Tank on display

My sister seems to recall a tank on some sort of concrete plinth, displayed in the 50/60's in a park along the Stoney Stanton Road. The park was opposite the Navigation Pub where the canal crosses, on the site now known as Gallaghers Business Park where TK Max is located. Can anyone recall and confirm this for her. I believe there were old cottages opposite the pub which may have got bombed out during the war and possibly the site was cleared and made into a park after the war. Thanks Tony

Hello & welcome, Tony. Hope you enjoy your time with us. I have marked your post as a question, hopefully to give emphasis to your request for recollections. Best wishes.

Not a very clear picture but you can just see the tank, Coventry Telegraph 1938. Sure Alfred Herbert provided the site and it was moved by Pickfords !

Tonyabacus. The tank you mentioned was removed for scrap in 1939, it was not a park in those days, the houses were not destroyed by the war. The tank was enclosed by railings, they were removed for scrap also. There are lots of posts on this forum about the tank, I cannot remember what topic. Annewiggy. Wrong tank, that was the tank in Greyfriars Green.

I posted it because it says it was being moved to a site near The Navigation Bridge in Stoney Stanton Road. I assumed this was the one Tony was asking about.

Does this help?

Hi, if you type into your search box, WW1 TANK COVENTRY, it will return the Cov Telegraph photos as well as where it stood and went to. It is called Old Bill Update, just found out how to add a link.

That confirms that it is the same tank and it also says as Kaga mentions that it was scrapped in the second world war so that one would not have been there in the 60's. I wonder if Tony's sister can be mistaken about when she saw it.

Certainly the plinth was there up until the sixties at least but I don't recall seeing the tank itself though the earliest I would recall is early 50s.

Annewiggy. Sorry Anne, I could not read that it was being moved to a new site at Navigation, I also thought the tank at Navigation bridge had been there since the twenties. Right opposite, the Navigation pub had a forecourt, plenty of room to manoeuvre. I'm sure it was taken away for scrap for the war effort.

Hi Kaga, There was a grassy area dead opposite the Navi in the 60's and a few childs swings erected there plus a slide. Maybe a remnant from a tank on there at some stage. If I had known at the time I would have asked around but that time has long gone now. Was that the Morris that would have been behind there as there were some railings there and a gate, and often saw workers using that gate as a shortcut onto the St. St. road.

Dreamtime Hi, Behind the tank was just a field, with railings, the concrete stand the tank was on was dead opposite the pub they left that. No the Morris was over the cut and the railway behind the pub I believe when I was a small child there was no Nuffield road or Sewell highway or Morris, it was stoke heath. with hundred of birds and wild life, it stretched way over to Walsgrave road.

You have a lot more to remember than I Kaga, but I remember my father fishing in the cut from the backgarden of the Navi. I don't know what he expected to catch, but come closing time he was there or watering his veggies. I think the pensioners who frequented the Navi would well remember the tank.

Dreamtime - it would have probably been workers from Alfred Herberts coming out of the canal end of the factory, through the back of Herberts Club and then through the playground onto Stoney Stanton Rd. There was quite an open area beside the club, I can remember the bowling greens but can't recall if there was even more grass behind that. I am sure that the concrete mounting for the tank was still there in the mid-1970's and probably lasted until the whole lot was torn down to build the new road and the shopping centre. There was a proper gatehouse for Alfred Herberts a bit further along towards Cross Rd as far as I recall.

Not Local, That's a very logical explanation you give as I imagine you remember what I saw. It would most certainly have been workers from Herberts Edgwick. I worked at Herberts Red Lane which one would say was situated before you reached the Navi. I think that mounting served as a seat while watching the children play. Such a transformation in that area now, like everywhere else I imagine.