Fleet Street

This view - thanks to John Gilbert on FB - clarifies things a bit more.

Thanks again to John Gilbert on FB for another view

Hi all, I love so many of the trading & professional names associated with Coventry. Even "Are you being served", couldn't match the names in that list. Rather than poke fun at actual specific names, we could invent some. Even off the previous photo, "Nunsgalore", or "Horse&Lumps".

Nice image by Appleby of Fleet Street and St John's - these came from Appleby's grandson, along with a few others. If you search Pritchard or look in the gallery for Appleby, there's a few lovely shots. Post copied from topic St John's Church, Fleet Street on 12th Oct 2022 12:15 pm

I have been doing a bit of ancestry, and appear to have a relative who lived on Fleet Street in Coventry in 1901. His address is recorded as 6 Court 10h. I believe that the h relates to the house number. The house had, I think, one ground floor kitchen, and two upstairs bedrooms. This sounds like the dwellings in the Bedworth Yards which existed through alleys and archways behind the shopfronts and properties on the main roads. Does anyone have any information about the courts of Fleet Street?

Coventry Archives is a great place to start. They've uploaded some old photographs to Coventry Digital - including the below, which isn't the court you are after but reflects the conditions. There's more to be added, and what you are after might be in there, but they've just appointed a replacement archivist and it was the old one that was adding material.

Does this help? 1911 directory.

Hi David. As far as I can tell the court would have been accessed from the archway behind the car in the picture Ben (bk) posted at 52 just above. It's an odd shaped yard and it's not obvious which was number 10.

Thank you Helen, Heathite, and bk for your kind interest and help. I have now joined Coventry Digital and have spent a pleasant afternoon browsing their fascinating content. Thanks to you all I have now found out where my relative lived, and there he was on the list Heathite provided, but not at number 10 because by 1911 he had moved to what on the map seems to be a slightly larger property in the same Court. Also if you look closely at the map you can see that someone has faintly pencilled in the house numbers in Court 6, so it is possible to see just where people lived. Finally, to see the archway to the court on the photograph is a real bonus, so thanks again.

Gray Forster on the 'Coventry we used to know' FB page posted this image. It's taken on Hill Street but is that the same section on Fleet Street taken in-period in the distance?

No. The buildings in the post war photo were a small section of Fleet Street that survived the creation of Corporation Street and ended up bookended by that street at one end and West Orchard on the other. All the buildings you see in the distance on the Hill Street postcard were Hill Street and were demolished to make way for Corporation Street plus new buildings. See section demolished at BFA

The last building visible is The White Swan at number 1 Hill Street from the very useful Coventry Pub History here.