NINETEENTH CENTURY

In 1793 a canal to Stratford was started from Kings Norton. It crossed the south-west corner of Yardley, and its flyboats were a novel and both smooth and swift way of reaching Birmingham for a few years. The canal did not reach Stratford until 1816, but for a decade before that it had been possible to reach London via the link with the Warwick Canal. These two waterways brought supplies of coal, lime, iron and corn to Yardley, and took away bricks, tiles, nails, and farm produce.

In 1833 the chief landowners obtained an Act for the enclosure of Yardley's remaining open spaces. The major allotment was 1843-6, and this is shown on the Tithe Map of that period, the last in 1852. There were still at that time 200 acres of open fields (Acocks Green and Stock Fields) and 650 acres of Common and Waste. The latter comprised the Commons of Wake Green, Greet, Swanshurst, Billesley, and Yardley Wood, which were divided among the chief owners with a few allotments to such few commoners as could prove title to their holdings. The landscape now assumed the appearance that many very old people can still recall : the whole district was enclosed into small quadrilateral pieces, all hedged and ditched, with forest trees planted in the hedges. All the lanes in the area were narrowed to standard width, improved, ditched, and hedged, at the order of the Enclosure Commissioners.

When the first OS map was published in the 1830's, Bulley had disappeared as a name, and the misnomer Billesley (another place altogether) had been applied to the Hall and lane. Maggage Hall, approximately on the Millmead site, had gone. Sarehole Mill had acquired a steam-engine and concerted its forge to a dwelling by mid-century, when it reverted to corn-milling only. Greet Mill was demolished before 1860, and the diverted river flowed down the former side-race. Lady Mill had ceased work in 1834, but its ruins lasted for many years. In 1853 Spring Hill College moved from the site in Birmingham which provided its name to a new place in Wake Green. The mock-Gothic building, originally a college for non-conformist ministers, became in turn a convalescent home and a botanical garden house. (In this century it has been a recruiting centre and hospital, and since 1922 a grammar school.)

Several early C 19th cottages survive around Showell Green. Large mansions were built on Wake Green Road during the century in very ugly styles, and in 1884 a chapel-of-ease to St. Mary's Moseley was built inside the Yardley border : in 1914 St. Agnes' Church acquired a parish which includes the school site. There seems to have been no Catholic church in Yardley during the century, though mass was said in Hall Green by priests from Solihull in the period 1840 - 8.

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