ANCIENT ROADS

The first reference we have to any road is in the Charter of 972, which records on Yardley's south boundary Leommanningweg, the way of Leomann's folk. This is believed to be Stratford Road, or at least that part of it which crosses the flat Solihull Plateau through Hall Green, winding between tributary valley heads.

There would be a ridgeway between Cole and Spark, which was probably the west bound of Greet's first field, the second being cleared later. When Greet Mill was built to grind the produce of the fields, the gravely shallows usually to be found below the dams would become a favoured ford, with a well-used track down to it from Sparkhill and Hall Green.

In time this was to be the route by which the hides and timber of Arden went to Birmingham and Black Country coal and iron went to Arden, a regional highway.

Greet Mill Ford was to claim horses and men when crossings were attempted during flood; Roger Fullard was the first victim to be recorded in 1275.

Warwick Road followed a much more difficult route, and it is nor surprising that Stratford Road (not so called until the Avon Navigation made an inland port of Shakespeare's town) was the preferred route to the shire capital as far south as Hockley Heath.

Warwick Road starts at Spark Green on the drift which Stratford Road is able to use for most of its way across Yardley, but beyond Cole the steep slope is on uncapped clay; this stretch, and the valley of Tyseley Brook beyond, must have been practically impassable in and after wet weather.

Beside the Turnpike road of 1725-6 maps show a quarter-mile strip sixty yards wide going over the ridge east of Manor Farm; this was certainly the holloway worn by feet, hooves, and wheels in the wet clay.

There was a worn way on Stratford Road where it climbs towards the Council House; when the Turnpike was made alongside - and presumably before the No-Man's Land strip could be taken in by the owner of the adjacent land - two squatters' huts were thrown up in it. (See C 18-19th map) By the ancient law of Arden they were permitted to stay and enclose a patch.

It is probable that all the lanes shown on the first O. S. Map (c.1820) were in existence by the later Middle Ages; they and their former names appear on the appropriate map herein. As Formans Road crosses clay, a furlong of river silt, then clay again, its ancient name 'Foulmore Lane' is justified; if a was across the valley there had not been essential, it would have been abandoned as unusable!