Barras Lane

The RAF club was on the corner of Holyhead Road & Barras Lane on the right hand side as you come from the ring road and before you cross Barras Lane. It is now playing fields for St Osburg's School. The whole site was owned by St John's Anglican Church, there was a 16 room house, the old rectory, which stood back from Holyhead Road and another large house on the corner which was spilt in two between the RAF Club and two flats, one upstairs and one downstairs. The curate from St John' s lived in the upstairs flat and from 1972 to 1974 I lived in the ground floor one. They were huge with really high ceilings, but during this time there were several attacks on the roof lead and I remember coming home one night to find several police cars and quite a few officers trying to locate two guys on the roof but although surrounded they managed to get away. The rectory at that stage was deteriorating badly then the RAF Club moved out, I ended up coming back to Australia and I heard that the church sold the whole property to the Catholic Church and turned into playing fields for St Osburg's.

I think I've worked out that Barrs Hill is now Barras Lane, please tell me if that's wrong. A relative was a servant at 5 Barrs Hill so I've tried my best to find it but the house numbering seems bizarre to say the least. Does anybody know why? Thank you

As I've mentioned elsewhere in the forum Janey "Barras Lane" was originally "Barr's Lane" but someone in the council apparently mistook a very large apostrophe on a map for the letter "a".

Barrs Lane got its name from 13th century bars that were erected on Spon Street. They were an early form of gateway into the city but were probably more for administrative purposes (taxes and fees) than serious protection as there doesn't seem to be any reason why an armed force couldn't go round them. The concept was later resurrected with turnpike gates to raise money for the upkeep of the main roads. In York several of the city gates are called bars. There were other bars in Coventry eg just east Cox Street on Gosford Street and north of Cow Lane on Little Park Street, although the others seem to be protected by a ditch or a river at the sides. The earliest form of numbering was consecutive, up one side and then down the other. Not the odds and evens we have now. Barras (Barrs) Lane would have been very sparsely built upon in its early years, being mostly farmland. Probably restricted to the Spon Street end. Until about 1850 the Freemen of Coventry had winter pasture rights on the fields around the city and adamantly refused to allow development, even though they themselves could have been living in hideously poor, cramped and unsanitary conditions. An Act of Parliament changed the situation and a lot of buildings went up after that point. Numbering often respected original designations, leading to odd styles of numbering eg 21a or 21/1 or even a randomly high new number 201. There doesn't seem to be a convention. Finally there would be times when buildings were removed either through normal development or the war and the replacements might need more or less property numbers than before.

Brilliant Helen F. Thank you. I will carry on looking for the house.

There is a Barrs Hill House and a Barrs Hill Terrace on the old Radford Road. The house became the school but the terrace houses look like they would have been big enough to have staff. It's been cut off now and is renamed St Columba's Close. Barrs Hill Terrace

Helen, I think you know that Barras Lane and Barrs Hill etc are miles apart and I don't know what they have in common, if anything. There were toll gates on one and sewage on t'other - apart from that, what?

Hi Kaga. Barras (formerly Barrs Hill) Lane heads roughly in the direction of Barrs Hill, without going through the town. There was even a partial track on the 1749 map heading beyond Naul's Mill (Abbott's Mill) towards the Radford Road. Maybe before the mill acquired a substantial mill pond, the track might have crossed over the Radford Brook further north and headed more directly to Barrs Hill? The Dutchman points out that Barrs might be derived from Barron's. I could be wrong but I think that there was supposed to be something at Barrs Hill but I can't remember what. Basically, it looks like it just tells you the direction the lane goes.

And shamefully falling into disrepair. A rather lovely building inside, though looking more like a school house outside. Closed because the Jewish Community in Coventry was so small, and my grandfather and father were very upset about it.