Little Palace Yard

Try eaw030281 it shows the Little Palace Yard from the front, matching the photos of the street view. It's a bit fuzzy but you can see the H shape of the building and where the arbour used to be at the end of the garden in front of the factory building on Much Park Street. It's not obvious that the arbour was there, I think it must have been removed by then and the statues were gone too. You can see something boxy but I think that was a feature on the other side of the wall. eaw001831 shows the building from the back (far left of the photo.) eaw024986 shows a reasonable view from the north. eaw001830 shows it from the south. Those give a good view all round but there are others. Because the area was badly damaged, temporary buildings and factories crept into the area but even before the war the garden wasn't at its hey day. Coventry's finest was already down market by the war with a mix of poor dwellings and factory units. Have you found it on a map? Look for the Bird in The Hand. Going south, there's a passageway then a building. Then the next two buildings and the passageway in between are the Little Palace Yard. It's on the J E Swindlehurst map and shows a simplified layout of the garden. The arbour is just a little oblong at the end of the garden. On the Board of Health map you can see garden features. There were bushes, borders, paths and what look like box lined parterres.

This is an excerpt from an article in the Coventry Herald April 1915 by Mary Dormer Harris. Referencing the sale of Palace Yard in 1831 by Messrs E & C Robins. The whole article is interesting to read but is too long to insert here. Let me know Helen if you want the whole article and I will send you the page.Interesting Lot 2 is described as "The ancient Palace & State Rooms of Queen Elizabeth"

Another article from 1917 saying that the structure was part of the White Friars Monastery

Ah yes, those would tie in. I think the arbour could have come from the remains of the Whitefriars church because the Whitefriars cloister and other priory buildings weren't quite styled that way. There would have been a lot of fancy stonework as they demolished it. Not sure about the animals though, but since an elephant is part of the Coventry motif perhaps there have been exotic animal carvings in the city for some time? Even the elephant and bear could be Indian in origin. Might Coventry have had a zoo of sorts with Indian animals instead of African? Anne, you ought to start a thread of your own called Anne's Box of Delights because everything you've pulled out and posted so far has been fantastic.

Agreed thanks Anne and Helen I'll check out the photos. I was aware the area was badly hit - there seemed to have been so many buildings / alleys / workshops etc crammed into that one area. Bet there were some fantastic pathways to have been able to walk through. Makes me smile when you see an early 1900's paper referring to it as an Old Garden - even then!

OK Just referenced that first photo Helen - thanks - I did not actually realise that the Yard entrance was further up Earl Street than I thought. I was probably only imagining it was around the area of that hidden pond behind today's Council offices. It was actually further west before the junction with St Mary Street. No wonder I could not see it at first.

BTW - where can I find a copy of the Board of Health Map? Also Helen I'm confused by this one? What modern building is that over the road in the background?

Think I've worked that one out myself - it's what must have been a newly built BT building in Little Park Street by the side of today's Salt Lane. Did not the realise the Yard exited there - even more confused about its layout now!

Hi Neil Yes that's the Telephone Exchange opposite, I remember it being a huge bomb site before but don't know what was there before the Blitz. That is Trevor Yardley (Ray Yardley's eldest son) sitting in his wheelchair at the entrance to the Yard looking out into Little Park Street. He spent many hours there and was well known. The block of stone facing us in the middle of the two windows is a mounting block for mounting horses. Stables were in the lower section, left-hand side of the Yard. The new Police Station is a short way down on the left of the entrance. Rosemary

Hi Neil, glad you worked out what the new building is because I know very little about the rebuilt Coventry. It's the wrong direction for me There are two ways of seeing the Board of Health Map, though both are at the History Centre. First, they have a colour version which is probably easier to see the detail, on computer. I've never viewed it but potentially they've stuck the different sheets together into one map. The second option is they have black and white copies of the maps that you can have photocopied onto A3 or A4. The maps are A2 and fairly ropey. You can scan your photocopies and stitch them together. Unfortunately if you want both the Palace Yard and Little Palace Yard, they extend over 2 maps. 2 A4 copies would cover them. Because I wanted all the areas, LPY and PY are divided into 4 A3s just because of the way I had them copied. Since you've got relatives all over Coventry, maybe you'll do what I did and get copies of the lot The two plots (PY + LPY) weren't really connected, there seems to be a small garden plot between the two, though locals may have cut through from one to the other at some point. On the BOH map The small garden plot has openings in the wall to a different building on Earl Street and one on Much Park Street, the one with the Knaves Post but none to PY or LPY. So in 1850 (date of BOH maps) people probably weren't travelling from LPY to the PY. It does't look like it on the 1750 map either. When Coventry started industrialising the big, empty gardens of Little Park Street and Much Park Street were obvious places to put them (for them, I think it was mad). Sometimes the street level building was demolished too. By 1920 when the aerial photos begin, much of the areas behind the street views were full of factories. It probably wouldn't have been possible to cut through from LPY to PY because there were structures in the way unless a passage was made with public access. After the war there was nothing to cut through to other than Earl Street as all the buildings were destroyed. It's easy to blame the Germans for targeting people and homes but the interconnected nature of factories and homes meant that any bombs dropped to wipe out factories would have affected homes too. Not saying he didn't target people, just that the effect would have been much the same if he'd just gone after production. The bombs dropped were incendiary devices so a lot of Coventry would have burned rather than blew up. Those medieval buildings that survived often did so because of either their own brick cladding or because they were sheltered by another brick structure, either directly from a blast or as a firebreak from other buildings burning. Hope this helps and what a stroke of luck to have your relative identified. Well done Rosemary!

A similar view from Middlemores

Looks like the BT building.

Levi Fox in Coventry's Heritage describes it as Court 20 (Little Palace Yard), Little Park Street. A picturesque group of dwellings, mostly of late seventeenth or early eighteenth century date which incorporate a medieval stone crypt and foundations. The court is called Little Palace Yard probably because it was originally connected to a path to Palace Yard in Earl Street. 1957.

I think you mentioned before it was Bushills factory?

Little Park Street west is poorly covered by photos and aerial photography before the war. It's hard to keep in mind what was where. Bushills was on the corner of Cow Lane/Salt Street entrance and it ran south to one building north of Banner House and west, half way along Cow Lane. There was another factory (bicycles?) running from where Bridgeman's was (next door but one to the Chequers pub) down to almost St John's Lane. There are some drawings from before the factories but not enough to fill in all the gaps.