Spon Street

Umm intresting stuff!! i guess they are still "confidential"! I have to say bravo to Dutchman I am enjoying talking about this.

The jeweller's shop is apparently now known as 'Aspell & Company" but most people probably still think of it as being 'Alexander Edwards'.

Cutting the borders off rolls of wallpaper, the smell of bed bugs and candle-wax, Sunday tin bath night, goose grease smothered around my neck to cure a sore throat, chest cold etc,and nobody wanting to sit by you in school because of the smell, and last but not least bread and dripping sandwiches! YUMMY.

Hi Sally, I loved dripping sandwiches, and toast done on the coal fire. Did your parents ever let you do stippling instead of wall papering. My dad would cut a potato in half, we made a pattern on it and then dipping it in paint we would splodge it on the emulsioned wall, lovely jubbly. We also had the old tin bath until we were old enough to cross the road to the public slipper baths which were opposite our house in Coronation Road. I can remember having mumps and my Mum slapping really hot poultices round my neck, not very nice!

And how about distempering the walls? You often see on "wartime" TV plays nicely wallpapered walls, but wallpaper was off the menu until, what, about 1951, as I remember! When the distemper aged, you could rub your hands on it, and they came off covered in whatever colour the distemper was... And just remember back - the doctor actually came out to you then!!! Our family doctor was hopeless; he couldn't diagnosis measles when I had it (so I soon had a damaged eye) and in later years, couldn't diagnose appendicitis either! Good thing they only let him loose on a destroyer in WWII...... But remember the tablets in pressed cardboard containers - round ones -and medicine in green bottles with a cork? (I bought a load of old watch parts a little while back, and they were all in the old fashioned cardboard round pill boxes.) And when I had a sore throat, my mother would make up a mixture of honey, lemon and tartaric acid. Delicious! My parents kept fowl too until about 1952 or 3. I used to have to go in the chicken run and collect the eggs - it was easier for me, being a small child! My dad wanted to wring their necks and use them for food when they decided to get rid of them, and my mother wouldn't let him, so they were given away.

Orange juice in little bottles off the Milkman, Haliborange, the old geyser in the bathroom, and a tin bath in the kitchen, washing machine with a mangle , making trolleys from old prams, buying cayli out of a jar by the oz and sweets, they still do in Bradford, broken biscuits from Woolworth, doctors using a bunsen burner to steralise the needles, going to the cinema for 6d, 1p bus ride into town, walking to school on my own from 4 and having to wear grey socks which I hate to this day any thing grey, cutting out cardboard to put inside my shoes as they had holes in them, pinching the gooseberries from the top of the garden, being held down while being given a big spoon of Kaolin and Morphine, penny for the guy, carol singing, going to Sunday School having to buy a stamp with a picture of Jesus on it and sticking it in a book, going to Girl Guides making pompoms, having a school bank savings, which they don't encourage children to save any more, playing out on the streets skipping higher and higher and having dens, climbing trees which you now would get an asbo for, sad, playing conkers, being under the hospital most of my childhood for illness which one they had never seen before baffling even the specialist Mr Paddy Williams. Getting good hidings hehe, filling up the taxis for petrol, helping my mum who ran the petrol station, I was 7 and getting a tip, would buy fish and chips 1/6d, scollop 1d, Godiva in Jubilee Cresent which was next door. Having to go to work with my mum at the Silver Sword when I was 3. Just think even down to the mangle it would be outlawed now with health and safety or classed as begging hehe. Germoline on our wounds

Was it one one of those big ones with an arm which swivelled between sink and bathtub and a flame which shot across the room when the water was turned on?

Spon Street was part of my route home from school between 1967 and 1970. What remained of the historic South side had been boarded-up while the council 'rat-boxes' as I called them were being constructed behind them. I remember feeling sorry for anyone who was going to be forced to live in them. (By a quirk of fate I now do so myself). Businesses on the North side were also gradually being closed-down by the council for no good reason but had not yet been demolished. Among those which survived in what is now known as 'Medieval Spon Street' (a misnomer if there ever was one) I remember the shop fronts being whitewashed rather than painted. There was also a very strong smell of emanating from various food shops which persisted with me until after I got home as far away as Craven Street. There were quite a few drunks lying around as well in the vicinity of the Windmill Inn which was close to Spon Gate School and not not be confused with the Old Windmill in a different part of Spon Street. These were mainly Irish building workers who had come to Coventry during the reconstruction boom but were now no longer needed.

Hi Dutchman, maybe you remember the Sun Sun chinese restaurant then, just as you enter Spon St, on the left from town. My husband and I used to frequent that place for supper after the movies. I should imagine it would have been closed down eventually for health reasons, but I loved their mushroom omelettes. That was way before the restoration work in Spon St.

Afraid not Dreamtime. It was Ponderosa Taxis when I used to pass it although it had been a restaurant previously. This is the same building in the 1950s when it was known as the Premiere Restaurant & Snack Bar:

In the days when Spon Street was still a major route into town with traffic lights on the junction of Holyhead/Queen Victoria Rd. the last shop was a paper shop and during the homeward rush hour the owner used to stand in the middle of the road selling newspapers. He had a number folded over his left arm, with his right hand he would flick the paper to fold it pass it to the cyclist or through the car window, take the money and put it in his pocket. This whole operation was done very smoothly and quickly. When the lights changed to green he still stood in the road and the paper buyers used to slow down to buy their paper. I'm afraid the name of the shop and the gentleman escapes me.

Goddard's!

Yep, I remember Goddard's too! And how about policemen on point duty in the early 50s? Often they stood in the middle of the road junction with no protection. I can remember a friend of my brother's running over the toes of a policeman who was on point duty at the top of Bishop St, he was turning right, and got too close to the bobby, who just leaned back a little, and be-bump, be-bump. Next night the bobby was waiting for him to appear (he wasn't hurt - they wore Totectors) and, oh did he give the guy a roasting - and made all the traffic wait while he did so!!

I asked earlier what happened to Alexander Edwards Ltd, the watch material suppliers, of 9, Spon Street. I see on the net that they closed down in 2008; well, fair enough, but looking at Spon St with Google Streetview, it looks little like I remember it, and I couldn't work out where Edwards shop was. I know it was on the Queen Vic Rd side, and I remember it being a fairly big double fronted shop; one side was for watch materials, and had a watch cleaning machine in the window; the other side was like a normal watch and jewellery shop. The latter was nearer to QV Rd. The only shop front that looked anything like the one I remember had very large 17a on its fascia board. Could someone help me get my bearings, please? I was also wondering what happened to their stock. Auctioned off, maybe? Bought by e.g. Cousins of Romford? Anyone out there know?

As mentioned in the other thread that was Edwards' shop until the 1970s and is now a hair and beauty salon: