NORMAN TO MEDIEVAL TIMES

In 1086 Beoley and its member Yardley (spelt Gerlei, the g being pronounced as a y) had a population of about 100. As Yardley was much the larger, it is reasonable to give it 60-70 inhabitants in perhaps a dozen households. Of these half, the villeins, probably had enough land to support a family : the rest, bordars, had to supplement the produce of their smallholdings by working for others.

About 600 acres were in cultivation : as the Church End fields covered only about half of that acreage, it seems likely that Tenchley and Greet, the other communal settlements of Yardley, were already established then. But the number of households seems few, especially as some of these may have been individual farms, assarts in the waste like Broomhall, Hay Hall, Tyseley, and Billesley. A good third of Yardley was wooded, the densest forest being a square mile between Blakesley and Coventry Road.

To get a more accurate picture of the population scatter, we move on to the tax returns of 1275-1327. The 82 taxpayers for the whole manor were probably about half of the total number of heads of households, the prosperous half. There were 30 of them in Church End, eight described themselves as being 'of Yardley', which may include Blakesley : two were at Stichford, two at Hillhouse, one each at Flaxleys, Rotyford, Lyndon and Glebe Farm - then called Water, later Walters, four at Gilbertstone, and ten at and about Lea.

So there were a half-dozen either living near the church or on un-named assarts elsewhere. That was a period of great population growth : among assarts founded with much labour in the clay were Blakesley, Waters, the Lea (later Bloomers, not the hall), Cole and Cowford Halls, Great and Little Fasts.

Yardley's open field systems had probably reached their greatest extent by mid-C 14th. All further clearance and cultivation were the work of individuals and families. Everywhere by fire and axe the woodland was being destroyed.

It is likely that most of the timber north of the village had been cleared while that to the south was being merely nibbled at. No medieval names are to be found within it : assarts at its edges, Blakesley, the Fasts (moated farms, fast as in 'fastness' ?), the moated farm on Moat Lane, Gilbertstone, gradually ate into the primeval forest. The land they uncovered, though potentially more fertile than stony drift, was heavy, cold, and waterlogged. No woodland names survive upon it, and only one name at its north-west edge : there in 1349 was Wodemilne, Wood Mill, not a timber structure but one close to the forest.

There are some wood names in the north of the Quarter, which may indicate copses left for game. The name of Yardley Wood came to rest in the drift-covered south of the manor, where the woods of Kings Norton, Solihull and our manor met.