City centre shopping precincts

This is the image I used for my digital model of Broadgate. I can't recall the original source. Going off topic, but on the subject of mosaics, does anyone know what this one in the Precinct represents.

Sir Guy and the Dun Cow.

Apologies if this is a re-post - similar images seen before but interesting nonetheless - Davieses and the chess set just in front of that shot - Milletts at the end on the left and turn left in to the Smithford Way car park.

I think you will find that Jill Hanson's record shop was in the Lower Precinct in 1966, ground level, below (more or less) the Pancake Parlour on the upper level. So, looking up from the Corporation Street end, towards Broadgate, Jill Hanson's was to the left of the base of the Lady Godiva Cafe (the Circular Cafe, the Mushroom, the whatever), where ice creams and similar snacks were sold. That said, and I am certain I am right, having spent so much money in there, the photograph you submitted with your post is superb.

Jill Hanson's was in Market Way, towards the market end of the Woolworth's building The shop you recall was Fennell's.

Yes, you are quite right Cliff, they were in Market Way - I don't know why but I am always getting the two mixed up!

They were originally going to be Market Street South and Market Street North but that idea was abandoned around the same time as they were pedestriansised.

You are right - Fennell's it was. It was of a reasonable size and it catered to most musical tastes. My taste then ran to jazz of all periods, and remains so to this day, though that taste is now likely to share equal time on the old stereo system with my interest in music of the concert/recital halls, usually music by Beethoven and his contemporaries, often composers of subsequent generations, occasionally straying back to pre-Beethoven composers - Bach and Mozart particularly, but many others. Upon reflection, though I recall Jill Hanson's shop in Market Way, I do not recall going into the place. By 1966 I was married, had been to - 1964/returned from - 1965 Canada, feeling altogether quite sophisticated, was twenty-three, and the teenyboppers who frequented Jill Hanson's shop. Upon return in 1965 my wife and I found a glorified bedsitter on Holyhead Road, the city side of the Ring Road. Let me say this about the "glorified" aspect of the bedsitter, I mean it in no pejorative sense. Yes, it was much smaller than the bedsitter on Gloucester Road we had rented from the same landlord, an architect, but - like our previous home - it was modern in every way, and - while a tad expensive - was close to the city centre, was close to everywhere we needed to go. It was, I suppose,"glorious" rather than "glorified". As soon as our goods & chattels arrived from Hamilton, Ontario - including a decent LP record collection, a collection that started in Coventry and at Fennell's - we bought an HMV Stereomaster, a radiogram (as once such an item would have been described). Just Google this prize of 1960s technology, a steal then at 65 quid, and all will be revealed. I recall an old pal saying to me: "If I had 65 quid to throw around, I would have bought my wife a washing-machine". My wife and I were nonplussed, for we had assumed that - in marital relations of the time - taking care of laundry was not the responsibility of one spouse over another, but the responsibility of both, of each. Of course, we already had bought the HMV Stereomaster - a musical joy for both of us, for each of us. As I recall, the "65 quid to throw around" guy we never heard from again. I think my wife and I were cut-off as socially irresponsible, and all because we used a laundrette! 1966 was the year I developed full-time my mail-order jazz record business, a continuation of a part-time pursuit I had for some months. I opened a jazz record shop above a men's outfitters in Lower Ford Street. This was a disaster that only the offer of a job at Standard-Triumph/British Leyland could provide a rescue from, but such an offer arose, and I'll continue this story on that thread, here at the finest website ever developed on behalf of a city's residents - erstwhile and current. Dammit, Midland Red - you and your single-decker buses (though double-decker on their road to Leicester, via Nuneaton from Coventry) - you've done it again, proving me wrong.

Ye Gods, I've never been called one of those before!!

If you run with the teenyboppers, and if you (no - I will not say it), then you are/were a teenybopper. Get serious, TonyS, I was writing of impressions I had at the time, but now that you mention it -

Impressions! Hey, tell me about it. After only a few weeks in the army in the summer of 1962 I came home on leave, I decided that I wanted to socialise, so went to the Locarno. Asked a girl for a dance and her reply was "No thanks, granddad." Taking stock I looked around and I was the only one dressed in a suit, the usual attire when two years previously my mate and I used to go frequently. A quick exit, stage left.

NeilsYard, is that space now occupied by the boring frontage of West Orchard?

Hey up, our kid - I'll have you know that in 1962 I was an habitue of the Locarno, and I would no more have dreamed of turning up to the Locarno, to dance with girls in hooped (sometimes, multi-layered petticoat) skirts, atop which would be a feminine adaptation of a blue blazer (short, close-fitting - a sort of blazerette) in anything less than the "smart brown Italian suit (double-breasted)" that I was reported in the Coventry Evening Telegraph to be wearing during a speech I gave in London (a Young Socialists' conference ) that year - "In the quietly traditional Conway Hall, the next speaker was from Coventry. Dressed in a smart Italian double-breasted suit, Mr ______, began by saying..." I mean, look it up in the Telegraph archives. I was largely successful in my Locarno period - what I like to remember as my dancing years - while you were being rebuffed as elderly beyond belief. Of course, I was only nineteen (young enough to escape national service) where as you were a man of the world, twenty going on twenty-one, battle-scarred and, perhaps, a little weary, a little troubled by what you had seen On Her Majesty's Service. Consider this, PIXROBIN, those young lasses, those lasses that rebuffed you, as they now are - matrons of "a certain age" - those lasses that called you Grandad , their chances of slipping today into the arms of a young service lad would be slim to non-existent, unless the serviceman involved was a grandson. Of course, let us not dismiss the possibility that your suit may have let you down, for suit and all that it was, I doubt that it was of the smart Italian double-breasted style that served me so well, for - had it been - you surely would have danced the Fandango until you were a whiter shade of pale, and I would have read about it in the Coventry Evening Telegraph. I think I should confess that my "smart brown" was bought in Nuneaton, then (and some might argue, still) at the cutting-edge of bespoke tailoring. The deal was a quid a week until full payment was the deal. The contract was for a fortnight. That's right, two weeks - at a quid a week - and the suit was mine. I was advised that the suit was of the finest wool, though I never smoked while wearing it, for I had my doubts. I believed the suit's flashpoint was Fahrenheit 451, and I was then given to using a Zippo cigarette lighter Ah, the memories!

Mine was from Frank Carter's - used to be in the temporary shops just inside Coventry's High Street. Great tailor! A couple of years later I wanted specially made jackets, I sketched the ideas I had in my head and they adapted the design to the possible They had to have large pockets so I could shove a Rolleiflex roll-film camera in them.

Yes flap - thats the walk up towards the precinct where todays side entrance to Debenhams/West Orchards is