Saxon Beginnings

The first documentary reference to our area is in the famous Charter of AD 972. In this King Edgar confirmed the Abbey of St. Mary (or Pershore) in its possession of many estates including 'five households in Gyrdleahe'. The name is pronounced 'Yerdley' and its given bounds enable us to state that this was our parent manor of Yardley. There is no reason to suppose that the settlement was then very recent, that the thousand years of recorded history which were celebrated in the Yardley Millenary Festival of 1972 were the total.

After the West Saxons' victory over a British alliance at Deorham (Dyrham) in 575, the way was open for their colonisation of Severn and Avon. Though movement into Arden may have been slow, it is probably that by the C 7th the Hwiccan kingdom centred on Worcester had reached its northmost extent. Anglian immigrants were moving into the middle of the Birmingham Plateau by way of Tame and Rea at the same time as Hwiccan colonists were advancing north along Ryknield Street and down the Coleside ridge. The two not dissimilar peoples, family groups looking for new homes away from settled lands of their immigrant ancestors, came into contact along the Cole and Spark.

Anglian Mercia and Hwiccan Wigornia established their common frontier thereon, as did the Sees of Lichfield and Worcester a century or so later. The Hwiccan origin of the first folk known in Yardley is apparently confirmed by the manor's inclusion with its neighbour (Kings) Norton in the Diocese of Worcester, established in AD 680. Wigornia later succumbed to Mercia, but that once-great kingdom had declined to a mere earldom by King Alfred's time.

Danish raiders were abroad in our area, for both the Roman fort at Metchley and Berry Mound were long known as 'Danes' Camp'. But the peace imposed by Alfred's victory sent the invaders back beyond Watling Street, and there was never a permanent settlement by Scandinavians hereabout, even after later incursions. Alfred's daughter Aethelflaeda, widow of the Mercian earl, continued to repel the Danes and to build strategic fortresses. King Edgar established the Midland shires by alloting contiguous Hundreds to the strongholds of Worcester, Warwick, and Stafford. As a property of Pershore Abbey Yardley belonged to Pershore Hundred, though far removed from the rest of it, and so went with it into Worcestershire like its neighbour Norton; it was to remain an anomalous promontory into Warwickshire until 1912.

The first inhabitants of Yardley to be known by name are three who appear in the boundaries recorded in the 972 Charter. Two of them (Mund & Leommann) lived in our Quarter. The valley of the Spark was the called Mund's Dean, and 'Leommaningweg' (the way of Leammann's folk) is identifiable as Stratford Road across Hall Green. There is of course no certainty that these men were still living in 972, or that theirs were two of the five households, but we may guess where they or their descendants were living, Mund's on Sparkhill and Leommann's either near the meeting of six tracks at Robin Hood or at Four Ways where the ridgeways cross. It is not unreasonable to suppose that all local boundaries had been settled by this time; we may wonder how so few people (c.50??) could have laid claim to 11.5 sq. miles of Yardley. But numbers in this late-settled wooded region were generally small. and there was enough land for all who came.