YARDLEY

Yardley had existed as a manor since Saxon times. It is generally supposed to have been settled by Hwiccan (West Saxon) folk who moved up onto the forested plateau of Arden from the Severn and Avon valleys during the C 7th. The first settlement site was a sandy knoll near Stechford, but that there were other sites quite early is suggested by the fact that in AD 972 Yardley comprised more than 7,000 acres - 11 1/2 square miles, stretching from Glebe Farm to Yardley Wood and from Sparkbrook to Acocks Green. Much of it was heavily wooded, but low ridges between the marshy valleys that grooved it were clearer : on upland sites here in the south may have been one or more of the five households recorded in the tenth century.

The earliest site of human occupation hereabouts may have been very close to the school. Until 1829 there was 'at Swanshurst' an earthwork enclosure of 11 1/2 acres, which in that year was ploughed out. The exact location is not now certain, even C 19th field boundaries giving no real clue, nor is the date of the works deducible. They could have been Iron Age in date, like the great hill-camp of Berry Mound in Solihull Lodge, or Saxon, of the Danish invasion period. A legend, no more, links King Alfred with Swanshurst, his headquarters before an assault on Berry Mound, whose alternative name (not necessarily correct) is Danes' Camp. The first map shows a possible site for the earthworks : the tree-clad 'plecks' of the 1843 Tithe Map (second map) and of today, were perhaps the south wall, protected by the bogs of Coldbath Brook, and the east wall was flanked by a tiny tributary. What may be vestigial banks - or later quarries, or both - survive at the south-east corner, and in the angle is a knoll that could have borne a tower command post. (Centuries later it bore a windmill.) The west side is a steep slope to Yardley Wood Road, but there, and on the north side (Windermere Road) where the banks and ditches would necessarily be much greater, they are quite lost.

The Saxon boundaries of Yardley, recorded in the AD 972 Charter, which confirmed its possession by the Abbey of St. Mary of Pershore, were - for this area - Mund's Dean, Tall Oak, Bull Spring, and Spel Brook. These are provisionally identified as the valley of Spark Brook, the junction of Yardley Wood Road and Belle Walk, and the source of Showell Green Brook, then near St. Agnes' Church site, and Coldbath Brook.

The lanes which were listed in the perambulation of 1495 are not recorded in the Charter, and the probably began as perambulation tracks along negotiated lines originally marked by blazed trees or low banks.

By medieval times perambulations, carried out on Rogation Days, might be formal affairs on occasion, recorded in detail. In that of 1495 twelve true men of Yardley took leave of twelve Bordesleians at a hedge and path that later became Highgate Lane, and greeted a dozen King's men of Norton. With these they trudged up Low Lane beside the 'torrent called Sparke Brook', turned at the Gilden Corner (the corner of Moseley Tax Yield) up the Green Way (Belle Walk) and down Bulley (now Billesley) Lane, not parting from the Nortonians until they reached Highters Heath.

Index