GEORGIAN TIMES

No map is drawn for the C 18th because the detail would be conjectural. Beighton's 'Mapp' of Warwickshire (1725) shows the bounding features of Yardley since the manor is largely surrounded by his county, and also the crossing highways with their intersections. It is possible to draw a road-plan based on these and known dwelling-sites, but a century later the Ordnance Survey fills in all the blanks and probably shows the Georgian scene largely unchanged.

Coventry Road was turnpiked in 1745, but three decades later William Hutton said of it that it was 'exceeding bad, even dangerous, only to be compared with the Dudley Road' - which he called 'despicable beyond description' ! No wonder that Stratford Road was then the preferred road to London. Coventry Road's line was chosen for the Turnpike, despite the awesome gorge on Red Hill, because it avoided a number of villages, including Yardley and Sheldon.

There was probably a tollgate at Hay Mill Bridge - tolls were still being taken there 80 years ago : others were at Small Heath and Sheldon. The road was to remain barely usable - in good weather - until Thomas Telford's work in the 1800's when the Red Hill holloway was abandoned. It could still be seen beside the highway west of Waterloo Road until a few years ago : villas next to Ada Road had their cellars built in it.

The increase of buildings along Church Road north and south of the church gave it the character of a straggling street village. Bad communications and poor water supply ensured that it would never prosper. In this period an enterprising carter began to supply fresh water : the service was so popular that when his horse died the parish bought him another, and when he died his wife was persuaded to take over.

A strange happening in 1772 was an earthquake, a very minor earth tremor which shook Church End houses and startled the sheep. By then there were 24 tile-works in Yardley, most of them in the Quarter and Greet, producing 150,000 tiles annually and large numbers of bricks.

Transport was a problem, and this was to be solved when the Birmingham and Warwick Canal was cut through the Stockfield ridge in the 1790's. Coal came to the wharf off Yardley Road, providing cheaper fuel for hearth and kiln - it had previously been brought by cart from Wednesbury at great cost - and also a better means of moving baked clay products to Birmingham and elsewhere.

Though not in Church End the canal was a blessing to its inhabitants as to those nearer, especially when flyboats began to ply - at 10 mph - between Stockfield and Camp Hill.

Of course the towpath, like the turnpike, proved to be a highway for criminals : Aris's Gazette printed frequent warnings to poachers, offers of rewards for information leading to arrest, and accounts of armed attacks on Yardley houses. Shutters on windows were not mere decoration in those days !

Known buildings of the period are Cole Hall, Lea Hall ('a large modern house' in 1767), the Talbot Inn, and the Workhouse (1787) : the last stood on Coventry Road at Holder Road (opposite corner to the police station) and was in use until Solihull Union Workhouse opened in 1839. It was then converted into a tenement, and lasted into this century.

So few of the farms and mansions known from map and record have been drawn or photographed that their building period cannot be determined, but doubtless many were Georgian, like those at the south end of the village.

Cole Hall was 90 acres, Lea Hall and Bloomers (The Lea) Farm together with 170 acres were characteristic of the Church End farms. The original two great fields were still in strips though no longer farmed 'according to the custom of the manor'. Riddings and the Lea Fields were enclosed.

There were allotment patches in the Quarter : Hutton used to walk from Saltley to put in two hours work on his plot before breakfast ! Matthew Boulton owned Walters Farm. He sold it to the Vicar of Yardley, so that it was thenceforth known as Glebe Farm. If the moat site had not already been abandoned. it was when the late Georgian farmhouse was built.

There were still a few stands of timber in Church End, oaks and ashes, on offer. Whether they were the last surviving clumps of primeval forest left as game preserves or new plantations from Tudor times we cannot now tell.