Acocks Green History Society
The changing face of Yardley
This essay was written by Rachel Roberts, and has been made available to us by Blakesley Hall. It is reproduced, with minor changes. We are very grateful for being able to include its valuable insights on our website.
The Meaning of "Yardley"
The ancient parish of Yardley was much larger than the modem day area by that name; it stretched from Yardley village to Yardley Wood and encompassed much of what we know today as Hall Green,
Moseley, Acocks Green and other nearby areas. As such, it seems unreasonable and more difficult to drop areas from this study when they were no longer considered officially in Yardley. The old
Parish has served as the template and in most areas the development of everything encompassed in it up until the twentieth century is included in this history.
The Tenth Century
Originally Yardley was one of nine ancient parishes included in what we now know as the Birmingham area. The first written reference to Yardley comes in 972 in King Edgar's Charter (wherein the
shire boundaries of much of England were clarified and set) where it is referred to as "Gyrdleah" and confirmed as the property of the Benedictine Abbey of Pershore. From this charter we also
know that Yardley was roughly 7,590 acres or 11½ sq. miles, and that there were five manses (an area of land big enough to sustain a family, so there were most probably five families living
within its borders). The existence of Yardley Wood today is a hang over of how big this early Parish was. While the control of the parish went to the Abbey of Pershore, administratively (although
never geographically or economically) Yardley was in Worcestershire at this time. The area jutted out from its border and was surrounded on the other three sides by Warwickshire. From King
Edgar's charter we also get the names "Dagardingweg" and "Leomanningweg" thought to be our Pool Lane and Stratford Road.
The ending "ley" found in Tyseley, Yardley and Billesley comes from the language of the ancient settlers and means a small clearing in a wood, this gives us some ideas of the sort of terrain that
tenth century Yardley had been carved out of. This wooded area would have been even more difficult to cultivate when you consider the tough clay marl, which underlies the entire area. However,
these ancient settlers not only managed to clear and cultivate the area but build a wealthy and expanding community. The law and order structure of the ancient parish was perhaps the most long
lasting aspect of the period, being organized in this way: The sheriff (representative of the Lord) split his area into tythings, which were groups of males from ten neighbouring households.
"Thythingmen" lead these groups and answered to Hundredmen, who answered to the Shire Reeve and then to the Royal Reeve. If a crime occurred any member of the community would raise the alarm and
all members of the tything would stop and search for the perpetrator. If they failed to catch him then a fine would be imposed on the whole group. This structure was kept basically the same (with
a few alterations by the Normans) until the seventeenth century.
The Eleventh Century
By 1013 the work of King Edgar's charter was done, England was split up into vaguely familiar shires and was ready for the next great upheaval in its history. With 1066 came the Norman invasion,
and with it a period of great expansion for Yardley. The population of England as a whole went from 1,500,000 at most in 1086 to 6,000,000 by 1300. Yardley was no exception to the rule and the
population began to skyrocket. The rising population had to be supported and with no national market or export system each isolated area had to increase its production to feed its own
population.
Land was cleared and farmed, and new paths and tracks began to be laid down. Ancient tracks were widened and made permanent as hunters followed the herds which made them, and traders followed in
the footsteps of the hunters. With continued use these tracks became main routes. In Yardley the main road north followed the direction of the modern day Church Road and the impassability of the
route over boulder clay and what is now called Smarts Hill Brook led to the road being lifted up on the 'long causeway'.
The eleventh century also sees the next official written documentation of Yardley. The Domesday Book groups Yardley with Beoley, still under the Abbey of Pershore and lists its population as 8
villeins, 10 boarders, and one radman. So, if we take into account that these men were living in households along with their families the total population would have probably been somewhere
between 35- 0. We do need to be careful with the Domesday Book however as it puts the expanse of woodland in the area of Yardley and Beoley as 40 sq. miles. While it is true that much of the area
was wood the entire district of the place is only 19 sq. miles, so it is quite clearly exaggerated.
