Books on Coventry

Spon Street & Spon End book Not cheap but a great book that only periodically turns up. Warning, some of these types of books may be updated and reprinted this year or next. It's an auction book so don't bid each other up. As per usual, this sale is nothing to do with me.

"Closing Time" - Chris Arnot

Helen, thanks. I bought the Spon Street and Spon End book and thought it worth the outlay. Lots of detail. Seems the Family History publications on Spon Street would also be of interest. Does anyone have them?

Hi Prof. The Coventry Family History Society Books, Spon Street and Spon End, are interesting if you are researching families and places in the area. Both are based on detailed lists of the 1891 census and various other name and address lists. There are also some good detailed street maps of the areas. There are a few pictures in both. There is a roll of honour of the fallen in WW1 in both books and a list of those killed in the blitz in Spon Street in WW2. A good couple of books to have on your shelf if you are interested in families there.

I'm glad you got it, Prof. I'd consider it one of the best books about the city, especially as it's dedicated to a specific street, so can cover much more detail. One of these days I might do a review of all the books I've got, including a few useful ones that aren't specifically about Coventry. Admittedly my focus is on very old images but I can appreciate other areas of the city. One of my favourites is a large pamphlet about the car industry with maps of where the factories were and their dates. For pricing, unless a book is in very poor condition (which is rare) or very common, I'll pay the sort of money a modern book would sell for. Only a few have I felt I paid too much and that is based on the poor content, not the condition of the book.

Anne. Thank you for your response. Unfortunately, by 1891 my ancestors had moved out of Spon Street, though still in central Coventry. An earlier period would help, though I have the census of course for all years they were there.

For anyone wanting to quickly begin a nice little Coventry book collection, or expand one, there's this nice little stack of eight local books on eBay at a very reasonable starting price.

Coventry : The Hidden History on eBay. Good book on early Coventry history and archaeology. Good price but there are other copies, so don't worry if you miss this one.

I'd still like a copy of Shelton's 'A Night in Little Park Street', if anyone sees a copy for sale.

There is a copy on Amazon, Neil. They only want £100 for it!!!

There are people snapping up bargains and then reselling at silly prices. I thought I saw a book I wanted, bid on it and then realised it wasn't the one I wanted and let the next bidder have it. The same book is now up for sale for 20 times what I offered.

When I left work for the last time (won't call it retirement as it was a little more complicated than that), I created a website to sell books Roy had collected over the years towards his "pension", mostly military and aviation. I went through the whole collection and found average prices for them mostly off Abebooks. Most prices on there were reasonable unless it was a rare book but a couple of sellers had ridiculous prices, sometimes 10 or more times greater. Roy thinks they do this to inflate the figures in the accounts, no way were they going to sell books at the prices on there. The book I have, A Harvest of History, on Amazon there are 3 second hand copies, 2 at £8 and one in America at £69.95. Ridiculous.

I reckon there are several possibilities. Someone gets the decimal point in the wrong place. Some are trying it on and hoping someone will get currency conversion wrong or are desperate for that specific book. Some are trying to make other copies look cheap or to introduce big cuts later. But yes, there may be a deeper reason for it.

"The Watchmaker's Revenge"