RELIEF & DRAINAGE

The slight local relief, varying only between 480 feet at Wake Green and 370 feet at the Cole / Spark confluence, is the work of natural drainage, which has shaped the surface. Former level plains, seen most clearly on Formans Road Recreation Ground and along Stratford Road through Hall Green, have been sculptured into gentle undulations by watercourses; these were not always the trickles of today, and there were once many more of them.

The main stream is the Cole, first documented in 972 as 'colle', known at other times as Greet Brook and Hay Mill Brook. It has a local gradient of about 15 feet in 1 mile, with break of slope near Stratford Road. During this century the Cole has been somewhat straightened as a flood control measure.

The Spark Brook, taking its name from a family resident hereabout in the C 13th, was described as 'a torrent' in 1511, but its gentle gradient and shortness suggest that it would rarely have deserved that name. It was a definite obstacle to travel, however, like all streams in this clay country, because of the undrained bogs, which bordered it.

The source of the brook was in a close called 'Springfield' on Yardley Wood Road opposite Woodstock Road, and its course underlies Stoney Lane almost to Stratford Road.

Thence it flows still underground between Walford and Benton Roads to join the Cole just south of the Oxford Railway embankment; today only the last half-mile of the brook is visible, in the former B. S. A. sports ground east of Golden Hillock Road.

In the C 18th there was a lake on the brook, taking its name from Danford, the crossing point. What is now Golden Hillock Road goes across the site of the lake dam.

'Showell Green Brook' is a convenient name for the rill which used to rise near the junction of Wake Green and Yardley Wood Roads. Its course is east-northeast, parallel to Oakwood Road along the Park edge, thence in a culvert to the Cole.

A tributary 'Park Brook' rose in Hazeldell, a little wooded hollow now vanished under new buildings of the Women's Hospital, and flowed southeast across the Park.

Several side-streams fan into the Cole; down Greet Mill Hill north of Shaftmoor Lane; from Greet Common north of College Road, its willowed course traceable until recently across the Yardley Poor Allotments; on the line of Fernley Road; and north of Warwick Road.

There were doubtless others, including tributaries of the Spark. On the East Side of our districts, Tyseley Brook flowed north from its source near Hall Green Church to join the Cole close to the Spark confluence. It is culverted for much of its course, feeding the Hall Green Sewer.

Index