The Twelfth Century
With the Doomsday Book finished, official records of the area go very quiet. The political climate of the country did not give the best basis for accurately kept records with a period of civil
war between King Stephen and Empress Matilda and her son being quickly followed by the tumultuous reigns of Richard I (notable for his absence from his realm) and the reign of his much vilified
brother King John. However we do know that the population was still rising, and as such, so was demand not only on farmland but also on other social amenities. The Normans, in an attempt to put
their stamp on their new country had sponsored a massive rebuilding programme of ecclesiastical buildings and as a result, in the second half of the century, comes the first mention of a chapel
in Yardley .While we have no documents surrounding the building or consecration of the chapel, in 1165 the Abbot of Tickford put in a claim for the rights to administer the chapel on behalf of
the parish of Aston.
By 1013 the work of King Edgar's charter was done, England was split up into vaguely familiar shires and was ready for the next great upheaval in its history. With 1066 came the Norman invasion,
and with it a period of great expansion for Yardley. The population of England as a whole went from 1,500,000 at most in 1086 to 6,000,000 by 1300. Yardley was no exception to the rule and the
population began to skyrocket. The rising population had to be supported and with no national market or export system each isolated area had to increase its production to feed its own
population.
Land was cleared and farmed, and new paths and tracks began to be laid down. Ancient tracks were widened and made permanent as hunters followed the herds which made them, and traders followed in
the footsteps of the hunters. With continued use these tracks became main routes. In Yardley the main road north followed the direction of the modern day Church Road and the impassability of the
route over boulder clay and what is now called Smarts Hill Brook led to the road being lifted up on the 'long causeway'.
The eleventh century also sees the next official written documentation of Yardley. The Domesday Book groups Yardley with Beoley, still under the Abbey of Pershore and lists its population as 8
villeins, 10 boarders, and one radman. So, if we take into account that these men were living in households along with their families the total population would have probably been somewhere
between 35- 0. We do need to be careful with the Domesday Book however as it puts the expanse of woodland in the area of Yardley and Beoley as 40 sq. miles. While it is true that much of the area
was wood the entire district of the place is only 19 sq. miles, so it is quite clearly exaggerated.
The Thirteenth Century
A subsidy roll for 1275 once again gives us a snapshot of the population of Yardley. In this year 82 taxpayers were listed in the area. Taking into account the families of those listed (using an
average household number of 5) we get a population of about 400. However, when those who were not eligible to pay tax and those who dodged the taxman are considered the population could have been
as high as 750.
With this massive increase in population feeding Yardley's people became not only a big priority but also big business, and it was in this century that enclosure reached Yardley. Ancient strip
farming and communal farming methods yielded to larger private farms and common land began to be fenced off, sparking riots and disputes. In 1221 alone four enclosure disputes were taken to the
justices in Worcestershire from Yardley. These fenced off farms grew wheat, oats, barley, drage (a mix of oats and barley), and peas. However, the main agricultural product of Yardley was, and
would remain, beef and dairy.
The more land which was bought and fenced off by the more affluent few lead to the widening of the gap between rich and poor. As the land was absorbed by the rich, subsistence farming began to
give way to a market economy and wage labour increased. Marl pits were dug to produce fertilizer for the growing farms (25 marl pits from the period were discovered around Yardley in 1847) and
the first blacksmith in the area appears in the 1227 rolls.
As the markets gained importance so too did the routes to them. Wooden footbridges were built at all the major river crossing points, where there are still bridges today, to allow access to local
markets at Birmingham, Solihull and Coleshill.
Yardley also got a full church to meet the religious needs of its ever growing and changing population. This church was the first stage of St. Edburgha's, which still stands at the end of Church
Road, of which the south wall and two lancet windows survive in the modern building. Yardley's first priest 'Henry vicar of Gurdeleye' began preaching by the middle of the century.
The systems of law and order, mentioned earlier, while retaining the same shape became more professional as Magna Carter (1215) shifted its organization from the crown to the local feudal manor
and paid officials including ale tasters and bread weighers were recruited.
It is important to remember that this century really saw the planting of the seeds of change and it was the centuries to come which saw the real alterations. The main difference from the Yardley
of 200 years ago were the larger farms and the affluent farmhouses such as the Swanshurst (first recorded when a burglary was reported in 1221) which came with them.
