THE RIVER COLE

Forming the west and north bound for seven miles, an obstacle to travel but usable for fishing, power, and perhaps navigation, the river was of some importance in Yardley's economy, as were its meadows. When largely bordered by forest which retained water and fed it gradually to numberless rills and brooks, the Cole was wider and deeper than now, and less subject to quick flooding and subsiding.

Deforestation, piped drainage, diversion of brooks into sewers, and the aim of successive river authorities to dispose of flood-water promptly in straight channels, all cause fast run-off. During the settlement centuries, but mostly during the last one, the once-replete drift reservoirs have been much drained by domestic and industrial wells and pumps. Many brooks have dried up or gone to flush sewers, like Yardley Brook.

No evidence can be offered for the Cole as a navigable river, but as there were no bankside roads until recent times and water travel was so much smoother than the use of the abominable lanes, it is quite reasonable to suppose that flat-bottomed boats like wide punts would have been in use, carrying goods if not passengers, between Hay Mill and Stichford. East therefrom the flood-plain is at its widest, laved by the great meanders, and full access to it for pasture and hay crops was not gained until earthenware pipe drainage was installed in the C 19th.

From the 1200's the Cole was being used to provide power. Through most of Yardley its average gradient is 17 feet per mile, so that a half-mile leat gives a 'head' sufficient for nine-foot diameter wheel. (See my Watermills of the Cole and Blythe Valleys.) Greet Mill was first, Wood Mill (Wash Mill) second, in 1349.

'Wash' indicates the oft'washed flood-meadow in which it lay. The last buildings of mill and attached farm stood west of, Millhouse Road opposite Mintern Road. Its triangular pool was fed by a leat from the Cole at Hay Mill Bridge - still shown on uncorrected street-maps, but long since infilled. The timbered mill was restored in 1385 by Roger Bradewell, who undertook the task in return for a lowered rent. The Cole mills, like its bridges, suffered frequent damage from floods, less from water than from material afloat which crashed into them.

Wash Mill, sometimes called Yardley Mill as it was the nearest in the manor to the village, was in decay in 1525, but the pool was being rented for its fish crop. At a later date unknown, possibly 1751, the mill was rebuilt in brick with farm buildings beside it and continued to grind corn until early this century. The farm was demolished prior to the construction of the municipal estate nearby in the mid-Twenties, the pool being then drained but not infilled.

Rubble from bombed houses was dumped into the bed during the Fifties, the site being levelled, and Kestrel Avenue now covers the site of millpool and lower leat. Stichford Mill, long a corn grindery, made paper after Georgian rebuilding : it lay across the Cole in Little Bromwich manor, and its ruins were cleared a few years ago in the making of a recreation ground above Stichford. There is one known windmill site in Church End : this was south of Lea Hall, where Holbeach Road approaches the Meadway.