BOUNDARIES

There were no more than sixty inhabitants when Domesday Book was written, and there were probably fewer four centuries earlier - so how could so few lay claim to and hold on to so much land (if indeed the whole was in single ownership ass it had certainly become by AD 972) ?

In that year Gyrdleahe was confirmed as a property of the Abbot of Pershore : the Charter refers to five 'households', which perhaps included an average of a dozen related persons.

If these all lived about Yardley Fields, on some of the sites listed above, it is hard to understand their ability to claim the great wooded and heathed tract to the south : it seems necessary to assume that there was sparse colonisation of the whole of Yardley by related groups, perhaps in more than five dwellings, each 'household' being the extended family of a patriarch who were not all living together.

Three proper names come down to us in the boundaries which the Charter records : these were Leommannicgweg and Dagardingweg (the ways of Leommann's and Dagard's folks) and Mund's dean. Only Dagard(a) is thought to have been a denizen of Church End : Pool Lane (Broadstone Road / Pool Way) was perhaps his 'way'.

Were the people living on various sites about the open fields members of his family alone ? Were other households at Lea Hall, at Tenchley (Stockfield / Acocks Green) and farther south ? We can only guess.

On Church End's east side the border with Maccaton was less well-defined. The names used here are modern : the map shows names of AD 972 and 1609. North of Coventry Road a glacially-transported boulder later called the Gilbertstone provided a marker, then a rill parallel to Elmcroft Road led to the boundary into and down Smarts Hill Brook to the marshy confluence with Lyndon Green Brook, and up that brook to a spring source (Oak Well).

Moat Lane, Bilton Grange Road, Duncroft Road / Charlbury Crescent, might be described as modern perambulation tracks. The ends of Vibart and Farnol Roads (when made pre-1931 they stopped at the then city boundary), a line thence across Sedgemere Road, west of Partridge Road, the line of Broadstone Road and Pool Way continued across Kents Moat Park to the Garretts Green Lane / Outmoor Road junction, thence a line east of and parallel to Heynesfield Road, complete the border to the Cole.

Several boulders were used to mark points along the boundary, notably the Shire Stone on Sedgemere Road. Because urbanisation of the border area was carried out in the 1930's, after Sheldon had joined Yardley in the City of Birmingham, several modern streets ignore the ancient bound : it can still be established where dips indicate former watercourses. (See 'Boundaries of Yardley' by J. M. J. for a detailed examination of the bounds during a thousand years.)

in 1817, and the bridge was then restored. It was rebuilt over a single channel in 1902, as was the Stratford Road bridge in 1914.