How Old is That Building?

One of the areas that is captured the most is Broadgate but working out which pre photography images are genuine is very frustrating. One of the first you, and certainly I came across, is this one of the Cross. Courtesy of our Rob via Coventry Digital, I love it but it's entirely fake. Even the Cross itself is a mediocre copy of genuine sketches. The styling of the buildings is somewhat off and the building on the right looks positively French. You can detect building differences between various regions of the country. Coventry's ancient buildings more closely resemble those in Suffolk and Kent than say Cheshire or Lancashire. Despite local styles, you'll often see modern computer games showing distinctly European medieval buildings, when the locations are supposed to be English. When did you see a castle built out of red sandstone in a reconstruction, and yet one of the most interesting ones, Kenilworth, is most definitely a red head.

You are quite right Helen, as Rolph Hellberg, who was the architect of the Cross replica, told me this one you have shown was so inaccurate it would never stand up. Presumably artistic licence is the reason!

A good example of fake buildings below. They do a fairly good job of pretending to be modernised Georgian buildings. However looking at the maps it's possible to determine that they didn't exist until Corporation Street was built. They were right on the corner of Fleet Street. The route now blocked here. Built after 1937 but there by 1939.