GEORGIAN TIMES

Highways across Arden clay were deep-sunk holloways like Scribers Lane, while across heaths they were strips of morass hundreds of yards wide. Travel in and after wet weather was often impossible. Work on the roads was a duty to all parishioners, but was done poorly and grudgingly at the orders of unskilled overseers. Roads were never made but only mended. Turnpike Trusts were set up for local highways in the C 18th, and Stratford Road was turnpiked in 1726-7. Tollgates were placed at Greet Hall, Cole Bank (School Road, Hall Green) and Shirley, and though the Trust still used 'statutory labour' it did have a surveyor who knew his job. The turnpike was a narrow road with firm foundations, and through the century there were improvements in the line and some of the gradients, notably Greet Mill Hill above the tollgate and smithy.

Swanshurst Pool (otherwise Moseley New Pool) was built by one Henry Giles before 1759 : like Coldbath and indeed all the pools it was a fishpond, supplying a welcome protein addition to the salt meat of winter months. There was a small hatchery at the north end of the earthen dam.

During the century several farmhouses were built or rebuilt. Moorlands (moor means bog), Coldbath, Sarehole Hall, perhaps Brook Farm and Bulley Hall. Swanshurst acquired a brick wing. The farms had large outbuildings with quarters for their workers : many smallholders were squeezed out at this time and later, being then obliged to move in as employees on farms or go to work in Birmingham.

In 1759 Henshaw Grevis, last of his line, was obliged to sell the last of his family estates : they, with the lordship of Yardley, were bought by John Taylor, a very wealthy manufacturer in Birmingham. Like every other manorial lord the manor has had, the Taylors were absentee landlords, but they were concerned to improve their estates. Drainage of fields, mixing of top- and sub-soils to improve fertility, rebuilding of farms, were all encouraged with cash grants.

Sarehole Mill received a new water supply in 1768, from the Cole along a half-mile leat which started in the Dingle at the 'Whyrl-hole'. The mill was then being rebuilt as a three-storey brick structure with two wheels and a forge, in addition to the farm buildings which all mills had. It not only ground corn but also edge tools and gun-barrels for the East India Company.

Greet Mill was rebuilt in 1775 on a similar scale, islanded between the weired river channel and a side-race. These expensive country mills were an astute investment, because in those days when only wind, water and muscle power were available as sources of energy, the streams of Birmingham and the Black Country were used to and beyond capacity for industrial purposes. Only a few windmills were left to grind flour for the ever-growing population : the Cole was not too far away along the turnpike, and its mills could expect to be as busy as their water supply would allow. With the building of Titterford Mill in 1783, this became a problem, for the river tended not to flood and fall more rapidly : if Titterford hoarded water and diverted it to its great pool, the other mills were deprived until the upper mill chose to send the water past its wheels and on down to them. Greet suffered most, and its early closure may have been due to this fact.

Poaching and highway robbery were rife in the C 18th. John Taylor, like the Grevises before him, issued dire warnings to poachers of his game and fish in Aris's Birmingham Gazette - which often told of travellers being robbed. The respected Mr. Swinburne, master of Hall Green Charity School, was robbed while walking near Greet Mill one evening : the footpad made off across the Common, but was caught by a horseman whom his victim had hailed.

A Mr. Mander of Bentley Heath was knocked off his horse and robbed : this happened at dusk on Stratford Road near Formans Road, a rope being stretched across the highway. If any of these criminals was caught he would be at least transported to the colonies if not hung in chains at the roadside as a warning. There was such a gibbet at Washwood Heath, perhaps more than one on this most important highway, the London road. Greet Common was probably not a safe place for strangers : in 1763 a footpad stole more than œ5 from a wayfarer 'at the bottom of Wake Green'.

The first bridge to enter record in this area was the footbridge across the shallows at Greet Mill in 1620. As late as 1759 there was still no wain-bridge there, for the death of horses by drowning after being swept away was then recorded. The usually placid stream has demolished a number of substantial bridges in its time. The bridge over Greet mill-race was replaced in 1775, and perhaps a county bridge was then built. (Yardley Great Trust became responsible for several footbridges : there were no other wain-bridges in Swanshurst until the C 19th.) The Great Trust had opened a second school (Atco building, corner of School Road, Hall Green) in 1710, and this was the nearest school for such children as could be spared from family work until the St. Mary's School opened in Moseley in 1828.