Church Road Yardley, looking towards St. Edburgha c 1900-1905.
Also two threads combined
View attachment 200588
Lovely to see this photo. Not one I have seen before. I believe the triangular tree in front of the Church tower is still there, if you look on Google Maps Streetview, although much bigger now. The area around the church has maintained much of its originality today as it was made into a conservation area and Church road was partially blocked off round about the '60s or '70s.
Behind the gap in the low wall on the left of the picture hides what used to be known locally as The field, opposite the park. This probably belonged to the farm opposite the church. When I was an infant there was always a donkey or a horse in it, awaiting admirers.
If my memory serves me correctly, in the '60s, before the conservation area, the council acquired the field and built a typically '60s style building which was an old people's home called Yardley Grange. That has now gone and as it was probably deemed to be a brownfield site, a developer has built a newish housing estate of small, vaguely neo Georgian style houses on it.
Going way back in my memory, the low level building beyond the field's wall used to be the village butcher. It didn't look quite like a shop but if I recall correctly, had a horizontally divided door which I assume, when the top half was open, served as a sort of counter. The building is still there but the old frontage has been rebuilt.
I remember that around 1960, the church celebrated its millennium and it was marked by a massive musical pageant in the park performed by all the girls of nearby Cockshot Hill school.