Boundaries

Border negotiations have been in the news locally for some years. Remember Birmingham's frustrated attempt to take in Wythall, the 1966 adjustments with Solihull, and the recently proposed allotment to that borough of a large slice of Hall Green territory ! Not the city faces the prospect of absorption into a Metropolitan County which ought to be called 'Bigger Brum' but isn't. Last year who were concerned in schools' contribution to the Yardley Millenary Festival sent many hundreds of children and some adults to walk the ancient bounds of Yardley, demonstrating to themselves and their sponsors that we are all honorary Yardleians, other loyalties notwithstanding. Having escaped the Solihull shark, and being not yet swallowed whole by the West Midlands whole, let us look at that part of Yardley's border which is also the city's and the Association's.

Until 1911 Birmingham stopped at Sparkbrook, and Yardley Rural District marched with Solihull from Gilbertstone to Highters Heath. The boundaries which the city acquired hereabout in that year had survived with little or no change since the C 10th : this we know because they were listed in the Charter of 972 whose thousandth anniversary is now being celebrated. (Rightly so ! Yardley pre-dates Birmingham in record if not in foundation, and is Solihull's elder by some centuries.) The eager bounds-beater would soon be lost, however, whether he set out in 972 or today : like the surveyor who first recorded topographical features as checkpoints, he would need a guide.

In a sparsely settled region such as this, natural landmarks were used to define borders wherever possible - watercourses, once much larger and more numerous than now, springs, giant trees, erratic boulders left by melting ice-sheets, bogs and clearings. Usually two territories met along the centre of a stream and any ponds thereupon. No work was involved, and the demarcation was indisputable. True, streams do change course due to their normal wearing action on one bank or another, which is why a boundary may sometimes be found along the line of a former channel : but the convenience of watercourses explains why 12 miles of Yardley's boundaries out of 17 lay along them.

To the east of us hereabout is a less usual delineation, where for 2.5 miles the bound runs parallel to and 2-300 yards from the Kineton Green Brook which flows north-east across Robin Hood Golf Course. This was probably the line where oak forest met boggy brookside meadow. It would seem that the Anglian folk of Cinctun (Kineton Green) were there before the Saxon Yardleians and established a claim to both sides of the brook, as Beorma's folk did on the Rea at Birmingham, or that at some earlier time they were able to impose a settlement upon their few neighbours to the west. Meadows were valued assets, providing summer pasture and winter hay. However this part of the bound was first established, it was to survive until 1966.

Let us now take part in that first recorded perambulation of Yardley's bounds, accompanying the official from Pershore Abbey and his guide - and remembering to take a 1972 street plan. Crossing the ridge along which Coventry Road does not yet lie, with the unrecorded Gilbert Stone left behind, we pass the Boundary Thorn and press on southward through patchy woodland, following a faint track marked by blazed trees. Narrow Brook bars our path : we identify it as Westley Brook and ford it at a point near the present dip and bend in Gilbertstone Avenue.

The wide bogs of Kineton Green Brook are not to our left and for more than two miles we pick a way between the mire and dense undergrowth at the forest edge. Kington Brook, coming down through what will be Fox Hollies Park but is a marsh in 972, must be crossed, and then we approach a bog which seems quite impassable : but our guide steps out boldly and we follow in his steps, finding the firm ground of Hidden Ford. Safely across, we pinpoint our position, and find that since the last ford our path has followed - or should one say, preceded - Gospel Lane. Hidden Ford is at the dip near Leysdown Road. Our guide leads us off the lane, keeping parallel to the brook as before, but now the going is easier, the soil drier and sandy, with broom growing in little hollows.

We have reached Broomy Nooks, Bromhales in the guide's speech, and White Ley is ahead. This is a natural clearing in the wood. which has remained thick and seemingly impenetrable to our right throughout the walk. In our own time the ley will be the south end of the golf course. A little further south the guide identifies a track that crosses ours as that which leads to the homestead of Leomann - the Way of Leomann's Folk. We know it as Stratford Road. Beyond, a sandy slope dotted with rabbit holes becomes the stream bed, and we are looking down it into the reedy, willow-bordered valley of a fair-sized river. We cannot recognise it, but its name - Colle - is the first given during our journey that can positively be identified since it has survived to the present.

