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Overview
Yardley is 11.5
square miles in area, 17.5 miles in circuit. Regionally it is a northward
extension of the Solihull Plateau, a flat area bordering the central hollow of
the Birmingham Plateau, clearly bounded to the north by the Rivers Tame and Rea,
cut into by the Cole system and declining gently to the Blythe valley on the
east. The general dip of the surface which the drainage reflects is from SW to
NE. Thus the highest point in Yardley is 507' above sea level at its western
tip, and the lowest is at the easternmost bound, (on the Rea-Cole interfluve) on
the Cole north of Kitts Green, below 300'. Apart from the rounded valleys, slope
is uniform and slight across the area. Yardley east of the Cole is a low ridge,
well defined by the river on the west, less so by NE-flowing tributaries on the
east, its flat crest lowering from 470 feet in the south to just over 400 feet
in the north.
The simple relief indicates the
uniformity and level of the underlying strata. These are layers of Keuper Marl,
a reddish-brown clay with some shaley bands within, which are 1,200 feet thick
in places. The only other solid rock in a negligible outcropping of Upper Keuper
(Arden) Sandstone in the Glebe Farm area. Overlying the Marl is a variable but
always thin layer of drift material, a ground moraine left by Pleistocene ice:
glacial melting washed the drift out of the valleys, leaving it as a capping on
most of the interfluvial ridge. West of the Cole, in Wake Green, Billesley, and
Yardley Wood, the deposits consist mainly of sands and gravels, of which there
are two smaller patches north of Yardley Church, while the ridge between Shirley
and Coventry Road is covered by boulder clay. The alluvial deposits along the
Cole are very narrow and hardly exist elsewhere.
The River Cole, in former times known
in Yardley as Greet Brook and Haymill Brook (though Colle is the most ancient
name) deserves no other title. It has always, since Pleistocene times when the
valley was deepened by torrents of meltwater, been a small and variable stream.
Larger and less variable when bordering forests retained water and released it
steadily, and when the untapped water-table overflowed copiously, the Cole was
still a very minor waterway. Yet despite its uselessness for navigation it was
an obstacle to travel, so that firm crossing-places were important: it could be
dangerous in flood, and it could and did provide waterpower. Its score of
tributaries are all small and short within Yardley, only the Chinn Brook being
more than two miles long. The east-flowing streams which rise in Yardley are
tributaries of the Easthall Brook which enters the Cole outside the manor. Many
streams are now dry or tiny trickles, and some have been culverted.
The natural vegetation of Yardley would
be largely oak woodland, whose undergrowth could make it almost impenetrable.
The relatively impervious Keuper Marl retains surface water, and oak trees
thrive on it. Boulder clay would be only less favourable, but the stoniest areas
and the permeable sandy patches would have had lighter tree cover, perhaps even
some open heath. Thus the parts west of the river would be relatively clear, as
would the north end of the ridge and perhaps its top. But the valley sides and
nearly all of the manor north of Coventry Road would be thickly forested. The
undrained meadows of the Cole and its side-streams would be bogs bordered by
willow and alder.
These factors would greatly affect human movement, settlement,
and occupation. Place-names, all Anglo-Saxon, help to give a description of the
manor in early times, and show what the first settlers had to face. The earliest
names are given in the Charter of AD 972, and refer to brooks, springs, a ford,
oak trees, and a swamp. The -ley ending of several names recorded for the 11th
century, but certainly older, indicates a clearing in woodland - but not in
dense woodland. Nobody lacking bulldozers and machine-saws would try to start
farming in a forest, and so we find Yardley, Flaxleys, and Lea, Tyseley,
Billesley, and Bulley, all using the better-drained soils.
Swanshurst and
Greethurst,
woodland patches, are found on
the west side of the Cole valley, and west of Tyseley and on the Arden sandstone
strip in the north. The name of Greet indicates the deposits which provided the
fords – to use which travellers made the tracks later to become Warwick and
Stratford Roads – and also easily-cleared land for open fields, for it means
‘gravel’.
The 'moors' often shown on later field-maps beside streams are 'mors',
meaning swamps. Quagmire Farm, much later, on drift but beside marl, is a
reminder of the difficulty of travelling on much-used clay tracks in wet
weather. Sarehole has the 'holm' ending which means a meadow liable to flood.
Fords are among the early names, like Rotyford (New Bridge, Yardley Green Road)
which means' safe crossing', a matter of importance in an area where there is no
deposit of gravel like those which closely approach the river at Titterford,
Greet, and Stichford (Styfec's Ford).
A point that becomes immediately obvious when old topographical
names are plotted on a map is their scarcity between Yardley Church and Coventry
Road. At the south end of this bare patch are Fast Pits, Red Hill, and Clay
Lane, all providing the reason for the lack of names. The drift-free area would
be the most densely-wooded of the whole manor, almost the last to be cleared,
and cleared from the edges by existing settlements not by new ones made within.
The condition of the road across this area (Church Road) became so bad in time,
the soft marl so worn, that it became necessary to raise it above the
surrounding land. This was the Long Causeway, shown on 19th century maps.
In the far south of the manor is Yardley Wood. At the time of the
Domesday Book, the combined woodland of Yardley and Beoley was given as 40
square miles: as the total area of the two is only 19 square miles, there was
clearly some exaggeration by the surveyors, but it can at least be said that a
great part of Yardley must then have been wooded. In Tudor times the manor was
said to be 'secluded in a great wood', but the forest giants were being felled
at a great rate then and later. It seems likely that the northern clay-lands
were cleared to supply the forges of Birmingham and the ship-building yards
before the last woods disappeared from the south, both because of the need for
more ploughland between the open fields of Yardley and Acocks Green, and
because the southern woods were farther from the town. Thus perhaps a name,
Yardley Wood, once applicable to another and more densely forested area, came to
rest where it is now.
Yardley's name, of which there are 16 documented forms, is
meaningless today. Since it is the name of the manor, first recorded in 972,
presumably it is the original one: but that it is on the original site, if
indeed there was a nucleated village in early times, is not certain. The first
open fields were on the sandy cap at the end of the ridge, but the present
village, a linear settlement beside the church, is on drift-free marl as were
the hamlets of Greet and Lea Hall. If a 'ley' (a dwelling site in a natural or
man-made clearing) were established in the 7th century or later, it would
certainly not be in the dense forest which bordered the sandy patch. Perhaps
the first houses were scattered about the field-edges, as seems to have been the
case with the Stockfield - Acocks Green colony: nucleation, on cleared land, may
have come late, even after the building of the first church. That may have
sprung from an origin as a chapel of the hall within the Yardley moat. (West
Hall nearby in Sheldon had its own chapel later). Another and perhaps greater
possibility is that the three settlements began as moated sites, which
necessarily were in impervious clay, and that population growth brought hamlet
development near them. The problem of fresh water supply, for wells sunk in clay
collect only surface water and dry up readily, may explain the continued
smallness of all the settlements and the number of individual clearances on less
difficult soils.
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