CHURCH END

Church End's name was doubtless of ancient use. A manor 7 1/2 miles long, 11 1/2 square miles in area, would need location names for its districts more than most, and the adoption of that one for the northernmost of three administrative divisions of Yardley in the reign of Elizabeth I was no more than a continuance.

The Civil Parish of Yardley then established, co-extensive with the manor and the ecclesiastical parish of St. Edburgha, was too large for a single set of Overseers : these unfortunates, selected annually from among the chief tenants, were unpaid and untrained for their onerous duties of maintaining highways and succouring the poor.

To ease their load, the parish was divided into three 'ends', conveniently separated by the Coventry and Warwick Roads, and the three 'ends' each had its own Overseers.

A century later the south of Yardley was sufficiently populous to require a further division into two, thenceforward called Broomhall and Swanshurst Quarters.

The area of Greet and Broomhall Quarters are in my 'Acocks Green and All Around'; my booklet Swanshurst Quarter (supersedes the earlier 'Walks in Yardley Wood' and 'Sparkhill and Greet'). In this publication 'the Quarter' will always mean the Church End Quarter, all of the manor and parish north of Coventry Road.

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