Coventry Photos and Paintings on the Internet

Go on, give us a clue where it was. Oopse, no I've found it and yes, that was what I thought it was. Wisteria Cottage and The Cottage Post copied from topic Stivichall / Styvechale on 29th May 2021 10:28 am

K G Kristoffersson Search page with Coventry entered

Think I have referenced them before but the Weir Archive has some crackers.

Many thanks, Neil - they are and even one of the Coventry Operatic Society with my Uncle Fred as the Captain of the Scotch Archers in 'The Vagabond King', a Hippodrome production in the 1930's. Alas I was probably not yet born!

The new library pictures site is hard to search through but there are a lot of new images from the City Architects. Beware very open search terms because each new tranche of pictures slow the thing down to the point it throws you out for inactivity. eg I just searched for 'city architects' and while very interesting, it took ages after the first few demands for more. I refined the searches to city architects and another term eg street or spon or hill but that relies on you guessing another word in the picture tags. There are some good images that I discovered by accident eg there was a picture of a Bishop Street rear with a tower block in the distant. The tag was for the flats, not the street. There are some interesting images for park street, including the demolition of the brewery. My usability score for the site is poor and Rob's version was much, much better, but I expect they've gone for the security features - while you can't screen print or copy the pictures directly, there is a way round that for the determined . I expect it's also more phone and tablet friendly but I suspect that most people using the images would be using something more dedicated to work like a laptop. The other feature I find annoying is the large numbers of modern photographs of almost exactly the same event/thing eg I had to wade through pictures of a pop concert while looking for old pictures of the Godiva procession. It doesn't help to search for the oldest shots because I'm not sure that the old photos as tagged as old yet. I'm not even sure of all the old pictures have been entered. I certainly haven't found photos I know were in the old collection.

Not exactly a collection but a good source of info and photos - apologies if it's been mentioned before but it's worth repeating. Our Warwickshire - set for Coventry search The search relevance is a bit suspect but the first link is a cracker of an aerial view south east. Some interesting articles and photos on Exhall colliery. Enjoy.

Not Coventry but still Warwickshire. There is a picture on there listed as "Atherstone Midland Motor Bus" 1920's. The conductress in the picture is Roy's grandma.

Historic England has a new way of selecting their aerial photos. Scroll down for a UK map and zoom in to Coventry. Red dots are modern. Pink stars and green squares are old. Login to zoom into photos. Personally I still prefer to look at all those labelled Coventry in date order but there are a few here that I've never seen before. Historic England page with map

Thanks, Annewiggy, for this information on another thread

Sadly this is from Cov Dig but there's a few not to be named who prefer to take the low res jpegs from the search and pass them off as theirs without even a thank you. Post copied from topic Smithford Street (inc. Ram Bridge) on 2nd Dec 2022 2:38 pm

It is sad, Ben, and very annoying. There are quite a few culprits on Facebook who claim credit for hundreds of images that they have no ownership of. eBay is another place they dredge photos from - numerous times I've spent tens of pounds of my own money on rare postcards (for the entertainment of our good folk here!), only to find that the eBay images have already been copied and plastered all over Facebook before I get the chance to show them off properly! Makes me wonder why I bother, sometimes.

Awww! Chin up, we all love ya, Rob.

I always try to quote where pics originate from. Problem is, there are a lot who don't, though to be fair they possibly have no idea of their origination with the amount of stuff out there on the super-web-highway. The worst ones I've seen are the ones that use your maps, Rob!

Ditto what Dreamtime wrote! I'm very conflicted over the issue of appropriated pics. I'd absolutely prefer to know who and where the originals came from, not least because I want to see the original site for myself, but I also know that there are a lot of things I'd never have seen without the practice. Google image search essentially steals pictures but there is usually a link to the site it came from but quite often the original has gone (eg sold). Without the ghost image I'd have missed some beauties. It is very rude/illegal to pretend an image is yours and not crediting the place where you got it but there is a benefit for the original site unless your content is entirely copied - it generates a market. It's a phenomenon I observed in the computer games/software field. Computers with no software are very boring. The rate at which games could be afforded was very slow and there was always the chance that interest would wane altogether. However as the games came at a decent flow, then not only did the interest stay, it grew. Some games were always bought, even if the majority were pirated. Newer games needed better machines and they in turn needed more games. Information on the internet works the same way. The more there is, the more we want. If there hadn't been the wealth of images of Coventry on the internet, I'd never have become so interested in the city. Sure, many will be satisfied with the pirated copy but some will come looking for the real treasure and then tell others about it.

For those looking for very old images of the city an unexpected source is the Peter Kempson tokens dating to the late 1700s. Examples here. The images show details that are nowhere else or match other very old sources eg the coin showing the Bablake School/Bond's Hospital has a different gateway to the modern version and it's clear to see that the city wall butted up to the last but one part of the building and not the end of it. Demonstrating that the gothic looking end section is 'new'.