Buildings of the District

A traveller about Hall Green as recently as 60 years ago could have found examples of domestic and other architecture from the 1500's onwards. Now our oldest surviving structure is Queen Anne (1704), and we have only one other from the C 18th. Let us take a safety cycle ride around the area before World War I and look.

To follow the sequence chronologically we must dodge about, returning to some sites where later additions or changes have been made. Starting at Hall Green Hall (Charles Lane Almshouses site), whose central structure is a typical open hall of early Tudor times : it consists of a heavy timber frame, the rectangular spaces between the beams infilled with wickerwork-strengthened plaster called wattle-and-daub. At the south end a two-storey gable has been added, and later a gabled wing whose timbers are even wider apart, due to the increasing scarcity and cost of wood. It is probable that the spaces were infilled with small bricks at once, but as early brickwork was often plastered over and whitewashed, this cannot always be detected.

Leaving the Hall with regret, because we know that it will be demolished in 1936, while still sound, we move to a building of similar age. It is Little Sarehole, just across Four Arches Bridge on the Cole, a checkerboard timber and plaster farmhouse with a steep-pitched roof and very tall chimney. (This will have become a tumble-down hovel by the 30's, when it will be pulled down.)

Shaftmoor Farm stands beside a rutted lane named after it, on a site where Elts' Garage will later be. It is an Elizabethan mansion of three identical gables, with a central porch and tall elaborate brick chimneys. When we visit, it has some minor alterations, and its walls are completely covered by ivy.

On Highfield Road we find Old House Farm (Longfield Hall) and Hill Close Farm. They, like Old Fox Hollies Hall, are probably C 17th in date. They are built wholly of local brick and tile, with gable-ends projecting above the roof-lines.

Marston Chapel is a pleasant small-brick rectangle with stone balustrade and quoins, and a copper-domed bell cupola. This original structure is our oldest building.

Now we must peddle swiftly along the rutted lanes, sparing only a glance for many buildings. The dilapidated tollhouse on the former Turnpike dates from the third decade of the C 18th, the Charity School opposite is dated 1754, and Paradise Farm is but a few years younger. Sarehole Mill needs no description because it survives to 1976, and since restoration the main building is much as it was when first built about 220 years ago. Greet Mill, rebuilt 5 years later, is similar in appearance.

Alongside Titterford Mill of 1783 stands a three-storey farmhouse with outbuildings. Roofs follow local fashion in having broad bands of Yardley tiles in two shades of red. Sarehole Farm has garrets above byres and barns which house employees' families : like many others hereabout it was rebuilt on a U-plan around a central yard. Later Georgian times saw much rebuilding - Sarehole, Titterford House (Tatterpool Farm) on Highfield Road, Greetmill Hill, Farm on Shaftmoor Lane, Yew Tree Farm on Scribers Lane, Shirley Road cottages, and Cateswell House on Stratford Road. These are all very plain buildings, utilitarian but pleasing because of their good proportions.

Returning to the Charity School, we look over the 1829 enlargements. There are several farms we must avoid visiting, as no picture or description has survived to make possible our pretence of viewing them : these include Scrib('n)ers Farm, Sandpits on Shirley Road, Ivyhouse in Baldwins Lane, Barton's Lodge and Robin Hood Farm.

The Bull's Head, which replaced an old coaching inn, dates from about the accession of Queen Victoria. A late barn of Greetmill Hill Farm (in Leominster Road now) bears its date, 1850, on a plaque. Highfield House is of about that time, last in the late Georgian style before architecture goes into fancy dress. We go back to Marston Chapel to see the short transepts and apse of 1860, which lack the balustrade of the original building. The bricks are larger and machine-made.

Nearby Fox Hollies Hall is a rebuilding of that era, brick under stucco with stone decorations, in an alien Italianate style : its stables, kennels, lodge and outbuildings make it the most imposing mansion in the district. Robin Hood House of about a decade later tries to outdo it with what might be called Renaissance Railway details. At Hall Green Hall a Victorian Gothic wing appears in the 80's and near the century's end Cateswell sprouts plain but incongruous additions. Our cycle-ride ends with a run past the substantial villas of the Severnes' 'Hamlet' and the Yardley Board School on Stratford Road : they were built between 1887 and 1893 in the newly-fashionable terra-cotta and glazed brick.