Bayley Lane

Hear hear Flapdoodle! The city has died and needs another Phoenix. I'm living in Malvern now but come back to work a couple of days a week. I was obliged to stay in one of the tourist hotels in Coventry for the night recently, only to wake up sharing the bed with bedbugs! The management have agreed that's what they were and the bites prove it. I'm still waiting for a refund or something, despite contacting them again and again. Just makes me feel embarrassed about how visitors must view the place....

Seems a shame that a building such as this is now to be allocated as a residential unit. I hope it gets treated with the respect it deserves by its new occupants.

I wouldn't say it's 'died', but it's sorely lacking in many things that its peer cities have, and must be the only large town without a city centre music venue of note. The problem area, as I see it, is the areas between the ring road and precinct. They just do not have any life in them and are slowly being taken over and turned into extensions to the University campus. Where there should be businesses and lively streets, there are just dead spaces. The council have wasted millions on pointless regeneration schemes when they should have been investing in facilities that bring people into the city centre - whether that's offices for hi tech startups (offered cheaply to get skills and means for growth into the city centre) or venues for leisure. It's all very well turning historical buildings into little museums, but they're mainly not sustainable and there are not enough tourists in Coventry. The city centre needs to be geared towards the residents and surrounding towns, not mythical tourists that won't come here. Endless repaving doesn't bring a single person into the city centre. That's all IMHO.

Being as I don't come from Coventry I shouldn't say this but they are the ugliest things that I've ever seen on my walks round your city, they should be removed all together and if need be replaced with something more fitting to the surrounding area as they block all the view of one of the nicest places in the city, two photo's here next time your in town have a look

Couldn't agree with you more, dougie - they're hideous and even up close, it's difficult to make out what they represent

Any idea what they are supposed to be?

I thing it's to show the people that lived in Bayley Lane, as MR said you have a job to see the this had only one name on

I think they are fantastic makes you appreciate how good Coventry looked morning after the blitz. Perhaps it's a new Berlin Wall or the way Coventry is going, new designed art from the University.

I believe they mark out the buildings that used to be there. I think there are names on them. The people who died?

So therefore they are replacing what used to be old buildings they demolished to put in place eyesore which look like rusty metal ugly boards, why bother knocking our history down in the first place, makes Coventry look like a ghetto as I said about one of their new building designs. Boy am I glad I don't go into the city if I wasn't depressed I soon would be with this and the Axa building.

It replaces these. The building on the left on the corner of New Street was the Provident Dispensary (whatever that was?).

Yes, the Dispensary was on the corner of New Street but the metal sheets start on the right of that photo. I assume the Old Dispensary was there. What I don't know was if the movement of the Dispensary was due to the destruction or if it had happened before the war. This photo shows the destroyed section. To the right, up to Jordan Well were a factory and a shop which may have been unoccupied.