NINETEENTH CENTURY

A row of almshouses was built beside the Trust School about 1800. New Bridge, the present one, was a decade later. The churchyard was enlarged in 1833.

The Napoleonic Wars and the Corn Laws thereafter kept the price of grain high and farming profitable. Many farms were rebuilt as groups of substantial brick and tile structures, as the maps show. Yardley Farm (1837) is the only one in the whole manor to survive intact. The large farmhouses provided quarters for family and single workers and there were garrets for workers' families over some of the out-buildings.

The Tithe Commutation Act, which substituted money rents based on acreage for tithes in kind, made accurate large-scale maps essential. Those for Yardley on 1843, each Quarter separate to a scale of 12 inches to the mile, are finely drawn, showing every building, close, lane and track.

They give us an accurate picture of Yardley for the first time, though the First Edition of the OS One-Inch Map published a few years earlier is not despised. Final enclosures having followed an Act of '35, the whole parish was now in individual ownership : because the newly-enclosed pieces were numbered differently from those mapped around them, it is possible to identify them.

The extent of the open fields at enclosure is shown on Maps 1 & 3. Only patches of Stichford and Church Fields had survived in Church End, though there were commons elsewhere.

From the Schedule we learn that Squire Taylor owned Hillhouse Farm, Rev. Gwyther owned Glebe Farm, Henry Greswold land about the Turnpike, Wash Mill and Blakesley Farm, Margaret Steward Bachelors Farm, the Earl of Digby Lea Fields and Cowford Hall. The villa which became Yardley Arms Inn and the cottages thereby like those on Old Stoney Lane beside the Station Road ramp, post-date enclosure.

Lanes improved as part of the Act were Yardley Fields Road, Stoney Lane, and Cole Hall Lane. A lane near the Lyndon border was made into a private drive to Old Gilbertstone in '46, being replaced by what is now Manor House Lane (it led to Lyndon Manor House, demolished in the 1960's).

Robert Stephenson's London to Birmingham Railway was opened in 1838. It cut through Church End's ridges, between Lea Hall and Bloomers, north of Cowford Hall and south of Stud Farm and Hillhouse, was banked over Yardley Brook valley and level at Stoney Lane. High brick bridges over the great trenches were built for Lea Hall, Church Lane, and Hillhouse, and an underbridge for Dead Man's Lane (Crossfield Road).

Rent was paid to the Vicar for the crossing of Glebe Farm land. Stechford Station (note Stech not Stich - a railway mis-spelling ?) opened in '44 : the level crossing was replaced by a ramp and overbridge 21 years later.

There was no rush to build and live in what could now be called 'commuter country'. Advertisements for riverside plots in St. Mary's Road (Mary Road) stressed that they enjoyed fishing rights in the Cole, then a trout stream, in addition to fresh air and freedom from town epidemics. A few villas appeared - Victoria House '65, Gumbleberries '74 for example and a grid of streets sporadically developed.

Two hamlets grew, Lower Stichford with, inn and smithy near the Cole bridge (Upper Stichford was on the Castle Bromwich side), and Five Ways by Field House Farm.

It is not proposed to tell the detailed story of suburban growth in Church End here : see my 'Urbanisation of Yardley' for that. Herein I shall generalise and simplify, as has been done on Map 10.

In 1820 when for the last time the manorial Courts Leet and Baron were held, in the Trust School, Yardley's population exceeded 2,000. It is now a hundred times as great. Having exported people for much of its history the parish became an importer from the mid-C 19th.

The Oxford Railway and Acocks Green Station were opened in '52, initiating a 'railway suburb' thereabout. Yardley Village was midway between the stations : mansions were built about but not in it, by wealthy families who owned carriages and created private parks.

Building society villas for professionals and tradesmen came too along the Turnpike and the old lanes. Last were artisans' terraces on new streets. Among the mansions were The Grange (Hoskins - Church Road), The Grove (Ashmores - Vibart / Farnol Roads), The Croft (Barrows - Cranfield Grove), The Oaks (Iliffes - Charminster Avenue), Rockingham, Yardley House (Turners - Hythe Grove), and Wisteria Villa (Hedges - Five Ways).

There were a score or more smaller named houses. At Blakesley were the Clementses, at Old Gilbertstone, and Kite House the Thornleys, and at Newbridge the Parsonses. New Gilbertstone, built in '74 for the Tangyes was a Gothic monstrosity : Kite House was rebuilt as Gilbertstone Grange, for this was the period of fancy houses with fancy names as bogus as the architecture. Hay Mills developed as an industrial village of terraces on both sides of Coventry Road, and 'South Yardley' about the Swan was a similar development of the '80's, like railside Stechford.

Public transport was the reason for Yardley's development as a Birmingham suburban area : without it the distance would have discouraged settlement. After Turnpike abolition in the '70's, horse-buses plied the Coventry Road to the Swan. In '97 the City of Birmingham Tramways Company began a service of steam tramcars from Hay Mills to the Swan, which was then rebuilt.

The humped Cole bridge prevented connection with the lines from the town to Small Heath : after its replacement in 1905 the link was made and open-topped two-deck electric cars trundled up Red Hill, powered by a generating station where Colliers premises are now. Two years later the Company was bought out by the Corporation of Birmingham Tramways Dept.

There was never an extension of the lines beyond Church Road. To cater for tram-borne townees on summer evenings out, large ornate pubs were built or rebuilt, like the Plough & Harrow and Bull's Head.

Yardley Rural District Council was established in '95, taking over the functions of the Local Board. Its headquarters were on Sparkhill, the population centre of Yardley, not in the rural village. The Solihull Sanitary Authority, which included the parish, laid a sewer down Yardley Brook valley to Colehall : the farm was bought for filter beds and the house became the offices. Later the sewer was extended to Minworth Main (Birmingham, Tame & Rea District Drainage Board). Stechford Bridge was rebuilt jointly by Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Birmingham in '94-95.