The Fourteenth Century
The fourteenth century saw Yardley's population hit its high point, reaching numbers that would not be seen again until the eighteenth century. It was also the century that saw this populace
plummet. With the numbers rising at break-neck speed that population soon became unsustainable and the land over-farmed. As a result, from 1312 onwards Yardley was plagued with bad harvests until
in 1315-17 torrential rains caused massive famine. Even harvests which did produce grain did so with lower yields and grain prices were 20% lower than they had been in the previous century: the
bottom was dropping out of both agriculture and markets. Tens of thousands died from hunger and disease all around the country and in Yardley the 82 taxpayers listed in 1275 dropped to only 48 by
1327.
The fourteenth century also saw the arrival of the Black Death, and this, coupled with the famine, lead to mass migration. As a result Yardley becomes not only a much smaller but also a largely
new community.
However Yardley, thanks to its reliance on the highly profitable dairy market fared rather better than many of its neighbours through these troubled years and progress was not stopped altogether.
Industry continued to grow (although at a slower pace) and subsidy rolls list Yardley's first cooper in 1300 and the first tanner (Mr John le Wyte) in 1345. To fuel this growing industry, water
mills began to be built throughout the area. Between 1349 and 1725 seven were built within Yardley and a further five outside its borders which served the area.
Roads were further developed and began being mentioned in official documents. In 1346 what we now call the Coventry road was mentioned as "the highway leading from Bermyngham towards Coventre",
and in 1350 the Stratford road can be found as "the highway leading towards Henleye and Bermyngham".
During this period, perhaps because of the Black Death and huge displacement that the population was suffering a massive church rebuilding programme occurred all over the Arden area, and Yardley
was no exception. St Edburgha's was given a north and south wing to create a cruciform in the newly popular gothic style; five windows from this period survive to today. St Edburgha's also became
its own parish by the mid fourteenth century, massively early for a small (but lucrative) church such as Yardley's, especially when you consider that nearby Castle Bromwich and Water Orton had to
wait until the 1870s to gain their independence. The liberation of St. Edburgha's is probably due to the contention which plagued its whole history over the rights to the parish being claimed by,
among others, Pershore and Aston.
In 1361 the justice of the peace act combined with the statute of Winchester, which had been passed back in 1218 to set up an entirely paid police system. While the same tenth century structure
remained its members were now full time professional law enforcers and the system was complete, to be untouched until seventeenth century reforms.
The Fifteenth
Century
In the aftermath of the Black Death Yardley had fewer families living within its borders but those who had managed to survive, like the Smalbroke family who built Blakesley Hall in 1590,
benefited from the smaller population and the demand coming from a country in turmoil. These families began to enclose even larger tracts of land and increase their wealth. In this respect
Yardley seems to have been almost unique. While the rest of the country saw an economic slump in the late 1400s and 1500s Yardley seems to barely have been touched. In fact the rents and incomes
of Yardley's residents wavered only slightly and then picked up much faster than those elsewhere in the country. This allowed the march of the big families to continue with ferocity into the next
century.
These large farms began to specialize as the economy focused more and more on the market and less on providing for oneself. As a result the agricultural make-up of Yardley became even more
pastoral than it had been, with grazing ground covering 85% of the area. The focus remained on cattle but the output moved away from beef and more towards the dairy products. Still though
families would keep other animals for personal use and grow a little cereal, as only the very rich could afford to buy in everything they needed.
The marl on which Yardley is built now allowed the birth of the tile industry, which would remain highly important to Yardley's economy well into the twentieth century. Beginning with William
Tyler in 1402 the tile industry blossomed and grew to 17 known kiln sights in the area.
The area at the head of Church Road, now a conservation area, took the shape that we know today. The architect Henry Ulm took on the church and added to it a north aisle, a west tower, a south
porch and the distinctive 150ft hexagonal spire. Since then only minor adjustments have been made to the church.
