Local Government

It was necessary in the mid C 16th to replace the lapsed manorial system of administration. Two Acts established the Civil Parish of Yardley as the body collectively responsible for local government, answerable to the county magistracy. Each parish's major concerns - keeping the peace, highway maintenance, and poor relief - were thenceforward overseen by appointed and unpaid officials chosen from among the chief tenants.

So large a parish as Yardley could not be managed by a single team of Overseers, and initially there were three divisions, each with its own officials. All of the manor south of Warwick Road was called Broomhall End. In Stuart times the south west had become sufficiently populous to justify a further division, and Swanshurst Quarter came into being. Rate-collecting was to prove so onerous that a final sub-division into Near and Far Ends was made. The Quarters were still in being until the amalgamation of Poor Law Unions in 1912.