The perambulation accounts exist for 1495 but those of 1609 are more detailed and might be followed.......It is May, just before Ascension-tide. Crossing the 'water of Coal' at Bates Mill (Colebrook Priory Mill) are 24 sworn jurors, 12 each from Yardley and Solihull. They met at a crossing of tracks on Highters Heath, where the woods of their two manors joined that of King's Norton, and are now walking their common bounds - going anti-clockwise as was customary. They and we, with a number of boys and dogs, ascend the Shirley Brook. It is so named because it marks the county boundary, the Shire-ley being a clearing settlement of the Warwickshire side.

The Parish Clerk who is recording landmarks puts down neither Bates Mill Pool on the Yardley Wood Brook, nor Shirley Mill Pool : perhaps they did not exist in 1609. The former is still a pleasant fishpond west of Priory Road, and the bed of the latter may still be seen between Watwood and Geoffrey/Dunard Roads. Climbing out of the Cole Valley we pass through closes called Finchalls, Radmore, and Conygre (Rabbit Warren) Croft.

Leaving the brook near its source on Sandy Hill, we continue north-east to the 'highway from Birmingham towards Henley'. As wide as a motorway, it is as difficult to cross, but this is due to deep ruts and potholes rather than the traffic ! It would be easier to go across country than to use this morass as a road. In our own time we could not follow from Shirley Brook to Stratford Road, because the desirable residences of forty years ago have blocked the perambulation path. North of the highway, however, we may still follow in the footsteps of our Jacobean bounds-beaters, so let us do so......The Bridle Path by the modern 'bus terminus takes us past a house called Steelfields, the property of Sir Richard Grevis - pay due respect to the manorial lord of Yardley (No, he does not live here, but at Moseley Hall.)

Now we are on the bounding lane which the jurors call Langley Lane, known to us as Redstone Farm Road after a farm at the far north end. One might suppose that the lane always formed the boundary throughout its length as it does now : but the true and sworn men we are following have turned along a track towards a distant farmhouse. This we discover is the half-timbered Langley Hall, its name taken from the long strip of meadow beside Kineton Green Brook.

The farm and its land are in but only just in Solihull : on the Yardley side is a croft called Clay Wall. From our street plan we find that the city boundary runs down the centre of Redstone Farm Road/Gospel Lane, and that the part of the golf course formerly in Yardley has recently been overbuilt. Langley Hall's C 18th brick buildings have given place to the Hall Green Social Club headquarters.

During our map-reading, the 24 honest parishioners have pressed on north-east from Langley Hall to rejoin Langley Lane. There, waiting beneath a huge oak tree which was growing when the first Saxons arrived, are 12 men of Lyndon. This was a detached part of Bickenhill Manor, whose boundary with Yardley extends north as far as Lyndon Green. The Solihull men take their final oath upon the 'meares', join in a brief service beneath the Gospel Oak (in whose ancient bark a cross has been carved), and return whence they came. The Yardleians trudge on with the jurors of Lyndon, and we accompany them along the lane, over the 'Rasse', which is the brook descending through Fox Hollies Park - so called perhaps, because it was the race from Broomhall Mill - and across the Sixty Lands to 'the highway from Birmingham towards Solihull'. The 'lands', indicating strip cultivation thereabout, used to lie across the border, but since 1966 they are wholly in Yardley/Birmingham as a schools' p[laying field.

Before we take a well-earned rest, let us pause on our way back on the site of the Gospel Oak - the tree, not the public house, which stands on the site of Gospel Farm. The exact site of the Oak is hard to determine, but it was probably just off Gospel Lane's east side, nearer Leysdown Road than Broomhall Crescent. One cannot be sure, because the tree was cut down in or before 1846 : the Vicar of Shirley planted a new one on the site and conducted a service, but the sapling did not long survive. Even at that date the bog which was crossed by Hidden Ford in Saxon times had not dried up or been drained, for the spot was still called Foul Slough Meadow.