Wyken Slough

I do indeed know who the chap is. He was my dad, Ernie, who passed away in '85. I'm the knock-kneed boy facing the camera, and my mum Elizabeth took the photo on our box Brownie. She still lives in the same house we lived in then, on Pearson Avenue. I still have the original of the photo under my bed, and scanned and posted it on this thread in its early days. No idea who put 'Wyken Slough' on it though. Certainly not me! Don't know who Gillian is either!

Hi Norman. Sorry about the VERY late response, but I was just reading through this topic after last visiting it ages ago. A minor correction: You remember the rhyme well, but, it doesn't refer to Wyken but Wykin, a small village just outside Hinckley a couple of miles from where I live now. The Stoke in this case is Stoke Golding, near Wykin.

Kimbo, Hi. Twenty years earlier and you would have had a football match on that field beyond the Slough.

The photo was taken in around 1958 or 59 I think, btw. We moved to Pearson Ave in November 56 from Frankton, when I was just turned three.

Kimbo, Thanks for your reply, but no your father was not who I thought, if you only came in 53. At the far end from your photo, there were a couple of wooden huts - two of my uncles lived there in the twenties. We used to have a guest book of the fishermen that came, most of them from the Hippodrome. It was private and well stocked with fish, until about 1935 when it was polluted by a stream that fed it.

Centuries ago, before rail, canal, or collieries, there were two little streams that ran through miles of fields and hedgerows, one from Exhall way the other from Bulkington way through the land called HAWKESBURY - they met in a little valley pool called Hawkesbury Pool (slough, marsh land), now I had never heard of it any different until this forum, and McGrory's book on Wyken. WYKEN village was at least four miles away - so how, why and when did people call it Wyken pool? In the 19th century the area came under the title of Foleshill, then in 1926 Foleshill became part of Coventry. In the late 19th century the collieries were called Wyken colleries but that was a name not in the village boundaries of Wyken. Also the Oxford Canal was built over both streams, so no connection there. So, someone please, anyone know the answer?

It's a good question Kaga with a very complicated answer. Coventry's naming conventions are a result of how it grew. Initially large slices of the surrounding countryside were owned by local and not so local big wigs and were then broken up by inheritance, sale or debt. When someone with money gained a chunk of land they built their own manor house and village to serve it. At other times villages started as a farm. Like London, Coventry eventually absorbed the small villages and then filled in the gaps. How Coventry's villages got their name inc. Wyken The rivers and streams situation is even more complicated. The routes of the rivers have been adjusted since at least Roman times. Coventry used to be very marshy and potentially had a lake (Bablake). The monasteries in particular re-routed rivers and streams to provide power for mills, fresh water and fish pools but also to drain land. I'm fairly sure that more water used to flow through the centre of Coventry but between the monks, the canal system, water extraction and modern sewers, the water is diverted away from the centre... most of the time. According to the article the Wyken Slough was caused by subsidence - collapsed mine? Not necessarily a modern one.

Helen Thank you, but this is not so old, I'm talking 1950s or later. This forum was the first time I saw the name changed. And there was never a hint of land subsidence in the past, it was a natural valley, fields on either side sloped down, creating the stream's course. It was my uncle in the twenties who had the idea to build a weir and deepen the pool for fishing. I'm pretty sure he made the 'ford' go through a tunnel below the farm track, thus keeping the miners' feet from getting wet each day, but that was hearsay when I was a kid.

David Fry and Albert Smith's book 'The Coventry We Have Lost - Forgotten Foleshill' contains a description of the Lentons Lane Baptist Church which explains how it was originally called the Zion Baptist Chapel but was later known as 'Wyken Square Baptist Chapel'. The book explained how this term was applied to the short stretch of Lentons Lane up to Hawkesbury Lane and that it seemed inappropriate given that the chapel was neither in a square or in Wyken.

