River Sherbourne

Nice sketches Anne. If you look at the areas flooded, they're mostly new builds (for the time). At least one earlier flood sounded much worse with timber houses flooded to their upper storey.

One article I read said about a coffin laid out in the front room floating about. Apparently also some people were worried about their Co-op books but fortunately they were stored on a shelf that the floods did not reach.

You find the greatest stuff from the newspapers, Anne

The river is spoken of in certain old deeds, and old plans show it as Spon Brook. Leading to the ford across the brook at Spon End, a hollow roadway and causeway were made in the year 1607. Spon Bridge was not erected till 1767 after a very disastrous flood occurred the year before, which did great damage. The hollow was filled up in 1771 when the bridge was completed. Another great flood occurred in 1800, on Oct 9th. Being a Sunday, the water rose while the people were in St John's Church in the morning - the parson had a chaise to go home in at lunchtime, the people didn't. The last part of the congregation was not taken away until 8o'clock at night when a wagon was sent to fetch them. The water was five to six feet high at the West Orchard end, and did a lot of damage in the Burges. People that had houses abutting the river had the right to fish for pike, perch, trout.

More floods! A hollow way I can understand and clearly the river was a ford at one point but without a bridge why would there be a causeway? I'm not saying there wasn't one, just that I can't imagine it. Was it just a slight raising of the roadway in the river, so that it wasn't quite as deep or boggy? It couldn't have blocked the river completely because it had to keep flowing.

Sorry Helen, I think Kaga is probably right. There are several mentions of Spon Causeway in the newspaper. Also an online article about the Weavers House mentions Black Swan Terrace. It says that "This part of Spon Street was called Spon Causeway as it formed part of a causeway across the flood plain of the Sherbourne leading to Spon Bridge.

I'm not arguing, just wondering. It isn't hard to imagine that they built up Spon Street and I know that they built up the land either side of the bridge but was there a causeway there before the bridge? I had a look at river fords and yes, they did build up roadways through fords. Part of it was to stabilise the river bed for carts but it would have also lifted them higher in the water. A big flood might well damage it significantly.

Quite often fords (holloways) have a small pedestrian bridge (causeway) at the side so pedestrians can cross without getting their feet wet.

Yes Peter, and the river had a packhorse bridge in that area although I'm not 100% sure where it was. My guess - there was a short road/track running along the bank, parallel to the current bridge and I wonder if the bridge was at the end of it. The river was deeper but narrower there.

I spent my first 24 years of life in Coventry on Prince of Wales Road in Chapelfields and as kids we played frequently on the River Sherbourne at the fields behind us in our dinghies, before it went under Four Pounds Avenue heading towards the city centre where it promptly disappeared. We used to call it "The Brook". I would sometimes find interesting items including a good sized piece of fossilised Jurassic period wood that the Coventry Museum identified for me. I also found an old gas mask and bits of an old shotgun? I also have a one-off memory of going underground in a huge cavity, which we never knew existed again heading towards Four Pounds Avenue. It was a one-off as the opening was closed off the following day.

Hi Sibelius, and welcome. I grew up and played there too - but the opposite side of the waste ground and allotments, Malvern Rd and Lake View Rd, the latter being named so because after torrential rain the fields became a lake, my parents told me, but that never happened when I lived there. We used to find all sorts of rubbish that had been dumped, and had several dens near the river. One was by the bridge you mention - we were scared to go more than a few yards under that bridge, even in wellies when the brook was only 3 or 4 inches deep. One day after school, and very heavy incessant rain, I ventured down there on my own to see how deep the brook was (we also called in the brook as it was too small to be a river, we had been told by big kids). The brook was torrent of dirty water, fast flowing and very deep. I got too near the edge and as the bank was muddy, slipped into the river. I was fully submerged and could not swim, but somehow managed to grab hold of overhanging growth and get out. It was the most frightening experience of my life, and I was only 6 or 7. A year or so later, they installed a huge concrete pipeline (sewage or storm drain) the length of those fields, all the way from Four Pounds to Grayswood Ave. There was no elf 'n safety in those days, so nothing was fenced off, and we used to climb down an open manhole, maybe 30 feet deep, walk along the new pipe sections (about 5 or 6 feet diameter), eventually emerging at the far end, where the work on the pipes had reached. I wonder if this was your underground cavity?

Hi Sibelius, welcome to the forum Kids are unfailingly attracted to water. In my case it was a series of reservoirs in Bury, every stream in Cumbria, the sea and, on one memorable occasion a Swiss glacier, fed a stream that was so cold it made my teeth ache.

Helen Packhorses just waded through rivers if no more than waist deep, and so did the coaches cross them. Spon End was by far the lowest point in Coventry, all the way to Cox Street was a big valley, and with hills all around, at one point that valley would have been a lake. The Coventry Canal had nothing to do with it, that water and streams formed the River Sowe that ran off the Radford hill the other way, and we waded through the ford in Longford Park. I don't doubt that the fields from the west had deep drain pipes across them long before the Victorians, these fed into the ditches at each end, that fed into other ditches, that also became boundaries. Our ancestors knew more about the land than we think we know today. We only poisoned it in the fifties. mcsporran, you are wrong about tunnels built, they merely built them at the side and divert a couple of inches. Like canals when they broke, they drove planks down into the bed, sealed it off one side, this allowed boats to still operate. When repaired they just took the planks out, like wartime, they put planks across the water, sealed it off, that way they only lost so much water, not the whole length. When I read that I thought of the Mersey.

By curious coincidence there's a post card looking the other way to the flood pictures of the Rover Meteor Works. As per usual, grab it while you can and I have no connection to the seller Meteor Works post card on ebay I'll delete this in a few days.

It would have been a beautiful river, full of fish and birds, in the priory days, but that's why industry first grew up there, the dyes and wastes went into the river. It didn't stop, even in the 1920s Courtaulds were pouring it out. Joe Public needed work, so who was going to complain?