Canals around Coventry

Kaga, hope you don't mind me looking, but the link between your family and the HAMBRIDGE family is when Arthur SIMPSON 1873-1947 married Sarah Ann HAMBRIDGE who was born in 1882 at Eynsham, Oxfordshire (as near to Thrupp as you are going to get) and who died at Aldermans Green in 1961. They married in 1897 at Kidlington, Oxon. All of that bit of the HAMBRIDGE family were recorded as born in Eynsham or Thrupp. Another daughter from the same era married into the MORRIS family and all of their children were born in Bedworth Hill or Nuneaton. There are lots of HAMBRIDGE children in each generation. Hope this helps. Roger

Roger, great, can't thank you enough, never ever have I met so many helpful people. Yes this internet bowls me over let alone the older than me generation, to me there is a great divide between people born before the second world war and those born after, the first years of my life no one had a phone, car, indoor toilet or bathroom, never saw a coloured person until I was ten or heard any one speak a foreign language, never saw an aeroplane, and I never saw the sea until I was seventeen can you believe. Made up for it since. hey just thought had the same doctor for seventeen years. Now it seems I see seventeen doctors in one year. thanks again kaga.

My father's working round at Sutton Stop and it's wartime, there's an American camp at Blackhorse Road (Bedworth side) and I'm riding my bike along the towpath from Tusses Bridge to the Stop, I'm taking my father a great big chunk of hot bread pudding. When I arrive there is about half-dozen Yanks photo'ing the boats and locks, then a Yank saw my dad sitting eating the bread-pud, he took a photo, then he edged nearer, spoke to dad, next thing he's tasting the bread pud, then they are all gathering round, tasting bread pud and taking photo's of each other eating the pud, boats and locks forgotten. Dadand his mates got beer, I got American chewing gum, oranges and chocolate, that we couldn't get in England at that time. Hope I'm not breaking forum rules.

I watched an aeroplane fly under a canal bridge, now I can hear what you're thinking. But cold hard fact. Two years later I asked a pilot about it, he more or less ignored me, but a few weeks later I had the chance to ask a second pilot, and he flew me over the bridge, pilot's verdict, possible, but foolhardy, courageous, and dead against the rules. But there was a boat on that stretch of water, not close enough to be dangerous, but he shook his fist and came out with a torrent of abuse. Now we all know about the bombing, so when they hit Sutton Stop I was angry too, but then I stopped and looked up, how could a guy up there, amongst all the flak, searchlights and everything being thrown at him, and we were throwing some powerful stuff, aim and hit with accuracy, with the one bomb he hoped would hit.

I think Kaga that during the early part of the war that bomb and gun aiming was a bit hit or miss. Like a couple of blind boxers having a fight. Usual target in that area was the power station. I don't know if they ever hit it. There was a gun, balloon and searchlight site back of Dudley St area, it was manned by the LDV (Local Defence Volunteers). We called them The Look, Duck and Vanish. Later they became the Home Guard or Dad's Army. We kids would go try and nick the empty shell cases that should be recycled. We would usually be told to go away but not in those exact words. Norman.

Norman, sorry but I have to disagree, early on we had a huge gun at the side of the power station, the biggest we had 3.7 AA. and a Pom-pom back of Main Farm, I can't remember dates now, but we had to take in two soldiers very early on before they had the huts ready. To me the Power Station and Sutton Stop was heavily guarded, as I said earlier, the first bomb missed the T junction by a few yards, the second and third straddled the cut, narrowly missing the Power Station and the fourth hit smack on were it was meant to hit. To me for some reason, seeing the canal empty was the most devastating thing I had seen up to then. At the time the Coventry Canal was not used, full of rubbish, doubt the 'gerries' knowing that, so Sutton Stop with three canals joining had to be a prime target, showing up like a ribbon to the Power Station, I believe it was only the guns around it that we didn't get more plastered. On the opposite side of the road in an Anderson shelter, the guns frightened us kids more than the bombs. Some moonlight nights we would watch wave after wave of German bombers passing in front of the moon, and mutter some other poor s--- getting it tonight, breathe a sigh of relief and toddle up the garden into the house and go to bed.

It was all quiet and serene this morning as I walked home along the canal towpath from Sutton Stop having dropped my car off for MOT at the excellent garage which operates in the old smithy behind the Greyhound pub. The smell of coal fires burning on the residential canal boats, the morning sun burning off the mist - lovely. I expect Kaga would have recognised all of this apart from the fact that they were not working boats and nobody flew under a bridge or fell into an open grave.

Not local, hi Sounds good to me, would liked to have been with you, doubt I would have recognised anything, but still pleasant alongside water, if only for a few yards, you didn't say which canal you was walking, but my preference would be the Oxford. I can only look back, I have never actually seen a pleasure boat, not up close, I can only envy them.

Sorry Kaga I was walking alongside the Coventry Canal from Sutton Stop up to the Newdigate Arm. Last week I walked from Sutton Stop up towards Tusses Bridge and back with my old dog. The canals are in the same place but much of the surroundings have changed since you lived around here. The biggest change must be the M6 motorway which provides a fair bit of background noise from the Engine pub at Longford, along past Sutton Stop and up towards Tusses Bridge and beyond. I was actually thinking about what the area would have been like when you were a lad as I walked along today. Regards. Roger

Morgana. I have just read your link with interest. I don't know the connection but my father, who was also a mariner and had been crew member on HMS Jervis Bay had some connection with the boat crew on the canal boat the Hood. During part of WWII it was used to transport cardboard coffins from Nuneaton to London. That I remember well. I also have a very strong memory of my father being grief stricken when he was told that the Hood had been sunk. The following day he heard with relief that it was HMS Hood that had been sunk by the Bismark. The war gave people strange values. Norman

I wonder, Norman Conquest, if the canal boat The Hood was named after HMS Hood or was there another meaning. Your poor dad having such a shock to find out it wasn't the Hood boat he was connected to. Interesting history there, that cardboard coffins were transported from Nuneaton to London by the Hood on the canal. Birmingham now uses their canals for transporting cardboard and less urgent goods.