In the second half of the fifteenth century the trust school was built in the shadow of St Edburgha's. While the building date is still unsure the first reference to a school house on that land
comes in 1575. The building was funded by the charity lands and the feofees which is where it got the name 'trust' school. The north side and west end of the building retain their medieval
appearance. These buildings around the village green would have been the centre of community life for the relatively spread out community of Yardley, as the area was still based around sparsely
distributed large farms, unlike neighbouring areas which had begun to cluster houses together. In front of the school on the green also stood the stocks and whipping post where, until the
nineteenth century, prisoners were detained before facing trial in Solihull.
The trust school remained the main school in Yardley until it closed in 1908 when Church Road opened near the Yew Tree.
The Sixteenth Century
With the onset of colonization in America the sixteenth century was a time of change for much of Europe. The new land brought vast profits back to those who were wealthy enough to fund trade
trips and with it huge change back in England.
In 1524/5 tax rolls list 71 taxpayers in Yardley, about 600 in total if an average of five per household is taken and an estimate for those who dodge or are ineligible for tax are taken into
account. The number of Yardley’s population who were in the top tax bracket is recorded as 8.6%, compared to just 3.7% in 1275. These numbers confirm the trend of a large increase in wealth
brought by both overseas trade and enclosure. In society, the widening gap between rich and poor was being filled by a newly emerging middle class of gentlemen and yeomen (just below
knights).
This new class of men had the disposable income which had before only been known to the rich landowners. As a result Yardley's infrastructure and industry could develop. In 1542 Sarehole Mill was
built, originally called Biddle's Mill after the family who built it. Sarehole is the only one of Yardley's mills to survive. The mill we see today was largely rebuilt in 1773 and was of great
inspiration to a young J. R. R. Tolkien: later it became the mill at Hobbiton in his fantasy world of Middle Earth.
Wind power was also being harnessed, and in 1578 Yardley's first windmill was built on Redhill near the site of the old Adelphi Cinema. Three more windmills were to be built in Yardley
recorded as being on Wake Green Road (Property of the Gervise family) and one shown on a map of 1789 as being on what is now a school playing field near Yardley Wood Common. Wind power
however did not prove to be as enduring as water and could not compete with steam or electricity. All Yardley's windmills were out of use by 1800 and none survive.
The new middle class also had more money to spend on their homes and the sixteenth century saw an improvement in many people’s domestic situation with large family homes appearing. Lea Hall was
one such house and was built around 1550 by Made Wheeler. Engraved in an attic window pane was found the inscription "Vanius, a famous atheist, persisting to deny the being of God, with a
wonderful obstinacy even in those very flames in which he perished in 1619". Unfortunately the house was demolished in 1937 when a railway cutting was built in the site.
There are also eight possible moated sites in Yardley from this period. While moats may have provided some protection from wild animals there is most probably also an element of fashion and
aristocratic ideals involved in their construction. One of these sites is Kent's Moat, which would have been a timber house half a mile east of Yardley Church. Local historians are unsure as to
when the house would have been built, but it is probable that the name is a corruption of the name of the Kempe family who lived in the area at the time of Henry the VII.
The Seventeenth Century
The Seventeenth Century stands out as the century of the civil war. After Charles I attempted to enforce Anglican reforms in Scotland and found resistance he was forced to summon parliament to
raise funds for military action. Parliament however raised grievances and was disbanded. These grievances were never addressed and when Charles attempted to arrest five members of parliament both
sides began to stockpile military resources for the conflict which would bring Oliver Cromwell to power. For the country this meant years of upheaval. The Midlands was mainly Parliamentarian
(with certain exceptions such as Aston Hall) but no matter which side you fell on the war meant expenditure, delay, and loss of life.
By now the population was on the rise again and would hit an all time high in the next hundred years. However as the population went up so too did the ever encroaching enclosure, which left more
and more members of society landless and displaced. As a result people from the most rural areas began to move to areas of wealth such as Yardley in search of work on the large farms. In the
first half of the century the rising numbers in Yardley became unsustainable once more and unemployment and underemployment spiralled out of control. Vagrancy and crime began to rise.
