Longford (inc. The Red Hills)

Hi Mary I`ve never heard the term stone finisher but I worked in the civil engineering industry for many years and we had concrete finishers who would "rub up" the surfaces of freshly cast concrete structures after the forms were removed. Such as road bridges concrete water tanks etc it is quite a skilled job and there`s an art to it and you have to know what your doing to obtain the right results I`m not sure if this helps you I`m just going by your concrete manufacturer quote

Thanks for that Mick, that gives me some idea of the sort of thing he would be doing

Hi again Mary I`ve just googled Longford Concrete, Coventry and there was a firm called Longford Midland Concrete which opened in Grindle Road in 1920, they made most of the paving for the Coventry and Midlands area and air raid shelters to most of the Midlands during WW2 they also manufactured kerbstones which is where the term stone finisher may come from. I wonder if this is where your father worked?

Thanks Mick, I'll go and have a look at that

I think that probably is it - I know my parents lived in Lady Lane caravan site when I was a child (I lived with my grandparents) and according to Google maps the site is pretty close to Grindle Road. Thanks again

You are right Grindle Rd is just across the canal from Lady Lane caravan site. In the late 70's early 80's I used to deliver dry powder cement to the company in question.

Is this any help?

Hi Dean. What is on the Concrete works site now?

Looks like Glenmore estate houses to me Norm if its on the right side of Woodshires Rd.

Here is roughly the same angle as the old photo, this from Google maps

The lorry park the other side of the line of trees conifers are in the back gardens of Glenmore Drive as my daughter lived in one of those houses.

I remember this place, it has been a Truck Stop for some years now. I used to meet our drivers there in the 80s. In the cafe they served a cracking full English breakfast, that was before I even heard of the word 'Cholesterol'. I never knew it was the site of the old Concrete works.

I delivered newspapers along Grindle Road in the mid-50s. I cannot recall a concrete works on the road - of course, given my daily routine, I was more concerned with private houses, rather than businesses. However, there was a concrete works - from the earliest time I remember - on Bedworth Road (another newspaper route I was awarded by Mrs Spittall, who ran the newsagents on Longford bridge) between the Engine Inn (and on that same side of the road) and the Iron Bridge. To make the location more obvious, I would need the help of a Google street view - unavailable at the time of writing for whatever reason) - but on the Coventry Canal side of the Bedworth Road, and heading in the direction of Exhall and Bedworth, there were - once past the Engine - any number of private houses, followed by The Concrete, as it was known to locals at the time, more houses, an interesting footpath that led past the allotments to the Coventry Canal, and maybe a thing or two more, and then - the Iron Bridge. That was the Longford Concrete of my childhood, and a dusty old place it could be on a dry, windy day. I recall sturdy metal fences, sturdy metal gates to the place, precluding the possibility of organized crimes making-off with the kerbstones and such, and parlaying its thievery into millions of pounds. From this distance, and I mean time not space, I find it hard to believe that there were - in my youth - two concrete plants in Longford. More probably, the Bedworth Road Concrete facility was the removed Grindle Road operation, though someone has posted a recollection of his truck deliveries to Grindle Road in the 1970s. Now Mick from Nuneaton was responsible for discovering the Grindle Road location, and I trust Mick as a brother, but Mick posted of an earlier time. My grandmother's house and my great-grandmother's house - two largish semi-detached villas (as the name on the collective front of the houses described them) - were adjacent to the Concrete, and I spent a goodly amount of time at those houses as a boy, engaged in doing all sorts of odd jobs considered important at that time, largely inconsequential today. It wasn't painting the coal or anything of the like, but it seemed to me - whatever it was - much ado about nothing. But the Concrete was much ado about something - men in dirty and/or dusty work clothes, going about serious concrete-crafting business in the fashion that Mick describes.

I was going to say the same 20A, you can see the quarry and chimneys in Dean's shot. I personally agree with Longford Lad that the Concrete Works were on Longford Road