OLD BUILDINGS

The oldest sites have been named above : few buildings survive upon them. Those which do are St. Edburgha's Church, the Trust School, Blakesley Hall, and Hillhouse Farm.

The church is the usual mixture of periods and styles. Starting at the southwest corner and going widdershins, we have the great contrast between the massive blocks of important sandstone that make the tower and the rubble masonry of the south wall and transept, which may well be of local stone from the Glebe Farm outcrop : the fragments certainly suggest that the supply of stone was limited.

Within the south wall, only part of the C 13th church to survive except for the re-set south door, are two Decorated windows of the next century, with the porch between them. The timbers of this are C 15th, like the tower and spire, but the stonework below is modern.

Transepts and nave were new built in the C 14th and the chancel was lengthened. The three-light window on the end transept wall is contemporary with these works, which created a new cruciform church. A recent boiler-house in the angle between transept and chancel obscures one of two Decorated windows and the priest's door between them. There is a C 13th lancet window above this, in its original position. The south chancel wall is a history in stone - rubble C 13th, irregular masonry C 14th, and uniform courses of rough-hewn stone at the end which, like the great East Window, date from 1890.

On the north side of the chancel; an arch infilled in C 14th stonework shows the site of a Decorated window of two lights : a large one near ground level indicates the former furnace-room. The cross plan of the Decorated church was lost when the north aisle was added in the C 15th and further hidden with the vestry addition in 1890. The original end window of the transept survives in situ. A lancet window was re-set in the vestry wall, whose other windows are late Victorian. Two Decorated windows from the former nave wall were re-set in the new outer wall, and later a Tudor doorway was cut between them. This had the pomegranate of Aragon and the Tudor rose in its spandrels, said to celebrate the marriage of Catherine to Prince Arthur.

The aisle's south window is Perpendicular, like the great windows of the tower, which are offset because of the spiral staircase in the south-west corner. The four-stage tower, with pinnacled parapet and crocketted spire, was the work of Henry Ulm, a master-mason who built similar ones for several parishes hereabout.

The grooves in the tower's south wall were apparently caused by the sharpening of knives and implements : Yardley lacks suitable stone for that process elsewhere.

In 1926 the church needed a new roof. Steel girders support it but the ancient beams were bolted beneath them. New courses were set on the top of the aisle walls, and carved corbels there included the two oldest spellings of Yardley's name, diocesan, royal, and family arms, the pomegranate and the rose.

The church contains monuments of local families, notably that of Humphrey Greswold who was Lay Rector in Tudor times. Of the pre-Reformation rood screen and six altars nothing survives and the interior has suffered many changes. The arms in the chancel are those of St. Chad, Canterbury, Worcester, Pershore Abbey, Twyford Priory, Catesby, and Maxstoke - the last four being claimants to ownership of the church in the Middle Ages.

The Trust School may have been built with a bequest of 1512, although there is no certain reference to it until 63 years later. The generous use of timber argues for the earlier date. The four-bay house has oversailing first floor and gable, decorated sills but plain brackets.

Of the original building only the west front and sagging north side with five brackets survive. Beyond this the building line continues with brick buildings - the eastmost surviving bay of the old school has been bricked on the ground floor - which are C 18-19th.

The first Georgian extension provided a home for the bachelor schoolmasters who had formerly lived on the first floor. The porch is modern, enclosing the original side door. The south face has been drastically repaired. Timbering survives over the porch and at the east end, but brickwork and large windows between are probably Victorian like the chimneys.

Since WW II the brick houses have been enlarged. The school remained in use for boys only (girls had ceased to attend when fees were demanded) until 1908, though there may have been a break in the C 16th. It is now used for parish meetings. A bequest had built it, and rent from many gifts of land maintained it. In time the income from sixteen pieces, eight in Church End, was enough to permit the opening of a school in Hall Green and held bridge maintenance.

Nearby Blakesley Hall was originally a moated farmhouse as were all dwellings any size. The site used to be visible just to the east of the Tudor Hall but has been levelled for use as a carpark. Richard Smallbroke built the present hall beside it in about 1575.

Though not built to the fashionable E-plan, supposedly in honour of Elizabeth I, having but one main wing, the hall reflects Smallbroke's wealth in its decorative timbering : herring-bone and quadrant woodwork was showy and costly in a period of declining woodland. Whether the school and hall were originally thatched is unknown. The great weight of later tiles may explain the sagging floors of both.

Local tile-making had continued, as we know from the excavations of West Hall (Kents Moat) half a mile away in Sheldon.

A humbler house survived until two decades ago. Vintage Cottage in Blakesley Road appeared to be C 17th chequerboard (square-frame open timbering) infilled with brick, dormered, high-chimneyed. Hillhouse Farm, a three-storeyed house with shouldered gables, is the last building on a site that may have been occupied for a thousand years or more. Pebble-dashed and dilapidated, long since abandoned as a dwelling, it cannot long survive.

Lea Tavern, also Stuart in date, was demolished this century. Such buildings as last long enough to be photographed were, except for those described above, always of brick, Georgian or later, replacing the earlier timbered ones.