YARDLEY IN ABOUT 1750

Hemill (Hay Mill) Bridge on Coventry Road was named on a map of 1675, but is unlikely to have been more than a footbridge. Thomas Telford undertook an essential reconstruction of the Turnpike about 1820, and the building of a road bridge, as well as the abandonment of the holloway near the top of Red Hill may date from that time. Mile-stones had to be provided after 1745 : none of them has survived in Yardley, and 18th C miles were variable lengths, but they should have been seen near the 'Swan', Greet House, Tyseley, Acocks Green, Sparkhill, Greet Mill, Hall Green School, and Six Ways. Turnpike revenue was not always up to expectation - the Acocks Green tollgate expected to take a pound a day (Coaches 1s 6d, Wagons 1s) in 1793, took less than œ293 that year. By 1817 there were 5 daily coaches on the Stratford Turnpike. Coaching inns were well-placed along the highways - the Mermaid, Dolphin, Spread Eagle, Bull's Head, Old Crown - and there were smithies at Greet, Tyseley, near Six Ways and the Swan, as well as three in Church End : in the mid-19th C about 30 people were engaged in services to horse-traffic through and in Yardley.

The River Cole has never been usable except by the smallest flat-bottom boats. But about 1795 travel by water across Yardley became possible when the Warwick and Birmingham Canal was cut through the Stockfield Ridge and a corner of Acocks Green Field. High brick bridges and a short tunnel under Yardley Road were constructed, and at two wharves (Wharf Road and off Yardley Road) Black Country coal was unloaded. The canal was complete to the Oxford Canal by 1799 : there were flyboat services, and Yardley tiles were dispatched to Birmingham and elsewhere. By 1803 the Stratford Canal was open from Kings Norton to Kingswood, with a wharf at Yardley Wood where Dudley coal, lime. and iron for local use were unloaded. Iron flyboats plied for a time. The canal reached Stratford and the Avon Navigation in 1816.

Robert Stephenson's London & Birmingham Railway was opened in 18138, and Yardley had its station, at Stichford, from 1844. Of more concern to most of the parish, because of its central crossing, were the Oxford Railway and its local station at Acocks Green which was built in 1852. After the abolition of turnpikes in the 1870's there were horse-buses to the Swan, and steam trams reached Sparkhill by 1885. Twelve years later there were electric trams to the common boundary of Birmingham, Yardley, and Kings Norton, on Stoney Lane, after the city and Yardley R. D. C. had jointly remade that road : on Stratford Road to the Cole : and on Coventry Road to the Swan : but the nearest terminus to Yardley village was Bordesley Green until 1928, and Warwick Road did not have trams until 1916.

The narrow street through Greet had a single track with signal lights at each end. The terminus was at the junction hamlet of Westley Brook, which was thereafter developed as the 'village' of Acocks Green. The older settlement near the 'Dolphin', approached by a very narrow stretch of Warwick Road, did not have a tram service.

The 1907 the North Warwickshire Line was constructed from the Oxford (G. W. R.) line at Stockfield to the Cole Valley and Stratford. An earlier plan by another company would have brought as railway through Sparkhill, with a station at Baker Street. Tyseley Station was built on the G. W. line in 1906, and Hall Green and Yardley Wood Stations opened the next year on the NW line. Tyseley Goods Yard served the new industries that grew up between the canal and railway After World War I, and the NW line brought industries to Shaftmoor (Spring Road Halt 1919) and the Cole valley north of Yardley Wood.

The City of Birmingham absorbed Yardley in 1911, and the next year took control of all tramways through the district. In 1914, the Coventry, Stratford, and Formans Road bridges were replaced : at Greet Mill site the country and millrace brick bridges were removed, a central channel was made and spanned by two brick and stone arches, and the tram tracks were extended to Robin Hood.

Under the 1914 Development Plan, sleeper tracks on central reservations between two carriageways were begun beyond the existing ribbon building : the only tram routes through Yardley on which this could be done were Stratford Road from Highfield to the boundary, and the extension of Bordesley Green East to Stechford (1928). Other double-track roads were begun during the 20's and 30's - notably the ancient ridgeway, School Road - Highfield Road - Fox Hollies Road - Stockfield Road - Stoney Lane ; and also Yardley Wood, Warwick and Coventry Roads, and Robin Hood and Brook Lanes : but existing buildings, wartime delay, and postwar cost, have left these schemes in a most unsatisfactory state of incompleteness, causing bottlenecks and accidents to the far greater traffic than the completed highways were expected to bear.

In the early 20's as it was realised that the narrow lanes and awkward intersections of Yardley were unsuitable for further tram services, Corporation motor 'buses were introduced : two fatalities on Yardley Wood Road by Lady Mill site in 1924 made clear the need for early improvement of the worst roads. In 1926 the Outer Circle 'bus route provided the first-ever communication along the length of Yardley, from Kings Heath to Stechford : Yardley village, always isolated hitherto and having no part in the spectacular development of better-served districts, was now close to a 'bus route, with the result that private building began around it. The 24 'bus, linking the tram terminus at Stoney Lane to Warstock, the 1A between Moseley and Acocks Green, were among the earliest of the new, more flexible services. The growth of municipal housing in Billesley, Yardley Wood, Pitmaston, Gospel Farm, Acocks Green, Fast Pits, Hobmoor, and later Glebe Farm and Lea Hall; and private development in Hall Green and 'South Yardley', brought new 'bus routes, now numbering 22, serving all parts of the ancient parish.

Lea Hall Station was opened on the L. M. S. line in 1937. Trolley buses replaced the Coventry Road trams in the early 30's, and the route was extended to the city boundary. Diesel 'buses replaced the trolleys in 1951, having already taken the place of the Stratford and Warwick Road trams in 1937. Having reached its peak about a decade ago ( i.e. 1954, a decade before this article was written), public transport is now beginning to decline. with the growth of private vehicle-owning. Passenger services have been suspended on the NW line and Lea Hall Station on the L. M. line has been closed. 'Bus services may be expected to decline also as losses on them continue. The congestion at the 'Swan' crossing will be relieved by the underpass now being made at vast expense.

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