ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF YARDLEY

The Kingdom of Mercia became Christian, in name if not in fact, after the death of Penda in 655 AD. Chad, Bishop of Mercia from 669. centred his huge diocese at Lichfield : but in 680 the See of Worcester was detached from it, being allotted an area largely co-extensive with the sub-kingdom of the Hwicce, whose capital was Worcester. These were the West Saxons who had colonised north from the Severn and Avon, and the fact that Yardley (with many other manors in what is now west Warwickshire) was included in Worcester Diocese suggests that it was a Hwiccan settlement despite its nearness to the Anglian immigration route up the Tame.

The Abbey of St. Mary at Pershore came into existence in the 9th C. The manor of Yardley came into its possession before 972, for in that year King Edgar confirmed its title to 5 hides in 'Gyrdleah'. This is the first written evidence of Yardley's existence.

There is no evidence of a church in Yardley before the 12th C and the present building contains no Saxon or Norman work. The Domesday Book records no priest in Beoley and Yardley, which are lumped together in the survey. The dedication of Yardley Church is to St. Edburgha (pronounced Edburra), which was one of several dedications of Pershore Abbey, made when bones of the saint, a grand-daughter of King Alfred, and an Abbess, were brought thither after her death in 960. Proofless tradition has it that some relics of the saint were re-interred beneath Yardley Church.

In the 12th C the church was claimed as a chapel of the church of Aston by the latter's owner, the Abbot of Tickford. The very large parish of Aston included several manors, and was Yardley's neighbour across the Cole. Litigation over the church's ownership lasted for some years. In 1239 the Earl of Warwick acquired a Charter Warren in Yardley and also the advowson, which he bestowed on the Priory of Studley. In 1329 the Convent of Catesby had the right of presentation, appointing the Rector of Yardley. Thereafter the advowson was acquired by William de Clinton; and given by him to Maxstoke Priory which his family had founded : from the 14th C to the Dissolution, Maxstoke provided priests and schoolmasters for Yardley.

The wealthy Pershore Abbey, a Benedictine house from 984, was responsible for Yardley's being allotted to Worcestershire when the shires were created at about that time, although it was geographically part of Warwickshire : the Abbey's insistence on even its most distant possessions being in the same shire created an anomaly that was to last for nine centuries. Its wealth was its undoing, for Edward the Confessor took half its estates to endow his new Abbey of Westminster. Yardley remained in Pershore's possession until the 13th C and was still an odd outlier of Pershore Hundred until 1760. Thereafter it was in Halfshire Hundred. It remained in Worcester Diocese until 1905, when Birmingham Diocese was established, and in Worcestershire until six years later when it became part of Greater Birmingham.

Yardley Church is the usual mixture of periods and styles. The chancel is 13th C; the nave, north aisle, and Becket Chapel are 14th-15th C; and the porch, tower and spire are 15th C. The roof is modern. Despite its inconvenient location for most of its congregation, and though neighbouring parishes had chapels-of-ease by the 15th C, St.Edburgha's remained the only church in Yardley until Marston Chapel was consecrated in 1704. This was perhaps due to the fact that there was no nucleated settlement other than the village by the church - elsewhere population was scattered, and probably sparsest in the most distant and still wooded south.

Job Marston of Hall Green left œ1000 for the building of a chapel near the Hall where he lived. The small brick structure was enlarged a century ago, but it did not then acquire the status of a parish church as so many chapels did about that time : this was because a second parish church had been created in 1849, centred on Christ Church, Yardley Wood. It was built and endowed by Sarah Taylor on land acquired from Yardley Wood Common at the final enclosure a few years earlier.

Christ Church received a parish which included a part of Kings Norton as well as the southern part of Yardley.

St. Mary's in Acocks Green was built as a chapel-of-ease to St.Edburgha's in 1866, and became a parish church the next year. St. Cyprian's began as a mission of St.Edburgha's in 1864, the church being built in 1873 by James Horsfall of Hay Mill, whose fancy it was to place it over the millrace. Five years later St. Cyprian's acquired its own parish out of St.Edburgha's.

In the that year, 1878, an iron mission church was opened on Sparkhill, following one at Stechford. St. John the Evangelist was first to be rebuilt, on the same site at Sparkhill in 1889, and it became a parish church in 1894 prior to enlargement. All Saints' at Stechford was so called from 1892 : the iron building was replaced by the present building in 1898. It was a Conventional District in 1905, and a parish in 1932.

The ancient parish of Yardley had thus far been shared among its own daughter churches, but in 1884 a chapel-of-ease to St. Mary's Church, Moseley, was built on Wake Green, just inside Yardley. Similarly, the Church of Emmanuel, built in 1901, acquired a parish in 1928 which took in Sparkbrook.

St. Christopher's, Springfield, was consecrated as chapel-of-ease to St. John's in 1907, receiving its own parish in 1911. St. Bede's (1907) remains a mission of St. John's in Greet. St. Chad's mission was built by St. Cyprian's in South Yardley the following year. The parish of St. Edmund Tyseley, assigned in 1931, has had three places of worship in its short history : beginning as a mission of St. John's in 1895, and the present brick one alongside in 1940.

Meanwhile, Marston Chapel had at last acquired its sown parish, in 1907 : it remained proud of its lack of dedication, as Hall Green Parish Church, until the creation of a Conventional District for St. Peter's in 1954, when it became the Church of Ascension - thus having three names within the lifetime of many present worshippers. In the same year St. Michael's, Pitmaston, was consecrated as a mission and, on completion of a permanent church (1966 ?), this will become a Conventional District.

Holy Cross, Billesley, was consecrated as a parish church in 1937. With the creation of a new parish in Highters Heath, Christ Church also lost that part of its parish which was outside the Yardley (now Birmingham) boundary, and is now only average-sized. St.Edburgha's was further reduced when St. Michael and All Angels, South Yardley, built in 1912 as a mission, became a separate parish in 1956. That year a mission opened in the Bishop Lightfoot Hall; it became St. Richard's, Lea Hall, in 1963, as a Conventional District, and will be a full parish when a new church is built (1966 ?). St. Peter's became a parish in 1964.

There were Methodist, Congregational, and Roman Catholic meetings in Yardley in 1830, in Hall Green, Tyseley, and Acocks Green, respectively. By 1911 there were 7 Methodist, 4 Congregational, 3 Baptist, 3 Salvation Army, 1 Christadelphian, and 12 Anglican churches including missions, 1 Church of Christ, and 2 Friends' meeting houses. Roman Catholics built one church and a convent in the first decade of this century. By 1964, the total number of places of worship to have been opened in the former parish of Yardley was 65, but some of these have closed in the interim. Others have moved to new premises, but have been included only once in the total.