THE MANOR OF YARDLEY

Yardley is 11.5 square miles in area, 17.5 miles in circuit. Regionally it is a northward extension of the Solihull Plateau, a flat area bordering the central hollow of the Birmingham Plateau, clearly bounded to the north by the Rivers Tame and Rea, cut into by the Cole system and declining gently to the Blythe valley on the east. The general dip of the surface which the drainage reflects if from SW to NE. Thus the highest point in Yardley is 507' a. s. l. at its western tip, and the lowest is at the easternmost bound, (on the Rea-Cole interfluve) on the Cole north of Kitts Green, below 300'. Apart from the rounded valleys, slope is uniform and slight across the area, Yardley east of the Cole is a low ridge, well defined by the river on the west, less so by NE-flowing tributaries on the east, its flat crest lowering from 470 feet in the south to just over 400 feet in the north.

The simple relief indicates the uniformity and level of the underlying strata. These are layers of Keuper Marl, a reddish-brown clay with some shaley bands within, which are 1200 feet thick in places. The only other solid rock in a negligible outcropping of Upper Keuper (Arden) Sandstone in the Glebe Farm area. Overlying the Marl is a variable but always thin layer of drift material, a ground moraine left by Pleistocene Ice : glacial melting washed the drift out of the valleys, leaving it as a capping on most of the interfluvial ridge. West of the Cole, in Wake Green, Billesley, and Yardley Wood, the deposits consist mainly of sands and gravels, of which there are two smaller patches north of Yardley Church, while the ridge between Shirley and Coventry Road is covered by boulder clay. The alluvial deposits along the Cole are very narrow and hardly exist elsewhere.

The River Cole, in former times known in Yardley as Greet Brook and Haymill Brook (though Colle is the most ancient name) deserves no other title. It has always, since Pleistocene times when the valley was deepened by torrents of meltwater, been a small and variable stream. Larger and less variable when bordering forests retained water and released it steadily, and when the untapped water-table overflowed copiously, the Cole was still a very minor waterway. Yet despite its uselessness for navigation it was an obstacle to travel, so that firm crossing-places were important : it could be dangerous in flood, and it could and did provide waterpower. Its score of tributaries are all small and short within Yardley, only the Chinn Brook being more than two miles long. The east-flowing streams which rise in Yardley are tributaries of the Easthall Brook which enters the Cole outside the manor. Many streams are now dry or tiny trickles, and some have been culverted.

The natural vegetation of Yardley would be largely oak woodland, whose undergrowth could make t almost impenetrable. The relatively impervious Keuper Marl retains surface water, and oak trees thrive on it. Boulder clay would be only less favourable, but the stoniest areas and the permeable sandy patches would have had lighter tree cover, perhaps even some open heath. Thus the parts west of the river would be relatively clear, as would the north end of the ridge and perhaps its top. But the valley sides and nearly all of the manor north of Coventry Road would be thickly forested. The undrained meadows of the Cole and its side-streams would be bogs bordered by willow and alder.

These factors would greatly affect human movement, settlement, and occupation. Place-names, all Anglo-Saxon, help to give a description of the manor in early times, and show what the first settlers had to face. The earliest names are given in the Charter of AD 972, and refer to brooks, springs, a ford, oak trees, and a swamp. The -ley ending of several names recorded for the 11th C, but certainly older, indicates a clearing in woodland - but not in dense woodland. Nobody lacking bulldozers and machine-saws would try to start farming in a forest, and so we find Yardley, Flaxleys, and Lea, Tyseley, Billesley, and Bulley, all using the better-drained soils.

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