Butchers Row

[dutchman]

Can we define what a Coventry kid is? I once got into a very heated discussion about this with someone claiming that to be a real Coventry kid you had to be born within the old city walls. That being the case, anyone born at Gulson Rd Hospital wouldn't qualify.

Gulson Rd Hospital WAS within the old city walls!

Half of all Coventry kids in the post war period were born in Keresley Hospital which at the time came under Meriden. It makes searching for birth records very complicated.

[rebbonk]

Gulson Rd Hospital WAS within the old city walls!

Thank you, Dutchman.

I was born at home in Wyken and I've always considered myself a Coventry Kid.

[dutchman]

This view from the corner of New Buildings and what is is now Trinity Street looking towards Broadgate is often mistaken for Butcher Row but was in fact known as "Bull Ring". Butcher Row ended where it joined Little Butcher Row on the left of the picture.

[Blitzkid]

The beauty of Butchers row that most times the banter from the shopkeepers was often Hilarious while conducting their business, which went with their colourful shops, a bell tinkled as you opened the door faded print dresses, Chinese porcelain vases, fans, coloured candles, trinkets, small stamp albums, chop-sticks, and a sweet smell of perfume, and at the bottom of the cobbled street they later called little Butchers Row was the smell of several ginger bread shops, and with a aunt who was still in the mood of the twenties, with beads, and bright flowered dresses, I loved every minute, strangers talked to people as if they had known them all there life, bright funny, and warm hearted it was a pleasure to walk the streets of Coventry.

[rebbonk]

Let the memories flow, Blitzkid. I can only go back to the early 60s, so anything before then is of great interest.

[Blitzkid]

COVENTRY was built on ten hills, the highest be at Gosford Fields Hill 289 feet above Sea Level,
The lowest at Hearsal Common Hill at 331 " " "
with the river Sherbourne Radford Brook, and smaller contributory water courses, in the Sherbourne valley, Hearsal Common being 67 feet above Spon-end, this is Geographical heights from Middle 19th century times. if you want to more I will happy to tell more.

[rebbonk]

Blitzkid, where were the city boundaries in your day? Have they moved much to what we accept as Coventry today?

[Blitzkid]

REBBONK
Yes the city as grown enormously since 1930 although I do not know where, in the thirty's hardly anyone left the street, there was no bus services , so you could only travel the short distances of the tram services, it was a completely different life as you know today. the where not the world scene that you know today, it was all deliveries by Horse and cart. It was the war that brought the big change, everything was speeded up. engines, transport, leapt ahead, and suddenly the world got smaller, and Coventry expanded, and boundaries changed.

[rebbonk]

[Blitzkid]

The old cemetery trinity churchyard,

Here lies the body of Edward Hide We laid him here, cos he died
We had rather, it had been his father, If it had been his sister
We boys, would have missed her
But since it honest Ted No more need be said

Here lies a man who lived by lying, Some people thought it would leave him, when dying
But to everyone's surprise, even in his grave he lies.