Hertford Street

Actually (you knew this was coming, didn't you!), if you notice the shadow of the lamppost in the foreground going straight up the street, that makes it 2:30pm or 3:30pm depending on whether it's GMT or BST! OK, call me Inspector Clouseau, or just a pedantic git if you like! (but I prefer Clouseau!!!)

I went to school at Cheshunt School in Manor Road, then King Henry VIII Juniors. When I was small and my mother collected me from school, we would walk into town to get the bus if the weather was nice. As a treat we would sometimes call in at the Geisha Cafe at the bottom of Hertford Street, opposite Green's Chemists. I recall having milkshakes in those tall glasses, or sometimes a knickerbocker glory. It all seemed very posh then with waitresses in uniforms.

"Mon Dieu, Clouseau" where did you get your magnifying glass from?

Yes you're quite right. From the very long shadows and the redness of the sunlight It must have been near sunset. So, given that it looks like there's a sprinking of snow on the pavement and still a trace of it on the road, I'm going to hazard a guess that the lack of traffic indicates that it's Christmas Day.

And no shutters at the shop windows! The good old days, heh?

No, people used to go window shopping in those days, walking round the town looking in shop windows to get ideas, particularly if they were setting up home. Coventry rarely had snow on Christmas Day, but in 1962 the first sprinkles came at Christmas and there was snow on the ground from then right through to the beginning of March. So I would like to date stamp the photograph as around 3 pm on 25/12/1962.

Does anyone have a pre WWII photograph of 17 Hertford Street they would put up ? This was the London County Westminster and Parrs Bank and also the offices of E.T. Pierson & Sons, Chartered Accountants. Does anyone know if this part of Hertford Street was blitzed?

Alvis - there are pictures of Hertford Street on 'Cov. street views' [top left. Two in particular show the street in the 1930s and 1950s, the latter showing the areas that were extensively blitzed. On the left hand side going up there were temporary shops between the Geisha Cafe and the Telegraph offices and beyond these can be seen the Westminster Bank and the roof of the Empire. On the opposite side the main gap was the front of the Queens Head but a bar remained more or less where the Penny Black was eventually built. Hertford Street was a new street built circa 1820 and named after the Marquis of Hertford , tenent and then owner of the Cheylesmore Park.

I've never seen a clear frontal view of the bank. The nearest is this shot on Midland Red's website, the bank is dead-centre towering above everything else: LINK The bank survived the blitz but the buildings either side of it were very badly damaged.

A while ago I bought this print as Hertford Street titled 'What have they done', doesn't it look wonderfully grand. Another photo taken from Hertford Street and film footage of Hertford Street here. Picture stills below film 43 and 44 shows savings bank.

If I were in charge of Coventry, I'd reconstruct Hertford Street back to its 1930s state. It's an astonishingly dismal place at the moment.

There was an opportunity to do that immediately after the war but the city council had already decided by the 1940s that the remainder of the street was to be demolished and completely redeveloped. In particular they wanted the Empire cinema to relocate to the corner of Hill Street and Corporation Street as part of its "Theatreland" project. Oddly enough a private consortium's plan to build a shopping mall on the site of the former Queen's Hotel - not too dissimilar to modern day Hertford Street precinct - was rejected by the council.

Some old and new photos of Coventry on this link some I have never seen before - Hertford Street. Link 1 Link 2

Interesting, Dutchman. From what I've read there were to plans after the war: Donald Gibson's plan to destroy everything and replace it with a load of cheap blocks, and another plan to rebuild but keeping the same street pattern - just filling in the areas that had been destroyed.

An answer to a very old post but I did not know where else to put this Neil. Kings Head 1937