Coventry History...

Pictures, maps, memories and stories

Re: Coventry History...

Postby Blitzkid » Thu Mar 23, 2023 12:20 pm

Dutchman,
I doubt it, I think it was 1937 when a party of councilors and a army officer came to house and demanded to look at our bedrooms. Then they said to my father, your teenage daughter will have to move in with the boys and we will billet two army men in your house and that's what happened. So we had two army guys with us for a few months, so did other houses. They cleared the turf from the field opposite us, put up barrack huts and made the great gun-site to protect the power station. A smaller gun-site in the fields behind us were a bofors gun to protect the larger one. So now we had this great gun in front and the chatter of the gun behind. The noise of the large gun shook the earth and kept us awake. The soldiers left three years later and my sister was in the army on one of these sites in south London.

rebbonk
In the 17th century there were so many horses that used Rope. The canals started, so more Rope. So Coventry started it's own rope business,--- great. Bales of flax and Hemp were brought from the country to the basin, placed in a huge warehouse. Bboys would take the bales on wheel barrows to young girls with spinning wheels. From there the strands would be taken up by men, so many strands to what thickness of rope. The man walked backwards keeping the rope of the floor. It was placed in a hole on a trestle that twisted the strands. The man still walked backwards placing the rope in smooth grooves on the trestle to keep it off the floor so there were a number of trestles as the man carried the rope. The farther he got from the spinners the heavier the weight. At the right length other men took it from him, made coils and the boys then wheeled it back to the warehouse, collected more flax for the spinners. The men possibly walked backwards 60 yards or more, could only work in dry weather.
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Re: Coventry History...

Postby rebbonk » Thu Mar 23, 2023 1:02 pm

Interesting, Blitzkid. :thumbsup:

Would the rope-making have anything to do to with the Rope-Walk that was near to where Lady Herberts garden is now?
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Re: Coventry History...

Postby Blitzkid » Fri Mar 24, 2023 1:26 pm

rebbonk:
Possibly, I have no idea, the story was handed down from my family. This is the earliest picture, my great-granddad about 1880 with our repair dockyard next to Tusses Bridge, but the family had been on the canal for nearly a century before that.

This boat cabin you see with chimney was the domestic cabin for the family why it is important to us because my dad was born in this cabin, the last of the family to be born on a boat (1897) and he lived on this boat for at least the next ten years By that time a couple of Bedworth coal mines and two Wyken coal mines had closed, the third was nearly worked out. The writing was on the wall for horse pulling boats, with horse boats could only pull two boats for about twenty miles a day, before needing food and rest.

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To explain the boat in the picture, he was born in that cabin, so was my granddad and my father. The boat had come to pick up the second boat (Butty). This was the repair dock, we owned the other Dockyard by way of marriage between a Simpson lad and a Sephton girl. Each boat could carry 25 tons of coal.

At Sutton Stop (where we built boats) this boat is about to be poled from that side to this side. Here the horse would be brought from the stables next to the Elephant and Castle and roped to the boat. The butty-boat would slide down poles of the slip way, poled across and tied behind that lead boat and they were ready to go to Bedworth coal mines.
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Re: Coventry History...

Postby rebbonk » Fri Mar 24, 2023 4:22 pm

:thumbsup:
Of course it'll fit; you just need a bigger hammer.
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Re: Coventry History...

Postby dutchman » Fri Mar 24, 2023 6:07 pm

Fabulous picture Blitzkid!

Thanks for posting :cheers:
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Re: Coventry History...

Postby Blitzkid » Fri Mar 31, 2023 11:34 am

By 1950s all the troops were back home and the extortion rackets were back, not as bad as the 20s/30s times. There was a business in Spon End. I winked at the waitress, asked a question, she pointed to a corridor towards the back. I knocked on a door, the flap of a spy hole moved. When the doorman saw I was not police he opened the door. He had an alarm button he could have pressed if I had have been. Two clerks sat at a table taking cash bets, this was illegal away from the race-track. A ticker tape transmitted prices, a phone line described races straight from the racecourse as they were run. There were about three punters laying bets of a few shillings. I asked the price of a horse soon to run. The clerk looked at the ticker tape, 5 to 1. I put twenty pounds on the table, said I'll take that. He jumped. Wait he said, walked in the back room, came back and accepted the bet. A few seconds later the race came on. The horse ran a splendid race and won comfortably. The the clerk paid me, it was more money than they had taken all-week. From out of the back-room the proprietor came out, gave me the once over and declared my limit would be £1 per bet. I picked up my winnings, made sure no one followed me, caught the first bus going anywhere, swapped bus several times, made sure I was not followed before returning to my flat. This I did the following day in another shop in Stoney Stanton road but got better odds.