Exactly which name change are you concerned with Kaga? Did you read the article? Wyken is the last to be discussed but it answers several questions. What happened in the 20th century is not the full story. There was an early mine shaft dug in the 1700s and there may have been even earlier mine workings that have no record. Even by your dad's era, the landscape was no longer natural. According to the article, the original name for the pit was the Craven Colliery named after the family that owned Wyken. Places sometimes have more than one name associated with them and at one time or another the names change in popularity. Sometimes places covered by a single name get separated by a new development in between. Sometimes an owner uses a name because it suits them, not because it has any real relevance to the location. On the Old Maps copy of the 1888 map, I can see names in places I don't expect them to be, Foleshill is a good example. Go back in time and Foleshill was Folks Hill. The railway and canal systems caused a lot of changes in the landscape. I can see dry watercourses in the 1850 map that have been created by those man made features cutting through and redirecting the water. In the 1749 map you can see the clear influence of the monasteries but at ground level they would have looked natural.

A good way to understand an area is to track it using Old Maps and moving from date to date. In 1890 the Wyken area has a lot of gravel pits and areas marked 'liable to flood' by 1928 a pond had been formed. By 1948 there is a bigger pond and a refuse tip to the south east. It's quite common for refuse tips to be turned into 'country parks'. Wyken at Old Maps As you move from date to date you will need to zoom in and out.

Not Local, I have not read that book, does it say when it was called 'Wyken Square Baptist Chapel'? Not known to me as such. But that short stretch was always Lenton's Lane and Hawkesbury school to me. McGrory, in his book of Foleshill, does not mention Lenton's Lane or the chapel, or the school. What he does show is a picture of the 'iron church' in Lenton's Lane, as in Longford. He also splits the collieries up, putting Victoria 'pit' in Foleshill and the Craven 'Pit' in Wyken, and coal transported down the Walsgrave road. No mention of the canal system from the 'Pits'. Different to what I knew, or what I thought I knew.

Kaga - The book does not say when the chapel was known as Wyken Square Baptist Chapel or when the area was known as Wyken Square. The church's Facebook page says it was originally called 'Zion (Particular) Baptist Chapel, Hawkesbury'. The book says that the 'iron church' was in Walsgrave On Sowe parish when it was built in 1860 but passed to Longford parish in 1908 under the responsibility of St. Thomas when it became known as St. Matthew's Mission. It also acknowledges that the old parish boundaries between Foleshill and Walsgrave On Sowe cut through the Hawkesbury and Aldermans Green communities leaving one side of the road in one parish and the other side in the other parish. My own humble opinion concerning the name 'Wyken Slough' is that it was associated with the Wyken Old Main Pit. Maybe the subsidence which caused the slough was the result of mining activity at this pit?

Non Local, But this is my point - the 'slough' was there centuries before the word coal or Wyken or the word Main was mentioned, so it was not subsidence, or anything to do with coal workings. It was the natural course of running water. It was Sowe Common and Hawkesbury but I have no idea where or if there was a boundary, and to me Woodway Lane, Deedmore Road and Potters Green were Sowe Common until they all came under Foleshill, about the 17th/18th century. The village of Wyken was the other side of Henley Common, Walsgrave village and Courthouse Green and nearer Stoke Common in my boyhood.

Ok I've found Wyken Slough on the old maps and it's called Wyken Pool all the way back to 1887. 'Slough' may be an old name or it might be a modern rebranding. There is a wiggly boundary line through the pool, suggesting that at some point earlier it was observed and recorded as the stream/river. The maps don't go back beyond 1888. The pool name Wyken, despite being some distance from Wyken village, almost certainly connects to the Craven Family, the land they held and their mining activities. Nearby the pool is the Wyken Colliery, still open in 1887 but disused by at least 1905. Wyken cottages, Wyken Arm of the Oxford Canal, Wyken Colliery Farm and lots of other names connected to Wyken. Later pits are the Alexandra Colliery (family name?) and Craven Colliery (close to Wyken itself). There are a bunch of place names connected to either Wyken or Craven between the pool and Wyken. The area is dotted with old pit shafts, clay pits and places liable to flood.