Pool Meadow and Fairfax Street (new and old)

Annewiggy. Brilliant, no wonder it threw me, nowhere near Pool Meadow. The photo and the name are not the same place, like I said, out of towners not knowing Coventry. 'Rob all bets off, wrong place' - was the Alexander cinema on the corner of Fairfax or Cox Street, early 61? 'Love is a many splendored thing' - Anne, you would have cried your eyes out. Anyway, thanks Annewiggy.

Kaga - corner of Ford Street and Cox Street

I recall that the Midland Red service 747 to Nuneaton used to stand next to the old electricity sub station (see also Fairfax Street - old and new).

We are in danger of denying the history of the Public Baths already documented on this Forum. A search under 'Swimming Baths, Priory Street', gives a full history that includes the wartime damage, rendering the baths unusable and the eventual clearance of the site in 1966 - which means that visible remains of damage, due to bombing, was available for all to see in Pool Meadow from c1940 to c1966

Fairfax Street moved. In the photo of the people pushing the car, Fairfax Street ran parallel to Pool Meadow and Ford Street. Closer than those two streets to the new cathedral. Fairfax Street 1960

Bets? Wrong place? Have I missed something???

It's another case of Coventry streets moving about and confusing people. Kaga's Fairfax Street is not the same as your Fairfax. For me, they're all new fangled stuff.

The confusion stems from Neil's very first post. The substation was seen from Fairfax but was on Pool Meadow, which was then partly run over by the ring road. That derelict area was then turned into a carpark which has now been dug up revealing the old city wall. It never occurred to me that there was another Fairfax Street in the vicinity that was demolished to make way for the ring road. We knew where Neil's picture was looking at but Kaga couldn't work out why we were all in agreement. So it didn't matter how many aerial photos were posted, they didn't fit with Kaga's memories. Note to self, and others - it's always worth moving forwards and backwards through the old maps because the roads and the names move. To be honest, Fairfax Street is closer to the cathedral than I realised.

Rob, first I would like to thank Helen, explains it better than I. I addressed you because I felt I was upsetting people (Neil), and I needed your guidance. I was about to E-mail you, but here will do. Now, what I would like you to do is bear with me. There is no way any photo was taken in 1953, it was practically impossible with the equipment we had in those days, and from that angle (1953 camera), it wasn't commercial. Some way the photo has been changed, bits added, bits taken away, there was never any tarmac or bus lanes. Neither was there a back entrance, look at the congestion of the traffic, the coaches would have simply turned round and driven out the back way. What I can't accept is 'photos from above' dated 1950s, it just was not viable, even from the top of a turn-table fire-engine. Helen, I think you were right again, I believe there may have been some sort of factory or commercial building before the raids, also the place always seemed damp, as though water seeped through? I think it was aptly named, it once was a beautiful damp Meadow, maybe a wee bit before my time, fed by the Radford brooks and the river Sherbourne. Look at Coventry names - the Swanswell, Hillfields, Primrose Hill, and Ford Street. I could go on...

So, the aerial photograph technology, used during the war, had no commercial application after the war? We are not talking about somebody with a 'Box Brownie' suspended from a child's kite floating over Coventry. Aerial photography was in use long before the war. No doubt the old maps are only valid up to the time of the Norman Conquest

Kaga, yes, the area is very boggy - and still is - despite measures to improve it. The 50s to the 60s were a time of rapid change and only stepping through the maps is it possible to track most of what happened where. I think that the plans for the ring road caused a lot of preparation in advance, sometimes scrapping roads just completed. The 1953 aerial shot is very different from the 1960s photo of the men pulling the car because the layout had physically changed. I reiterate, aerial views often look very different from the street view. What looks like tarmac might be lumpy, compacted dirt. I get the impression that the marked out lanes on Pool Meadow (street rather than bus station) were only there for a very short while. It might have been a few weeks/months while some work was done. That exact layout doesn't feature on any of the maps. That is not a reason to distrust the photo, but is just a reflection of the speed of change. The aerial photos are from planes and there are several batches from the 50s that are just as good quality for Coventry and many more across the country. The Britain From Above used to give information about the flight that took the pictures (they didn't just photo Coventry in one trip). I'm not sure who commissioned the post war photos but the pre war ones tended to be by business owners wanting nice shots of their new works. The quality mostly improved year on year. The photos are too good to be tampered with and mostly agree with the maps. There would be no reason to modify them.

No upset to me, Kaga. I bow to your experience I just go off what I find on t'interweb

Kaga, as difficult as it is for me to contradict you, there is honestly no conspiracy, and photos of that quality really were taken in the 1950s - and long, long before. The "Britain from Above" website contains nearly one hundred thousand aerial images, beginning around 1919. Even if they had the means to do so, how, and why, would they possibly change those photographs? Why would they decide that Coventry should have its history altered? If, as you say, those 1953 photos were actually taken in the 1960s - that means that someone painstakingly altered every single aerial photo of Coventry, from every angle. And in doing so they had to put trees where the New Cathedral stands, add the old Priory Street swimming baths and the Triumph Works back into the photo, remove the new Fairfax Street, remove the Precinct and redraw Smithford Street - every building, change every vehicle to look 1950s, remove Leofric Hotel, redraw Owen Owen to make it look like it wasn't finished, remove all the rebuilt places in Earl Street.... the list goes on - it really, really is not possible to do. There is only one plausible reason that those things can be in all those photos - and that is, they were taken in 1953. Now I understand what you say about the average 1950 camera - ordinary cameras might not have been quite that good (although 35mm film could give super results, and medium and large format many times better still). But aerial photography was already very advanced by the wartime, with extremely detailed photos being used by us and the Germans from many thousands of feet up. But astonishing images could be made long before that. Below I offer you a photo from a glass slide from Victorian times. Can you see the woman in the window in the first photo? No? OK, now scroll down to that same photo where I've cropped that part.... incredible detail - and from about 150 years ago. So Kaga, please believe us when we all say that the photos labelled 1953 are genuinely from that year - there really is no possible alternative.

During my service as an Army Photographer during the 1960s I used several cameras that were not available at retail. Some used film sized 20x16 inches. For aerial obliques as shown on Britain from Above the standard camera was the Fairchild/Graflex K20 which produced 5x4 inch negatives. For reconnaissance and mapping there were cameras that produced 9x9 inch negatives. I never recall seeing any of them in Beryl Houghton's shop window.

Is that in Cov Rob?