There was one hope for the people of Yardley however in the shape of the new and growing linen industry. Every stage of production could provide jobs, from the growing of flax to the spinning,
weaving, making of dyes, and selling, and the Midlands was considered perfect for the new venture for numerous reasons. Firstly the climate and soil were well suited to flax and there was no
staple crop being grown and taking up the most fertile lands. Also there were plenty of unemployed people who could work the labour intensive crop. Woad, madder, and weld, used for making dyes
were also cultivated for this reason. Linen became such big business in Britain that duties were levied on French Damask in 1663 and French linen was banned altogether in the 1670s.
However the production of linen never really took off in Yardley and the business never made it past small-scale domestic production. As more and more people continued to move in every day only a
tiny dent was made on unemployment.
Another shift occurred in the agricultural face of Yardley at this time. During this century the price of nutritious crops began to rise above that of dairy and so more land was handed over to
the production of the staple cereals. Hops too made their first appearance as bitter beer replaced the traditional English ale.
The Manor House was also built in Yardley somewhere between 1690 and 1720. The house was certainly grand but its name is deceptive, as it was in no way large enough to be the manor house of such
a wealthy area. It is also not thought that any of Yardley’s lords actually lived in the area, preferring to rule from afar through a structure of bailiffs and sheriffs.
The Eighteenth Century
Industrialization became large scale in the eighteenth century as more people left subsistence fanning behind them and began to work for a wage. Industrialization brought immigrants who travelled
mainly from the countryside to centres of industry to ply their trades. From a sixteenth century number of 500, Yardley’s population rose to over a thousand for the first time in the 1750s and
Yardley was soon overcrowded and faced a housing shortage. With most of the area's money tied up in expansion there was little that could be done until the birth of the building society movement
and slum conditions began to spread into the area.
Along with the workers industrialization did also bring money to the area. By 1776 there were 24 tile houses in Yardley producing tiles from the natural marl base of the area which could be sold
at great profit. Many signs of this lucrative industry are still around. The name of the Marlborough and Fast Pits Estate gives a clue to what the area was used as before, and many of the pits
became pools or ponds which remain today.
With the money Yardley began to improve its infrastructure. The Turnpike Trust was created and began to maintain both the Edgehill Turnpike (the Stratford Road) and the Birmingham to Warmington
Turnpike (the Warwick Road) in Yardley. Roads were improved and wooden footbridges replaced by stone, such as Greet Bridge (first show on maps in 1725) later to become the Stratford Road Bridge.
Toll gates brought back some capital and included one at Greet Mill, Cole Bank, and Acocks Green while the Coventry Road was officially created with a toll at the Swan. After 1745 milestones
became mandatory but the 'miles' were often hugely inaccurate and none of the old stones survive in the area today.
By the 1750s tolls had become unmanageably high and the 1767 General Turnpike Act was passed to regulate them. In 1793 the Acocks Green Turnpike charged 1s 6d for coaches and 1s for wagons. The
road was expected to take £1 a day but only made £293 that year, but use, and profit, steadily picked up and by 1817 there were five daily coaches on the Stratford Road. The busier roads drew
coaching inns to the area, including the original Spread Eagle in Acocks Green, the Bulls Head, and the Old Crown. These in turn brought new industry which took advantage of the passing trade. By
1795 the Warwick and Birmingham Canal was built, including High Bridge and a tunnel under Yardley Road which remain in altered states. Two wharves were built at Wharf Road and Yardley Road to
allow deliveries of Black Country coal and in 1799 the Oxford Canal was completed and Yardley Tiles were shipped out to a wider market.
Industrial prosperity created the money to build more impressive private buildings. In 1700 Allestrey Hall was built near the church but was demolished before accurate maps could tell us much
about it. Religious buildings also profited and in 1704 the reign of St Edburgha's as Yardley's only church was ended when Job Marston funded Marston Chapel (now the Church of the Ascension in
Hall Green).
The Nineteenth Century
From this point on the physical changes in Yardley are much easier to chart as improved mapping technology allowed the first accurate survey sheets with a scale of 2 inches to I mile to be drawn
up in 1812 17. In 1834 the 1st O.S. Maps with a scale of 10 inches to I mile were released.
