Bombing aftermath

Kaga, I can understand how the people in the village must have feared for the safety of those who went off to fight. In reality the blitz took the lives of three teenage boys from the village, something no-one would have predicted. In addition there were at least two other former Hawkesbury residents who perished on that same night at the Motor Hotel in Radford. They would have been known to your father's generation depending on when they left the village. I am sure the same sad story was repeated across the city with people losing relatives and people they had known. I can recall a chap telling me that all servicemen who had a home in Coventry and who were in the UK at the time were given a 48 hour pass to go home and see if their family was alright and to see if their house was still standing. This man was lucky on both counts. He told me that he received a telegram to report to the Labour Exchange in Cheylesmore, and having done so was told he could either go back to the army or he could become a fireman. He chose the latter and was most surprised to receive another telegram telling him to report for duty at the Dunlop which was five minutes walk from his house in Holbrooks. He stayed there until he retired at 65.

To go with my earlier image in post 71 - can't believe these sat like this for 20 years!

All these surface pictures but I always wondered what happened below the ground? The Precinct area took a lot of high explosives, damaging foundations, and we know water mains were burst, so thousands of gallons of water ran from Broadgate down through foundations to the vale of Corporation Street. Plus 1952/3 we had the worst floods for over a century. Through the fifties basements were all flooded, I have no idea how they would cope with such, it just seemed walking by each day a mammoth task that was glossed over too quickly.

Our fathers' generation suffered the worst and most senseless fifty years in human history. They knew all about war, horrors of death and destruction, wounds and pain, bereavement. They also knew that 1939 was terribly different from 1914. 1914 was like a bolt from the blue. When you opened the newspaper in those days you did not read of wholesale torture, persecution, imprisonment or even liquidation of tens of thousands of people. But from 1933 to 1939 one crisis followed upon another. Europe had slipped into the hands of a madman. International affairs was dominated by the emergence of fascism, and savage barbarism in Europe and the menace of another world war, and Coventry would be right in the thick of this one. This is the way I read it.

Searching the "Coventry Collections" website I see that there is a lot in the collection now referring to air raid damage. I am not sure if these are newly referenced documents. There appear to be some schedules of damaged property as I came across a couple for Coundon number 9 area which included Poole Road where I lived. This is only an index, sadly the documents are not available online but I thought it might be of interest to anyone able to visit the Herbert.

Anyone identify? Can it be Lower Ford St. Note background the pointed conical roof, looks like schoolrooms near Fire Station. Duncan Gibbons

I really cannot help with the identification but I do have a question. Is there a railing and what looks like water on the far right of this picture?

Well spotted - it is, of course, Swanswell Pool, and the road featured is White Street, looking towards the city.

MR, do you have a recent photo from the same position ? (then and now comparison)

People swarming everywhere, all over Coventry. It was the same for months, so if anything was found, people were asked to hand it in to the authorities - anything like old coins or artifacts of an older age, when it went straight to JB Shelton who was the councillor in charge of that department. Being an amateur archeologist, he didn't need to go digging. Anything of value went to the police who tagged it, where it was found etc, anything like a bomb or body, or something unsafe, was roped off by the police until dealt with. Most places were just levelled offand temporary huts erected. I do believe some of the old basements and tunnels were filled in with debris until long afterwards when larger buildings were erected, and archeology (in the fifties) was of little importance - few people cared about the treasuries laying below the surface. Earl Street comes to mind - soldiers shovelled it flat and Nissen huts sprang up within a short time. Who knows what was lost. That's the way I saw it during that time.

I am unsure where the photographer is standing. Is it the Library in front of the cathedral tower?

It's taken from Pepper Lane. You can see the old County Hall (Slug & Lettuce) at the base of the tower. I don't know what the "modern" brick building is on the right. It's gone now. Peter.

To take the view you suggest, the photographer must have been standing in Broadgate

Well spotted MR. That's exactly it!

Brilliant. Slightly before my time; I can only remember going into Lyons' when the row of prefabs had been built.