Courthouse Green

Hi all Can anyone help, please? I have receive an email request that reads, "Do you know if there was ever a Courthouse around the vicinity where Nuffield Rd and Mulberry Rd join. I was chatting with my Avon lady who is digging up their front garden and they keep finding stones with metal rings in them and were wondering was it anything to do with an old jail. I thought you might know, I thought it was a farm all round this area but don't know down the centuries what may have been here." Please can you help.

Just had a quick look at the newspapers. This is 1905, unfortunately it does not give an address but it is a start.

Hi all Just answering my own post above, the stones with rings in them smack of mooring points for the canal. The canal was a major part of the transport system in that vicinity, but that does not answer the question about the name courthouse.

Hi, I don't know if you can see this image clearly enough but it does show the location of the Courthouse circa 1889-1890. If you locate the Canal at Navigation bridge and go Northwards along the Bell Green road, you can see where Nuffield Road may have got its origin. And going down that way one can see the Courthouse site. I knew the lady that lived in the old dairyhouse along Bell Green road (it has a big chestnut tree in the front) and she was born in 1917 but she didn't remember much about the Courthouse to tell me. She did tell me that Bell Green was a separate village (her words) and Coventry stopped at Navigation Bridge. Does this help?

The Illustrated History of Coventry Suburbs says that Courthouse Green was the site of the mediaeval courthouse, later Courthouse Farm.

By the way, if you take a look at the image where 'Court House Gr...' is visible, you will see beneath the 'C' an irregular patch marked 'Sand Pit'. Well my friend told me that is exactly what it is/was, a sand pit. So, Earle Court is built over a sand pit.

Hi, you are all brill!

HI, do you or any one know where the "The Big Entry" might be at Courthouse Green. It was the address of my father's birth, and I would love to find where this is, if anyone has any ideas. Thanks.

lesdel56, what is your father's family's name? It may be possible to find them in Spennell's 1912 Directory of Coventry and see where the family is living at that date. They may be in the same home - that would have to be a bit of inspired guesswork, of course. Also, you could look them up on the 1901 or 1911 census or perhaps your dad's baptism is online with the address. Happy to look him/them up for you on Ancestry if you need.

I was born in 1949 in the old weavers' cottages, just past the Weavers pub, heading towards Bell Green, there were cottages set back from the main road. Entry to them was through a large archway, just inside the archway on the left was a small shop. I remember taking pop bottles back there. The area was demolished about 1956-7, it must have been a very old area. I can remember there being a well in the courtyard there. Whether this is any help I don't know. I lived in the cottage by the Weavers until 1963 when we had to move out owing to a compulsory purchase order although were not demolished till a lot later. John Richardson.

Hi, : there is a 'John E Richardson' listed in the 1955-1956 Cov directory as living at 207 Bell Green Road. It is sited before you get to the Weavers Arms (as you travel towards Bell Green) and right back off the road. In fact it is at the bottom of the back gardens of Johnson Road. Does this help?

My grandparents lived at 222 Bell Green Road in a block of 5 cottages almost opposite Armfield Road. Here are two maps, one before Clark Street, Armfield Street were built & the other afterwards. My grandparents house is arrowed in red. The were a row of cottages opposite (thatched I think). My mum's best friend Nellie Rowstron & her parents lived there (arrowed green). The blue arrow I think points at the weavers' cottages (just after the Weavers Arms pub) that were set back and back on the Johnson Road.

Since finding this wonderful forum I have searched my mind to go back to the city I once knew as a child. There was a large heath at Courthouse Green that I was taken to many times, but I cannot remember if it was before they built Sewall Highway or not. Have Googled many times to find the date, but all I get is 'houses for sale'. The heath stretched right across to Walsgrave Road. Lots of tufted grass, small bushes of hawthorn, gorse, and the wild dog-rose. Ah, the magic of the dog-rose - five petals, two serrated (dog-toothed), two smooth and one serrated on one side, smooth on the other, nature's magic. Same with the horse chestnut, when you remove the stalk of the leaf it leaves a horse shoe complete with nail holes. The wonders of nature. Looking back, one of the things that puzzled me going in to the city. From Lentons Lane to the Navigation pub on the Stoney Stanton Road there seemed to be lots of open fields, or pieces of open ground, houses were on one side of the street or the other most of the way, terraced with street doors of similarity which opened hard on to the pavement. With a great number of trades people, who called to offer their wares on the back door step, they seemed to move about in an aura of either sunshine or rain. The man that sold the fish shuffled along the brick path at the back of the cottages, with an air of despair, it always seemed to be raining, as he put down his basket of dried fish, I watched the rain drip off his beak-like nose wondering if it was going to drip on my prospective dinner. Mr Rowley the greengrocer would appear round the end of the row, looking like an undertaker in a coat of black box-cloth. Mrs Penny always arrived out of breath, tight pin-curls under the brim of hat, and always a cloudy day as she opened her case of reels of cotton, cards of darning wool, packets of needles and pins, buttons, bars of toffee and bulls eyes, and gobstoppers that changed colour as you sucked on them. The only guy that seemed to arrive on a sunny day was the milkman and he came every day.

Hi Kaga. Some interesting information there, thank you. You put history into prose, you would make a very good children's teacher in my view because they like to be entertained whilst being taught. You have a talent for that. Anyway, enough praise, I'll be run off the forum for . . . well you know what. I agree with you about Courthouse Green history, it's difficult to find. But I have looked the following up from a Coventry Directory of 1874. Under the heading of Foleshill Parish we have; William CRAMP, tailor, Court House Green. Joseph HEATHERLEY, grocer, provision dealer, and butcher, Market House, Court House Green. William HARRISON, Beer House, Court House Green. James BUNN, Golden Fleece, Court House Green. Thomas MARRION, coal dealer, Court House Green. Sarah Ann ORTON, coal dealer, Court House Green. William TINSLEY, shopkeeper. Court House Green. Thomas TURRALL, ribbon weaver. Court House Green. John WANLEY, shopkeeper. Court House Green. Thomas WIBBERLEY, shoemaker. Court House Green. Richard JONES, farmer, Court House Farm. Heathite.

Thanks, Midland Red