Trinity Street

Oi! Leave us poor pensioners alone

I was joking. The last time I used the bus I was waiting at the stop after a night partaking of beer in a city centre pub. The last bus came sailing past and vanished into the distance, leaving me waving pointlessly at empty space. The electronic timetable seemed to list invisible buses that didn't arrive. It's shocking. I always get the feeling that they don't actually want customers.

Just adding this one here though there's been a few mentions of Timothy Whites.

Just why did they feel the need to build Trinity Street anyway? Looking at old-maps and the differences between 1919 and 1937 - there was a considerable area cleared (including beloved Butcher Row! ) to allow for it.

I thought this was an interesting picture, from a Telegraph supplement 1997 showing just how much area was demolished to make way for Trinity Street. You can just see in the distance the buildings in scrutiny's picture in the topic "Mystery Churches" and the Market Clock.

A clip from movietone showing Coventry in the early 1950's, shows Trinity Street and several others - Petrol Protest

Another cracker Anne

Great find Dean! I haven't seen that before. I also never realised that Owen Owen occupied the store where the Cash-Generator shop now stands on the corner of New Buildings! Also, on Google Maps, if you go "up" Trinity Street you will see the new square on your right as you approach the top by Wetherspoons with the new pedestrian only Broadgate area ahead. However, if you click onto this paved area, the view then suddenly changes to the old "drive through" Broadgate, with the TravelLodge still in the corner. It's a bit like a time-machine!

Yes, Tony S I remember that part of Owen Owen and there was the overhead cash system, when the assistant put the docket and the money in a screw up round box, attached it to the wire from whence it sailed along above the customers to the central point where all the lines met for the money to be taken and change given, then returned the same way to the customer! I worked for some time in John Manners in the Precinct where they had the more 'modern' Lamson cash tubes (a vacuum operated system) and when there was a staff crisis with a manager brought in from retirement from Nuneaton, I was up at the very top of the building working a six or seven telephone switch board to the two shop floors and manager's office and also dealing with the change for customers. I was 17.

This view of Trinity St reminds me that as well as Mills & Mills, there was also Pullars of Perth (Dry Cleaning), J. Sainsbury (prior to the supermarket across the road) with only the bacon and cheese counters.

Was there a Thorntons toffee shop at the bottom of Trinity Street, when they still had it in slabs and broke it up for you?

Yes there was Annewiggy, I remember it well. Love the Thorntons plain toffee, trouble is once you start eating, it's hard to stop.

Hear Hear!

The old photos of Trinity Street show a taller section in the middle of the new shops on the side opposite Sainsbury's. At some point this was lowered to two stories. Was this done for a reason and when? It looked better with the taller section in the centre, breaking up the monotony a little.