Canley Gardens Society Estate

Does anyone have any information on this estate which seems to have existed only between c 1925 or so for about 10 years.It is listed in various directories over that decade then disappears. One of my relations is in the electoral roll for 1931 as living at Plot 16. Was it a private estate?

I think they're on this map below. South of the EARLSDON label. They were built without decent roads or with surface drainage. There was a lack of sewerage and street lighting. There are articles in the 60s talking about how bad the puddles and pot holes were. Due to the problems and the residents not stumping up the cash, the council hadn't adopted the roads. There doesn't seem to be many properties even by 1950. A possible candidate for plot 16 would be number 16 Innis Road but it would have come with the rest of what is now a cul de sac. They were all originally very big plots. Modern location here.

The estate was a cooperative development by members of the Canley Gardens Society. It exploited a temporary relaxation of the planning laws which was made after the First World War, in order to ease the housing shortage the need for local authority planning approval was suspended. The result was a "shack and track" development with cheaply built houses (many were simply ex army huts), poor draininage etc. The roads were narrow and had no pavements. However, the plots were large and were effectively small holdings. The roads were finally adopted by the council in the 1950s I believe and over time the original dwellings replaced by more substantial houses, with many of the large plots subdivided. Today it is a popular residential area although the original narrow roads remain an issue!

I dont know if it is included, but during the mid to late 50's, the Riddings was a very nice place to live. I went to Henry Parkes with a lad who lived there. Not a very wide road, but easily accessible. Later, I did my paper round from Holts paper shop that was at the end of the Riddings.

Hello, This is a fascinating conversation. My recollections of Canley came to an end during the fifties, my recent contacts have been playing at crem funerals. Thank you all for your contributions. Please keep them coming.

Thank you so much, Langtonian, for that info. It confirms what Helen said earlier. I seem to recall reading about a similar development, basically a shanty town, with a real community feel in the north of the city, which had a lot of photos. The occupants looked very happy despite the rather primitive looking dwellings. I suppose they were pleased not to have to live in the cramped city centre courts where conditions were probably even worse. I wonder if any photos exist of the Canley Gardens Estate.

Hello, Some aerial photos of the Canley area from the Warwickshire Railways Website. Warwickshire Railways Website.

Hi Philip. Opened up those photos and it brought back some good memories. Particularly the cottage Ref: Inwrchg 545. I have in the past spent many happy hours in the early 60's in that cottage. Twins Michael and David Riley live there with their parents, their dad worked for BR at the time and upon leaving Woodlands both boys went on to work for them. Thanks for the jog !!!!

I've been looking at directories again and it seems that some of the residents of the Canley Gardens Estate listed in 1931 were later listed as living in Innis Road in 1939. EG my relation Horace Cooke (who died in 1936) was at 16 Canley Gardens but in 1939 his widow and their 6 children were at 12 Innis Road' Looking at google maps shows how narrow Innis Road still is, I hadn't realised it was next door to the golf club.

This is a plan showing the original plots, note that it is shown as "south up". The streets were not named until sometime in the 1930s, until then addresses were simply the plot number followed by "Canley Gardens". Innes Road is shown as Road No 2 on the plan..

Hello, My next stop will be, Canley, the announcer has just said.

The Riddings was still a nice place to live during the 60s. I believe it closed to through traffic sometime in the 70s. It was a "rat run"' as they call such roads, as if the public had no legal l right to drive through. Yes, a short cut from our house in Canley Road, near the A45, to Earlsdon. Most mornings, my dad would take me half way to school in his Rover P5, which was quite a wide car in its day (a bit like the big ****-*** Chelsea tractors of nowadays which are not cars, but are even wider). My dad could judge the width of his car to the nearest inch. The Riddings was quite a narrow road, with no pavement, just hedges. Most mornings, we encountered an old Hillman coming the other way. The driver was a chap older than my dad, trilby hat, muffler, driving gloves, glasses... the archetypal old English driver. The problem was that this particular gent could not judge the width of his car accurately, and was obviously frightened of hitting something on his nearside, for he left quite a gap on his nearside. This meant that my dad, in order to avoid a collision, had to very often scrape the hedge on his nearside - usually a privet, as I often heard the scratching on the paintwork of my dad's Rover. My dad used to curse with "oh no, here he comes again, Wide Berth Bill!". Jelleys the coal merchants were down the Riddings. It must have taken skill to get the coal lorry up and down that road. When our house was built, on the plans/deeds, there were only a handful of houses in the whole of what was then Canley Lane, before the A45 came along. I did three paper rounds for Jim Holt for several years, every morning. First the Riddings, then Rochester, then back down Nightingale Lane to do the Dip. That was what Henry Parkes Road was called!

I did a paper round that covered Pilkington Rd, Ingram Rd, Canley Rd, Nightingale Lane, Sir Henry Parkes Rd, and Ainsbury Rd. Not for Jim Holt though, the telegraph dropped the papers to my home in Canley Rd. There were only about 40 papers but the round was so spread out it took about 40 minutes on my bike. Jim Holt had a bit of a reputation. I remember we'd nick the empty pop bottles from the outside of the back of his shop and take them back in for the refund.

I guess that was some years after I did my paper rounds. Jim used to supply morning and evening papers. Before I did my three morning rounds, which all followed on from one another, and took me exactly one hour, which I used to love, whatever the weather, I did try doing an evening round of Telegraphs, but soon gave up. It was murder, competing against all the rush hour traffic which used the Riddings etc. as a "rat run". Plus, it impinged on my evening time, which was already impinged on by homework, which I detested having to do. Jim certainly was a character, a one-off. I soon learned to take much of what he said, especially gossip and scandal relating to people, with a large dose of salt. He used to live with his mother in that old house until she died and he inherited the business. But he lost many customers. Always immaculately dressed, the house, which he shared with several cats, made the Bates Motel house look like a palace. He never married, nor seemed to have a female friend/partner, but his circle of friends were all into the horses, i.e. gambling. Visiting racetracks and drinking were the main passions of his life, so he neglected the paper round side of things, and at one stage, I estimated he was losing an average of one customer per week. I used to get it in the ear from disgruntled customers: "Here, you, yes you paper boy. You can tell Mr Holt I'm cancelling my papers from him and going to Fanes in Earlsdon. I've told him before I'm sick of.. [some complaint about poor service, usually that he'd forgotten their monthly magazine or Sunday paper or something]". Before I ceased doing the morning rounds, the Telegraph stopped supplying him. Jim moaned that they were "kicking a man when he's down", but it was rumoured to be because he was not paying their bills. I daresay it was caused by gambling debts. I guess this was the time they started to deliver directly to paper deliverers. I know they did a survey of every house in the area, because a lady knocked my parents door and asked if they had a Telegraph delivered, and who supplied it. "Oh yes, Jimmy Holt" she said, as she ticked something on her A4 clipboard pad. One of Jim's' brothers ran the barber's shop, which occupied the front room of the house. His other brother Steve did the papers in the Wainbody and Canley areas, and in later life, Warwick University.