Local Government (Part 1)

More than 4 years have passed since the last unwelcome changes. It is a good time to look back over the history of local government hereabout.

The first evidence of authority and organisation in our area is Berry Mound, that great earthen hill-fort in Solihull Lodge, whose construction must have required generations of arduous labour. It indicates a strong controlling power, perhaps a family of chiefs who could command the energies of many men in this northern part of Arden during the century before the Roman conquest. But whether they were akin to their subjects or as alien as were the Romans and Normans we cannot say. Before and after the Claudian invasion (44 AD) this region was a No Man's Land between major tribes who retained their identity as states within the Empire. Of provincial power thereabout during the Roman peace little is known, though it lasted for more than three centuries.

In Anglo-Saxon times the folk-moot was the instrument of local authority, it was a democratic gathering which elected the chief and settled disputes. Frank-pledge was the system of justice : in this the tithing or decenary was collectively responsible for the conduct of ten men and their families which comprised it. Ten tithings formed a hundred and they met at the Hundred Moot, every four weeks. The name stayed the same while the numbers belonging to it grew. Yardley was the northmost part of the Hwiccan (West Saxon) kingdom whose capital was Worcester. Owned by Pershore Abbey from the tenth to thirteenth century, it was included in Pershore Hundred and its representatives were required to travel the long and hard way to the Avon for the Moot.

When shires were established, about A.D.1000 in the Midlands, supportive areas were allotted to fortress towns by Hundreds. So Hwiccan Yardley, already in the Bishopric of Worcester, went to the shire of Worcester, with the rest of Pershore Hundred and stayed with it until 1912. The Shire Moot met twice yearly, attended by Yardley's reeve, four prominent tenants, and the priest of St. Edburgha's church. Its concerns were justice, tax collection, roads and bridges, and military service.

In Domesday Book (1086) Yardley appeared as a 'member' of Beoley : the two manors shared a rad man (literally 'riding man' who was the Abbot's reeve.)

William the Conqueror abolished the folk-moots, replacing them with individual manor courts. He wanted none of that election nonsense. 'Every man must have a lord', the court baron, which met twice a year to administer justice. Manorial officials included the Bailiff, Conners (food and drink inspectors), the Constable and his assistant the Headborough : these were all appointees of the lord's steward, who presided at the courts. Shires, now called counties, were controlled by the King's sheriffs (shire-reeves). Frank-pledge and Hundred Moots continued. Thus in Norman and Medieval times administration and justice were controlled by a blend of Anglo-Saxon and Norman-French institutions.

As manor courts declined with the replacement of labour services by money rents and the nobility killed itself off in civil wars, the local gentry acting as justices acquired greater powers. Ecclesiastical parishes were often, as at Yardley, co-extensive with manors. Two C 16th Acts gave onerous tasks to the Civil Parish of Yardley, often called the Vestry because the officials met therein.

From 1547 Overseers, appointed annually by the Justices from among the chief tenants in turn, were required to find work for orphans and fit paupers, money for the sick and indigent, and to keep a register of householders and the poor. Surveyors of Highways similarly appointed from 1555, were responsible for putting parishioners to repairing the roads on their begrudged 'statute days', for ensuring that the wealthy provided carts and horses, and for collecting rates to pay for materials.

So large a parish as Yardley could not be served by one set of overworked and unpaid officers. Originally there were three divisions of the parish south of Warwick Road, one being called Broomhall. Later the south was sufficiently populous to become one of four Quarters. Broomhall then lay between Warwick and Stratford Roads, and Swanshurst was the large area to west and south of the latter highway. The Association spreads into both Quarters, which were named after mansions whose tenants would have to undertake many tasks of local government : the names of members in these families occur frequently in parish documents.

Later population growth, and the ever-greater burden of the poor brought sub-division of the Quarters into Near and Far Ends, each with overseers and surveyors.

The parish constable, assisted by the headborough and thirdborough of each Quarter, had to prepare lists of men for militia training, keep the peace, lock malefactors into the stocks or the stone .lockup by the church school, and take the major criminals to Worcester Assizes. The vestry system survived with little change other than that of title to Parish Council, until the late C 19th. Meanwhile the Yardley Courts Leet and Baron continued to be held at the Trust School : the Taylor squires maintained these anachronistic meetings until 1820.