Longford (inc. The Red Hills)

Just as an aside. I have looked at my Dads wedding certificate and Joe Watt was one of the witnesses. Small world!

Heres an advert from Memories of Coventry book

I have just been back to Coventry and Longford for the first time in about 15 years. I was quite impressed with what has happened to Longford. It seems to be a better place to live than the place I remember 40 years ago. Despite the demise of many of the local pubs, there seems to be more life in Longford now. I was impressed with how they have developed Longford Park. I can remember seeing those enormous willow trees by the river being planted as saplings. The Dovedale/Ritz is up for auction. Hopefully this eyesore will soon be gone or redeveloped. I walked up to Sutton Stop and was amazed by the amount of activity on the canal and also the residential development on the other side of the canal. We had a little family get-together in the Greyhound. (Excellent beer and food.) I was not so impressed with Coventry itself. Many of the shops I remember are gone, and there are quite a few empty shops. I missed my cup of coffee at the Kongoni. ( -- long gone, I know). It was an interesting walk down memory lane.

Just remembering a few Longford shops and premises. Dicky Barker's barber shop where I used to get my "short back and sides" scalping as a boy. He would put a wooden plank on the armrests to bring me up to cutting height! Gandy's hardware shop which always seemed to have the required item. The Off-licence just over the canal bridge, advertising a large selection of "Wine From The Wood". You took your own bottles to be filled! Just down the road from that, the "O'er The Bridge" Chip shop, the signage arranged so that it said "Fish O'er The Bridge Chips!" I also remember going to Longford Woodcraft with my Dad, and not being allowed into the wood yard. Hanging about outside I could hear an engine starting and stopping (possibly a compressor) in a tiny building at the end of the stone boundary wall fronting onto Longford Road, which is still there. Strange the things you remember. The Old Capitol skating rink that I used to frequent.

Longford Coach & Horses . You can bring up other Coventry pubs by going bottom of page just click on Alphabet at the bottom. LINK

Link for morgana

Thanks, was just putting it on as it mentions the hair dressers David H talked about. Also wondered if any one knew who the customer of the Coach and Horses was who won the bigest and fatest cockrel but could nt have it because it sits on top of Longford church what a wind up for him who ever he was must have a good sense of humour.

Hi. Just discovered the extremely interesting Longford discussion. I would appreciate any information participants might have on my Great Grandfather - Joseph Wright who farmed in Longford from around 1880 to about 1912. Any information would add to my research into my family history. Thanks

Not sure if this helps you. In the 1880s Longford was outside Coventry duristriction for your future ref. LINK

Your recollection of Longford perhaps is more recent than my own, but I recall Barker's barber shop and Gandy's hardware store, but - it strikes me that, when I was a child - the latter was known only as The Hardware, in much the same way as Longford Woodcraft was known only as The Woodyard. The "engine" you heard was from a small brick-built electrical sub-station, then between a row of houses (Victorian or earlier) and The Woodyard. The road you refer to - "the stone boundary wall fronting onto Longford Road" actually was the Bedworth Road, the Longford Road ending at the bridge above the canal. All this I know because I was born on Bedworth Road, immediately opposite the sub-station. Now, my accomplishment in being born on Bedworth (not Longford) Road is not of the stuff that leads to a Nobel Prize in itself, but -as you will understand - is of some moment to me. (The Victorian or earlier houses were razed to the ground in 1950 or thereabouts, thus making additional car parking space for The Engine Inn.) The off-licence to which you refer was once in my grandparents' ownership, and my father and mother lived there in the early years of their marriage. The off-licence was below street level, the street being Sydnall Road, but, below street level or not, the building was quite large, notwithstanding its modest frontage. Adjacent to (rights angle to) the off-licence was a blacksmith's shop on Bedworth Road (later any number of things, including a car repair business), which was operated pre-WWII by my grandfather's brother. Today, this one-storey building bears a sign to the effect "Farriers' Mews/Suites" or some such thing, but my great-uncle was a blacksmith, a farrier's craft being somewhat narrower.. I join you in expressing the strange things (that we) remember, and your citing the Capitol Skating (Roller) rink pretty much sums up that "strangeness". Down the end of an alley, (a rather dirty affair), an alley between (in my days) a confectioner's-cum- tobacconist's and some shop I cannot recall, and immediately behind the shelter for city-bound buses, there was a scruffy place, dedicated to celebrating the art of roller skating, if art it be. At a remove of sixty years or so, I am hard-pressed to recall anything specific that commended the place to me, but - as perhaps is obvious - I loved that scuzzy joint. Similarly, I loved the Capitol Billiard Hall that fronted on Longford Road (not hidden down a lane-way by "normal" shops at front), almost immediately opposite the Post Office, the building that now has a frontage sufficient to warrant status as one of Coventry's most attractive older buildings. I applaud your obvious love of what once was Longford, for all that I entertained many doubt myself as a child. Now I think it a grand place, whatever the misgivings that once I had, the misgivings is now totally disavowed.. Why, once upon a time, a boy/girl might stand beneath the single tree (not a fruit tree) that comprised what was risibly referred to as The Orchard, and witness a 20A (Longford destination, not Bedworth by way of a 20) reverse into Lady Lane, and make a turn for its city-bound run back to Broadgate. That, then, would have been the cutting-edge of public transportation! These years of yesterday, these years both you and I describe, may well be of nothing to the current Longfordians, who boast a most attractive village. But, thanks for the memory, and apologies for (what I see as) corrections. Ya gotta love the place, and you and I do.

For Longford lad Toronto scroll down 10th photo on this link showing a bit of the big tree in Longford the orchard as you call it. Before. LINK After The jitty side of what use to be the shop now house the same lady still lives there rear of Saracens pub. The jitty also leads to the photo below this one. Continue turning left of the jitty.

Thank you for that Morgana. Brill Our Longford forum, roving correspondent. Some of us realise the effort needed by you to post these gems. Brill!

Thank you Philip, the cottages both sides in the jitty which come out on to Lady Lane where the gate is , in the last photo comes under Longford Square confusing for the post man and parcels delivery.

Thank you LongfordLad for responding to my post. It is great to have memories confirmed. Like you my links with Longford run deep. My father and grandfather were born there. My grandmothers family lived on Market Square in the early years of the twentieth century, my mother and father first met at the Capitol skating rink in 1934, so if it hadn't have been for that "scuzzy joint" I wouldn't have been here! Finally my father rested at Hackett's prior to his final journey through the village. I have always regarded the place as somewhere important to me, not strange but rich in my family history, of which I am very proud.

Market Square for you David H taken today. At another angle Enterance to the old skating rink where the black gates are between the two blue shops