Coventry Co-operative Societies

Are its frontages any good? The one in the lower precinct is stuck down in the corner and there's no footfall on Corporation Street apart from people using the buses.

That may be true now flapdoodle, but it wasn't the case in the past. Prior to my going in the army in 1962 the buses disgorged the multitude at the stops opposite the Co-op, and turning the corner into the Lower Precinct the Drapery Dept was the first shop on the left.

That whole run of streets from Fairfax Street right around to Warwick Row via Corporation Street is a hideous mess. All the offices have closed and now many of the street frontages are either dead or being converted to student flats. This is pretty much the only 'road' left in the city centre and it's economically dead apart from students, who are hardly going to provide it with a boost. This should be Coventry's equivalent of Manchester's Deansgate. This whole run of streets has been in decline for at least 25 years and this is the latest one. The mistakes of the 1950s and 1960s are really coming home to roost now with the city centre, yet they don't have the guts to tackle it. (Unlike Birmingham, which decided in the 1980s to do so.)

"The mistakes of the 1950s and 1960s are really coming home to roost now" suggest fladoodle. They were not mistakes. They suited the needs of the people of that era. But, changes to people's lifestyles have made them unsuitable 50 to 60 years later. The problem that the city faces now is that there was such large areas of redevelopment in the 20 years following WWII that to replace it all would be impossible. In the past cities relied on the need for retail space and office space. With the technology and lifestyles of today, let alone what will happen in the next 50 years, means that city planners have no historical context on which to base new developments. Friargate and Bishopgate I see as toes being dipped in water to see if it works.

That s right Pixrobin we have no history left as its all been knocked down, then bombed and the remainder left has been slowly knocked down. History thats older than Birmingham, Leicester, Nuneaton, etc, etc. Funny though as last time I was in the City telling my grand kids about us having once having a castle and the 1st cathedral where it once stood in Coventry, an elderly man came up and loudly interupted stating yes and it was a prodestant King who had it demolished , I wonder who has been responsable demolishing the rest of the City ever since.

Early Co-op image. No Idea where it was taken, except that it is somewhere in Foleshill.

One of the calendar shots. I think the building is still there.

Corner of Holmsdale Road and Foleshill Road - here is my photo from 2010

Excellent image MR. But is that the corner Windmill Rd Foleshill Rd. Recognise it better in your photograph.

Norman - the view to the left of this group is Foleshill Rd with the General Wolfe and the junction with Station Street. The view to the right is Holmsdale Rd with the police station just out of shot.

No, Norman, Windmill Road is a long way away, nearly in Longford! The photo is just city-side of Station Street, at the junction of Holmsdale Road (to the right) - the photographer was probably stood on the west side of Foleshill Road (the General Wolfe side)

This store on the junction of Holmsdale Road was the largest of the Lockhurst Lane Co-op grocers. The distinctive set of 4 windows in the gable to the left are unmistakable. I worked in that store for a short while in 1963 before going into the navy, had a smashing time but the wages at the Co-op were very low. That top room was where a long serving man and wife weighed and packed dry goods like sugar and rice by hand. There are extensive cellars which were storerooms and a boiler room in my day. There was a cigarette kiosk to the right of the main door. I also spent a few weeks at the Windmill Road branch opposite the Ritz. I notice on Google Earth that it's now a booze shop and tattoo parlour. Lockhurst Lane Co-op Society was smaller than the Coventry Co-op but was, I believe, one of the very earliest.

"They were not mistakes. They suited the needs of the people of that era. " This is not true. Almost as soon as they started rebuilding the city centre they were having to alter it to take into account the fact it wasn't working and people didn't like it. The only people it suited were politicians who wanted to implement their grand utopian plan as they thought it was in our own interests (Based, it has to be said, on theoretical ideas that have now been somewhat discredited - nothing dates quicker than someone else's view of the future.) Moving everyone out of the city centre and demolishing it was never a good idea, and by the 1950s they were trying to fix their mistakes by building residential blocks. There's no excuse for the amount if civic vandalism that took place after the war in the UK - whether its Coventry, Plymouth, London or Birmingham. None of it 'suited' the needs of the people (Why did people suddenly change so much they needed their city replaced by modernist rubbish?)

Thank you MR and Walrus. I am fully with you now I had totally forgotten about the Co.(We never used the Op) by the Wolfe. But now I remember. My stepmother got our clothes and shoes from there, upstairs. No money up front but bought on the drip, one shilling in the pound for twenty one weeks.

Yes it's still there, it's an Indian like a haberdashery shop now selling materials, beads etc, the doorway is still on an angle as in the photo, later the Co-op Foleshill must have moved to the building with the large windows upstairs, a little down from the photo of Norman Conquest, as I recall going in their with my mum when I was a little girl standing by the big windows upstairs looking down on the shops opposite.