The population is also much better recorded. In 1800 it rose to 2,000 people, by 1861 it was 3,000, and by 1891 it hit 17,000. The break neck speed of increase brought rows of terraced houses to
the area. The same thing happened in Birmingham and speed and expense, not planning, were of paramount importance; suburbs splayed out along road and rail routes and began to merge with each
other. Conditions in the new developments were better than the slums they replaced but not by much. Houses were crowded, poorly built and badly ventilated but remained a fixture in the area for
many years to come.
In the 1870ss the Albert Road Estate, the first commuter housing estate in Yardley, was built. It was placed 5 minutes walk from Stechford station and provided a way for skilled or semi-skilled
city workers to live away from the crowds. Most of its residents were middle class business owners or managers and employed one or two servants, they were also mainly from Birmingham, with only
10% previously already living in Yardley.
These commuters needed reliable transportation and the nineteenth century saw massive rail development. In 1838 the London-Birmingham railway opened and a station was built at Stitchford in 1844.
This station was replaced in 1882 by one to the east, in the position it is now, the name of the new station was misspelled as Stetchford and the mistake became adopted as the official name of
the area. Acocks Green Station, on the Oxford line was opened in 1852.
Thomas Telford also undertook an essential reconstruction of the Coventry Road Turnpike in 1820 and regular horse buses began running from the Swan in the 1870s. It is likely that it was under
Telford that the bridge near the top of Red Hill was built. In 1885 Steam Trams began to run in Sparkhill and by 1897 electric trams went down Stoney Lane, the Stratford Road and the Coventry
Road. In 1803 the Stratford Canal opened from Kings Norton to Kingswood, including a wharf at Yardley Wood, and the canal reached Stratford and the Avon Navigation in 1816. With the explosion of
canals Yardley was on a major industrial trade route from which it profited greatly.
After Marston Chapel ended St Edburgha's primacy in the area in 1704 a wave of new churches were built in every part of the area including St Mary's in Acocks Green, Christ Church in Yardley Wood
and St Mary's in Moseley. Despite all this development Yardley was still relatively rural and the Artist F. H. Henshaw (born 1807) painted numerous studies of the rural surroundings while he
lived at 'The Cottage' in Green Lane, Small Heath.
The Twentieth Century
By 1907, while officially it was not, much of Yardley could be considered a suburb of Birmingham. It had a population of 58,000 and contained 13,640 houses. In 1906 and 1907 Tyseley, Hall Green
and Yardley Wood all got railway stations and it was the lack of such a station which helped Yardley village itself stay so rural as long as it did.
All areas of old Yardley continued to grow and in 1911, after a bitterly fought debate, it was officially absorbed into Birmingham. While many residents had fought to stay out of Birmingham, at
the point of absorption Yardley had no refuse incinerator, no electricity supplier, and gas and water were already being supplied by Birmingham Corporation. 1,325 Yardley children were schooled
in Birmingham schools and many residents were dissatisfied with the local council, which admitted it would rather keep rates low than improve the area.
Soon after the incorporation Birmingham Council began a road repairing scheme and existing tram lines were extended to Robin Hood. In 1916 the Warwick Road got a tram system and the station at
Acocks Green sparked its growth into a similar shape to today. While Yardley Village would not get a tram station until 1928 developments in transport saw more and more people moving to the
suburbs and widening the gap between the classes.
The real changes to the face of Yardley in the twentieth century however came after 1921 when a building plan was unveiled by Birmingham City Council. 19 miles of road were to be widened and 10
miles of new roads to be built. There were allowances for new parks, rail stations and amenities but limits were put on the number of houses which could be built at 12 houses per square mile (15
in some areas) to allay the fears of the local community that they were to be swamped.