Two days later I visited Lingfield races, but stayed in Brighton. Went to a pub and gave the money to a young girl. She gave me £20 and a social evening like out of this world. This was stable lads' money who were not allowed to bet and could be traced by racecourse detectives.
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Re: Coventry History...

Postby rebbonk » Fri Mar 31, 2023 12:30 pm

Blitzkid, stories like this are priceless, please keep them coming. :thumbs-up:

A guy who I worked with in the early 70s had been banned from most local bookies. His 'crime' was to consistently take a small sum from them, just to prove he could. Bookies can be really poor losers. :lol:
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Re: Coventry History...

Postby dutchman » Fri Mar 31, 2023 1:01 pm

Blitzkid wrote:This I did the following day in another shop in Stoney Stanton road but got better odds.

That was Jimmy Gough's.

He was also a boxing promoter but ran that part of the business from an office above a shop in Cox Street.
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Re: Coventry History...

Postby Blitzkid » Sun Apr 02, 2023 5:15 pm

The true story of
‘COVENTRY CANAL’--BEDWORTH TO COVENTRY

Around the year 1763 business people of Coventry talked of a Canal to bring coal from the coal mines in Bedworth to COVENTRY, the Canal would be easy to build as it would not need locks or cuttings but Coventry had two rivers to cross, the Sowe and the Sherbourne and the floods they caused, but water was useful to a canal.

Called by the name ‘Navigation Company’ and in act of parliament in 1768, commenced in April of that year. BRINDLEY was expensive and busy with canals in the North so they asked Thomas Yeoman to build, He formed a company, sold shares to pay for it.

It would be from Bedworth to Stoke in Coventry, extended to the basin, later.

Shareholders were asking why Brindley was not involved, so Yeoman employed him at £150 per year, just to look in two months in the year. Brindley did not come near so was ‘sacked’.

At that time Brindley had several canals on the go up North, now transport was only by Horse, a horse carrying a rider could only travel 33 miles a day, before needed rest and food, so it would have taken Brindley about a week or more, each way, Brindley could not afford the time or money to visit Coventry.

A horse pulling two boats, it was much less and the company had to build stables and food for man and rider. The first was was on the Bedworth-Bulkington road, called THE NAVIGATION INN. the second on the Stoney Stanton Road at Courthouse Green, also called NAVIGATION INN. Yeoman knew Brindley would not attend.

Commenced that year on the 25th of April and finished the year following. The first two boats were coal, came into the Basin on Aug 1769. The canal system now connected to the Stafford Canal at Fradley, brought in Goods from the North. The first crates of soap arrived in the basin and within months the MORTALITY OF COVENTRY dropped by about 70%.
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Re: Coventry History...

Postby Blitzkid » Tue Apr 04, 2023 3:58 pm

Following morning after the Blitz and Broadgate is flattened. After the area was cleared except for two large smoke-blackened safes. Amid the rubble they were mute testimony to what had happened to the prosperous heart of Coventry.

The heat of the fire that had destroyed a family business, had so distorted the locks that the safes had to be cut open on the site a few days later.

Inside was the charred remains of watches, jewellery, gold and diamonds. Paper Money and Documents had been reduced to ASHES and the manufactures that had supplied the articles took them back without charge to the jeweler, cleaned and repolished or salvaged what they could. They came back to Coventry and re-sold. The safes were in the double-fronted shop of Flinn and co. 14-15 Broadgate. The firm then moved to Warwick Row. Repairs to jewelry that customers could not collect was covered by insurance, the mayor of Coventry a century before started the business.

This story from the Midland Daily Telegraph. Witness of the Safes in a distorted way, Blitz-kid.

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