Historic Canals Of Coventry

[rebbonk]

Blitzkid, would I be right in thinking that the bridge was moved further away from the pub at some time after the above was taken?

I seem to remember that around 1970 the landlord of the pub kept budgies, my dad bought a few from him.

[Blitzkid]

SORRY FOR THE DELAY, no the new bridge was built in 1936, a little wider clipping gardens of houses on the right hand side, I think we lost about six feet of front garden. When my Dad came home from the WWI he went to Bell Green, bought a small tree, as memorial to his past comrades that did not come back, planted it in his dad's front garden. When they built the new bridge Grandad forbade them to touch the tree, so they built around it. It was a plum tree and it stood in the middle of the new pavement until 1946 when Dad moved to Ansty. I think it was removed when they built the new Motorway. In all the books I read of memorials this is the first one I knew of.

In 1919 they erected a temporary cenotaph in Whitehall. They also started the two minutes silence.

The cenotaph you see today wasn't completed until 1920. The body of the unknown warrior was brought from the Western Front on Armistice Day of that year and buried in Westminster Abbey.

[rebbonk]

Fascinating, Blitzkid.

Now, you mention Ansty do you have any memories of the jet and rocket engines being developed there?

[Blitzkid]

yes I was works fireman there 1949 first job out of army but we were given instruction that no way could we touch the rocket site. the liquid poured into a bowl the flame shot a good thirty yards against s concrete wall, the irony was for the last three years I had been trained to search for rocket site's in a special unit, and destroy them.