Lake View Park

The River Sherbourne crosses Lake View Park as it runs from Four Pounds Avenue towards Grayswood Avenue. In Lake View Park, another stream runs off the Sherbourne, and maps show that this is the one which runs through to Eastern Green, but I cannot find a map which names this. As there is the Scirebourne pub in Eastern Green near to this stream, do I take it that it is a branch of the Sherbourne or does it have a name of its own?

I believe the river which runs through Eastern Green and eventualy joins the Sherbourne in Lake View Park is known as the Pickford Brook.

It appears I was totally wrong and that Pickford Brook is further north and joins the Sherbourne long before it reaches Lake View Park.

Thanks for the replies The best I've been able to come up with is "Brookstray", which fits in with the flats bearing that name on Mount Nod

I used to live in Lake View Road, when very young. In those days, the fields opposite consisted of waste ground and a few allotments, great for kids to play in. One day, when it had rained heavily and the brook was a deep torrent, I slipped on the muddy bank and fell into the water. I could not swim, but somehow managed to grab hold of something and scramble out. Frightening.

Funny you should pick up on this subject again Slim, as I have experience pre-WW2 of this area when it was allotments and field. We lived in Prince of Wales Road and had an allotment, just off the rear of our house there, but on a fine summers day we would take a picnic and settle down by the pretty little tinkling stream - the Sherbourne. Catastrophe - apparently I (age 2) came back crying because I`d dropped my cake when paddling. Also funny - my first home, Mt. Nod, maisonette, Hopton Close, we were at the bottom of the cul-de-sac that overlooked the "Brook Stray", I think it was marked on the map as such, but I didn`t think that was the name of the stream, but applied to the wide grassed area that ran alongside the brook (say 30/40 yards wide). I suppose you might call it a flood plain, but I don`t remember any floods.

Daddy told me when I was very young that the road was so named because the brook (actually the Sherbourne, but we called it the brook) flooded and the fields all became a lake, but in all the 8 years I was there, I don't recall a lake. But I do recall many weeks of work involving gangs of workmen and mechanical diggers (one with Wilson Plant Hire on the side), and diesel pumping machines pumping away 24 hours, so perhaps the council carried out work to stop it flooding, like widening the "brook". Ah, I remember that they also installed a large storm drain that ran the length of the now park. Huge concrete (probably lace with asbestos), large diameter pipes were scattered everywhere. The pipeline was very deep underground, with open manhole shafts, brick-built with inset stirrups every so many hundred yards. Every thing was open to the public, and it was great for playing in. We'd climb down one manhole, walk along the pipeline, then climb up another one. No health and safety obsession then. And it never did us any harm.

I've read that it was called Lake View Road because there were plans to dam the river and build a lake. Developers started building houses and named the road in anticipation of this, but the lake never happened. (Shame, in Cardiff there's an urban lake/park that works well.)

Well, you read right Flapdoodle. In the 60's there was a Lake View Road, or else I was visiting complete strangers. My daughter and her friends all played over in Sherbourne Fields behind the allotments and there was no water in the brook then, or else I would never have let her play there. There used to be an entry leading from Lincroft Crescent right through the allotments (we worked one of those allotments) into the fields at the back. No sign of any lake in those days, dry as a bone over there at that time but you could see where there had been a stream/brook running through at one time.

Whilst visiting home and driving down Four Pounds Avenue recently my wife said quite matter of fact that she wanted her final resting place to be Lake View Park and that she wanted her ashes to be scattered close to the site of her late beloved father's allotment plot that backed onto it. She said that she had read somewhere that there were plans to develop or improve the area which may make her reconsider her wishes. Anyone know anything?

Is this any help? This is from an article on Coventry Live 26th July.