Through the 1920 s Stoney Lane, Yardley Road, Warwick Road, Coventry Road, School Road, Fox Hollies Road, and Robin Hood Lane were extended to double track roads but the position of existing
buildings, war time delays and post-war costs left them unfinshed, and the number of cars which would use the roads had always been underestimated. With plans stalled it was soon realized that
trams were impractical for the narrow roads and they were replaced by the Corporation Motor Bus. In 1926 the 11 bus route was opened and trams on the Coventry road were replaced by trolleybuses
in 1937 and diesel buses by the 1950s.
Under the 1921 plan housing estates became a feature of Yardley .The Lea Hall Estate, built in 1936, had 3,486 houses and a shopping centre and included the 50,000th municipal house in
Birmingham. In 1939 rents in Yardley had been raised to put more money into poor relief, but the rent payers, unable to afford it, went on strike. The mayor announced that non-paid rents would be
collected in furniture by bailiffs. In protest, on the morning of the opening of the 50,000th municipal house rent strikers lynched an effigy of a bailiff and took his coffin to the opening in a
mock funeral. The opening was continued as planned and the strike was forgotten when war broke out.
Between the wars an industrial sector built up between the rail and canal routes and Tyseley goods yard was opened to help cope with the volume of goods which were travelling through the area.
World War Two however stopped all of the expansion which had been going on in the area and the sudden halt to construction and the losses of war meant that 1946 saw another housing shortage in
Yardley. As the previous housing shortage had lead to terraced houses going up, this one lead to the boom of the tower block, many of which are still with us.
The twentieth century had a massive impact on the physical face of Yardley , and so did it have an impact on the residents. As the area expanded and became more and more a suburb of Birmingham
the traditional middle class, who did not wish to live close to the city moved out further afield to areas such as Solihull. As others moved in the suburbs grew and cars, along with commuters,
became a part of everyday life, congestion on the already ill equipped road worsened until 1965-7 when the Swan underpass was built to ease the problem, the Swan Pub being demolished in the
process.
The area was developed again in 1984 (the same year that the Coventry Road was widened to six lanes) when the Midland Development Group decided to turn a disused supermarket into the modem Swan
Shopping Centre. The Shops were opened by T. V. personality Larry Grayson on 18th November but a year and a half later in 1986 the whole market was gutted by fire causing £2 million
pounds worth of damage and badly injuring two firemen. Traders opened stores outside just a week later and the rebuilding was completed November of the same year.
Also in the 1980s Yardley gained a record-breaking building in the Old Brookside flats. Officially opened by the Queen in 1981, the old people's home containing 68 flats was the largest complex
for the elderly in Europe at that time.
While the twentieth century saw Yardley expand and gain hundreds of new buildings it was also a period of great loss. As land was cleared for the new developments numerous historical buildings
were lost including several medieval farms and the imposing Hall Green Hall to name just a few. However it was not all bad. In 1951 work started to refurbish Blakesley Hall and it was reopened as
a museum (after sustaining damage in the war) in 1957. In 1969 the area around St Edburgha' s was made a conservation area to protect the church and the medieval trust school and in 1976 the road
was closed to traffic and the area awarded the 'outstanding' category.
Dozens of images from this century are available in numerous mediums. Thanks to photographers such as Canon Cochrane and local artists like Florence Mare this period of Yardley's history is
documented very thoroughly, physically, as well as in statistics and official records.
The Twenty First Century
Yardley as we know it today is split in two by the A4040. To the west of this road lie pre-war and inter-war structures, mainly housing, while to the east the area is predominantly post-war. The
industrial areas of Yardley lie mainly in Tyseley and Garrets Green.
The 2001 census for Yardley Ward shows 22,976 people in Yardley. (Of course this is only a small part of the ancient Parish). The size of the area is listed at 4.4 sq km with 5,170 people per sq
km, more populous than Birmingham. The average age of the Yardley inhabitant is 38.2 years (two years older than Birmingham) and 15.1% of Yardley's population comes from ethnic minorities.
Yardley is now firmly established as a suburb of Birmingham and its rural surroundings, preserved for so long compared to many neighbouring areas, have gone. It remains to be seen what effect new
developments in Birmingham such as the Bull Ring are going to have on Yardley but more than at any time before its future is strongly linked to all areas of the city.