Watercourses and Standing Water in The Manor of Yardley

The River Cole is about 25 miles long. It rises on the lower slopes of Forhill, one of the south-western ramparts of the Birmingham Plateau, and flows largely north-east across the plateau to enter the River Blythe below Coleshill, Its source is very near the main watershed of Midland England : tributaries are few and very short except in the lower reaches, outside Yardley, so the Cole is only a small stream.

Average gradient of the central reaches is 10 1/2 feet in a mile. There is a fast run-off from the drift covered clay which makes up its catchment area, and heavy rain produces sudden floods : in the absence of replenishing side-streams these subside as quickly as they rise. The Cole is normally shallow, except where weirs maintain an artificial depth.

The name is probably Celtic, from the word meaning 'hazel'. In the Charter of AD 972 the river throughout Yardley is 'Colle' : it has since borne several different local names.

972 Colle
1275 Maerebroc (Boundary Brook)
1495 Water of Cowle
1609 Water of Cole
1649 Inkford Brook (south of Yardley)
1700's Hemill, Hay Mill Brook
1700's Low Brook (south of Yardley)
1700's Greet Brook

The Cole has been employed to work 12 watermills, 5 of them in Yardley, and its tributaries 8 possibly 9; of which 2 were in our manor. Riverside ones were at Greet (ref.1275), Sarehole (pre-1542), Hay Mill (1495), Wash Mill (? 1385) and Titterford (1779). The others were Lady Mill on Coldbath Brook (1685), Broomhall (1778) and a possible mill powered by Danford Lake.

The oldest fords across the Cole were probably at Titterford and Stechford, where the through-Yardley ridgeway descends into the valley. Rotyford on Yardley Green Road was a crossing of necessity, but a bad one in clay - its name seems to mean 'slimy or slippery' - whereas the others had firm gravel beds. It is at least possible that from early medieval times millweirs at Titterford and Stechford held back the river, creating a shallows blow which could in normal flow be forded safely. (For practical reasons later and most rebuilt mills were sited in riverside meadows and fed by leats.)

Certainly at Greet Mill Stratford Road diverges to cross below the site of the weir, making use of the gravel bed and the customary shallows - but from the C 13th there are records of men and horses swept away there during floods. Hay Mill ford, so called, was far downstream of the mill and below the confluence with the sometime 'torrent' of Spark Brook, so that it too must have been dangerous after heavy rain.