But if you come to Yardley Village, well… th, the vicar of Yardley in, in the, th, twenties and thirties, would’ve been quite happy to see Yardley Village taken down and replaced with a new model village. Erm… and, er, he was worried about how all the countryside ‘round, ‘round the village was being consumed, er, by council estates. And, er, he objected to some inter-war houses being built north of the church, erm… and it was pointed out to him that, erm, he knew perfectly well that the land, erm, had been sold for housing. It was very embarrassing for him, to be objecting to housing being built where he’d been a party to the sale of it, for the, exactly that purpose. And what the city did was, they- [interviewer coughs] -said to
him, ‘Oh, don’t worry, we’ll only put the best tenants in. They won’t cause you any trouble’. And it’s that sort of story that you come across.
Now, Yardley used to have a moat, in fact it used to have a double moat because the manor house was next to the church, and bits of this moat were still there at that time. And the story goes that they were unable to have the services outdoors because of the gnats coming from the moat and biting everybody. So, you know, you, you come across these, these, er, interesting stories that make, make the history alive.
