THE WATERMILLS OF YARDLEY

For four miles the River Cole flows through Yardley, and for more than six miles north-eastward from Spark Brook it forms the boundary. Its tributaries above and in Yardley are few and small, and the river is only seven miles from its source when it enters the manor. Thus it is a minor stream, whose quick-rising floods soon subside, and it can never have been much more, though it would have been larger and less variable when bordering forests which retained water and released it steadily, and when the untapped water-table was overflowing copiously. The gradient was small, and the valley wide, so that watermill dams would necessarily be major undertakings : this may be a partial explanation of the absence of mills on the Cole when the Domesday Survey was made. However, since the 11th C, there have been 5 mills on the river and 3 on tributaries, but not all in existence at any one time. There have also been 5 mills just outside the manor, which may well have served it - notably Stichford Mill, for the whole of Church End had only one, Wash Mill, and perhaps a windmill near Lea Hall.

First documentary references are probably unreliable as indications of age unless it is clearly stated that the mill is then new. Greet Mill is named in 1275, twenty-six years after Stichford. In 1385, 'Wodemyll' was built : geology suggests that this might be Wash Mill, because that structure was in the drift-free clay region, which probably had the densest forest cover. Greethurst Mill appears first in 1437, and this was probably on or above the site of Lady Mill. Sarehole Mill was in existence at this time, since it was making payments to Maxstoke Priory, which closed at the Dissolution. The Boundary Presentment refers to Hay Mill in 1495. On Beighton's map of 1725 is shown what is provisionally called Lower Greet Mill : this is evidently not a confusion with Greet or Hay Mill since both are shown. Broomhall Mill is not heard of before 1778, though that does not prove it to be a late arrival like Titterford, which was advertised as new in 1783. Of all these mills only Sarehole survives.

Greet Mill was presumably associated with the manor house of Greet, 600 yards downstream. (Lower Greet Mill was nearer, but there is no evidence of its existence in mediaeval times, or indeed any information about it at all : its site, at the junction of the Cole and Tyseley Brook, has disappeared beneath industrial spoil). Greet Mill dam was placed above a small natural change of slope, thus creating a good fall : there was normally a shallows below the dam, and this became the Stratford Road ford which claimed a number of victims in flood-time. Greet began as a corn mill, as did they all in Yardley, was re-built in 1775, and by the century's end had been converted to blade-grinding. Out of use by 1843, it was demolished 12 years later. The weir across the river became ruinous, the pool drained, and the water flowed down the mill-race. In 1914 the two brick narrow bridges were replaced by the present 2-arched bridge placed centrally over a new channel cut through the millsite, the long-buried foundations of the mill being then used to help fill the old channels.

Wash Mill or Yardley Mill, perhaps dating from 1385, mentioned in 1751, remained a corn mill all its working life : rebuilt in the 18th C, it went out of use early this century, surviving as a farm into the 20's. Its long race began near Coventry Road, and filled a pool (north from the modern Hobmoor Road) which was not completely infilled until 1957. The mill was on a site west of Millhouse Road opposite Mintern Road.

Greethurst (Coldbath or Lady) Mill. Greethurst Estate was probably centred on Bulley Hall, from which the outfall of Coldbath Pool is half a mile down the brook. This may have been the site of Greethurst, later called Holte's Mill : but these may be earlier names for Lady Mill, whose pool was just below Coldbath. Yardley Wood Road crossed the brook by its dam, the mill being on the east side of the road. Both pool and millsite are identifiable. At one time Lady Mill was a thread-mill, and in its last years was employed in wire-drawing, being demolished shortly after 1834.

Sarehole Mill was in existence before the Reformation, rebuilt in 1542. Formerly supplied only by Coldbath Brook, in 1768 it also received Cole water by a half-mile leat from' 'Whyrl-hole'. Rebuilding in 1773 included a forge and blade-grinding machinery : about 1840 a steam-engine was installed, and the forge was made into a 2-storey house. Metal grinding and boring continued into the mid-19th C, and corn-milling until 1919, Sarehole being thus the last Yardley mill to go our of use. The 3-storey mill building, the empty engine house with its chimney, and the house, survive in a ruinous state : the two iron wheels are still in their chambers, the pool is silted and overgrown, and the Cole leat is infilled. Plans to restore the forge and make the mill a museum of rural industry await funds from a public appeal (since 1964 the mill has been renovated and opened as part of the City's museum).

Hay Mill, presumably associated with Hay Hall nearby, was a 'Boreing Mill' on Beighton's map of 1725. In 1820 it was a blade-mill, with a small triangular pool just below the embankment of the Warwick Canal. About 1830 a new mill was erected 200 yards downstream and a larger pool added. The works were enlarged in 1847, and the pools now extended south to the confluence with the Tyseley Brook. Wire-drawing machinery was installed in 1860, and five years later there were further drastic alterations : Webster and Horsfall obtained a contract for sheathing wire for the first Atlantic cable, and they abandoned water-power. Pools and tail-race were infilled. The side-race, bordered by factory buildings, is the only survival of the watermill, in an area dramatically altered by the huge clinker mounds of the Tyseley Destructor Works, which is built over the site of the first mill and pool.

Broomhall Mill site was at the junction of two small streams, a half-mile from the ancient moated site of Broom Hall. There is a possible reference to its race ('the Rasse') in the 1609 Boundary Report. First noted in 1778, when it was in use as a corn mill, it was disused a century later. The site, in Fox Hollies Park, is at the foot of a concrete cascade on the one surviving brook, and no trace of the building can be found.

The small gradient and variable flow of the Cole suggest that the early mills employed undershot wheels. Reference to Hay Mill's 'pool tail' in 1495 shows that it was not on the river but was served by a short leat and a pool made in the riverside meadow, and this was to be the method adopted at Wash, Sarehole, and Titterford Mills. The only surviving wheels, at Sarehole, are one overshot and one breast wheel, and the long leats of the 18th C works elsewhere suggest that these more efficient wheels were brought into use generally.

The capital outlay on these mills was a safe venture for so many mills in and around Birmingham had been converted to industrial uses that there was a great lack of corn-milling plant in the region : the coming of steam-power may have saved the Cole from becoming industrialised like the Rea, and the river's watermills, continuing or reverting to corn-milling, survived until roller-mills at the ports, and the decline of arable farming in the area, made even that uneconomic.