds. Poachers still operate on dark nights, ignoring notices they cannot read. The air is fresh, for the westerly winds blow away the smoke from the reeking town four miles away in the next county.

Turnpikes have been abolished three years ago, Stratford Road is now free of toll : at Cole Bank the old gate has long since been propped open and will soon collapse altogether, followed by the tumble-down tollhouse. Across the way stands the enlarged Charity School. Since the opening of the Oxford Railway in '52, with a station at Acocks Green and connections to Stratford and London, there have been no coaches on the highway. But there is still plenty of work for the smiths - near the school in Webb Lane, and down by the Cole Bridge. Wagons to and from the town, carriages and traps, saddle-horses, and an occasional road locomotive, churn up the dust of the unbound surface.

Hall Green Hall, its origin as the home of the Haw family long forgotten, has a new brick wing in the Gothic style which accords with ancient timber. Behind is the large Georgian stud farm where racehorses are bred, while across the green Marston Chapel has been enlarged : the transepts and apse of 15 years ago, lacking the stone balustrade of the Queen Anne buildings, still look very new. Down the lane Fox Hollies Hall is also an 1860 rebuilding, in Osborne Italianate, with stables, kennels and farm buildings. Standing back from Six Ways, not often called Robin Hood after the small inn nearby on Broad Lane (Shirley Road) is the new brick mansion in no identifiable style, Robin Hood House. There are cottages about the junction green, while Robin Hood Farm and the Old Crown Inn stand on the west side of the main road beyond Baldwins Lane.

Alongside Broad Lane, where the swamp called Bushmore has been drained by earthenware pipes, there is now a racecourse, with two small stands. Horses from the stud farm are exercising on it. At Four Ways the Bull's Head, handsomely rebuilt in the coaching heyday, is struggling to survive on local custom : it has a future not yet imagined, for in another decade or so, steam tramcars will be bringing hordes of townees on fine evenings and weekends to the Cole Valley, and cyclists will pause en route for Henley and Stratford. In about 60 years time the Bull's Head will be the local pub for thousands of new Hall Greeners. Meanwhile the district enjoys its self-sufficient rural peace.