THIRTY-FIVE YEARS

Second in magnitude and importance must be the extension of Bordesley Green East to Station Road and the Meadway thence (early 1960's), a much-needed highway to Coleshill. Towers loom beside it and overlook Kents Moat Park, in the making of which ancient Pool Lane has been partly obliterated. Pool Way shopping precinct is cut off by the Meadway from half its potential customers : a long-demanded foot bridge was installed, ignored, damaged, and at length removed.

The uniform cottage-type council houses of the Thirties estates were to be flanked by 'high-rise' and 'low-rise' dwellings in a variety of heights and lengths during the completion of Glebe Farm / Lea Hall / Kitts Green. Shop rows appeared at Glebe Farm and opposite the new Baths complex at Stechford (1962). This squats on Stich Meadow, the brook being underground.

Sadly the largest surviving piece of open field in the manor, Manor Road recreation ground, was overlain by towers and long blocks in the Sixties : a small patch of Nether Field is still green on Yardley Fields Road. The Yew Tree shop centre was extended, and low towers went up thereabout, in the Fifties. The last two decades have seen much infilling of open spaces left by earlier development : everywhere cul de sacs of private and municipal dwellings, in short rows usually, push between and behind older housing.

Electrification of the London line necessitated replacement of all the over-bridges except that at Lea Hall (now closed to cars), because they were too low to accommodate the cables. Recently the two stations have been re-furbished.

In 1951 diesel 'buses replaced the trolleys. River and riverside work has continued, the Severn / Trent Water Authority being responsible for flood control : balancing lakes at Kingshurst will not affect Yardley, but bank-raising has changed the topography of the former flood-meadows in the Quarter. Building approaches the river more closely than could be wished, but two walks have been provided along the new high banks.

As I write, there is a threat to access to the Cole at the site of new building near Cole Hall : 200 acres of the former sewage works thereby are near complete reclamation. Industry has continued to develop north from Kitts Green and, recessions permitting, may spread across the levelled site.

The Tivoli cinema has gone, and the Atlas is in other use. Blakesley Hall is a prized branch museum, after restoration which involved demolition of unsightly brick buildings at the east end.

Yardley Village, protected by the Park on the east side, is now approached closely on the west be a pleasing new estate - but access therefrom is by foot-path only. As one of the city's Conservation Areas, with a Society to watch over it, the village has been closed to through traffic which threatened church and cottage. so that walking about it is a pleasure once more. Let us stroll through in October 1980. Opposite the former Talbot Inn, a house that was restored for the Millenium season, is Yardley Grange, a historically incorrect name for an old people's home.

The village proper starts with brick outbuildings and a low house and former butcher's premises. This has been pebble-dashed but is early C 18th, brick beneath. Beyond two weedy vacant plots, which await the attentions of the Society, is a three-storey Georgian house also cased in grimy concrete and gravel. The 1882 Institute is shabby in disuse, contrasting with the restored Penny Cottage (1826) next door.

Behind the late-Nineties' row are two more, twelve dwellings in all wholly filling two of the original long crofts which make up Church Terrace. At the corner is the Post Office and only shop. The white-washed and dormered cottage of Stuart construction, now two dwellings, was formerly a malthouse. There has been no inn since the Talbot retired with the opening of the new Ring O'Bells in the Thirties farther along Church Road. Damson Cottage, Georgian, is embedded in the back of the old malthouse.

The smithy is closed, but until a few years ago it was still producing decorative ironwork.(Correction : the smithy is still in business, most work being done in the modern block to the north.) Yardley or Church Farm of 1837 seems unchanged with house, barn and outbuildings : but it has no land to farm. A modern house replaced the overlarge Victorian vicarage two decades ago. The vandal-proofed Church School survives as a parish hall.

The houses on School Lane, from Holly Croft of 1786 and 1860 to Meriden House a century old, are - with Church Terrace - the only extensions to east and west of what seems always to have been a street village lacking a green. Trust School and moat site are there to interest the visitor who finds the church locked against hooligans. The sward behind the church was in 1972 the arena for my pageant 'Yardley's Thousand Years', in which 500 children from schools in the ancient manor took part. This was major event in a season of celebration of the Millenial anniversary of the Charter in which Yardley was first recorded.