Butcher Row ('Great' and 'Little')

I have found this have not been able to locate the picture anywhere though.

So my memory was wrong about the Bull Yard, but with the abattoir, Bull Ring and Butcher Row on the north side of the hill, and assuming the bull pens were in the Bull Yard on the south side makes me wonder how they led the bulls from Hertford Street through Broadgate and down to the Bull Ring. What comes to mind is a five foot and a half guy clinging on to a mature bull, being pulled all over the place through Broadgate, hilarious and dangerous to boot. Anyone have other ideas?

This clearer picture shows it to be definitely cabinet.

A note on the spelling, if you look carefully you can see it is 'curiositie'. This spelling also matches the one in Little Butcher Row

I'm quite poor at being able to put the different images in strict time order so I don't know if the shop moved to or from Little Butcher Row or even if they were two branches of the same emporium. But I do think that they were related. The location on Little Butcher Row was very quaint.

Yes, same thoughts myself! YOCS

There was a shop in one of those old streets I vaguely remember - there were oriental fans and trinkets in the window so you couldn't see in. The entrance door had a large colourful advert of some eastern circus or such on the plate glass window, so you couldn't see much through that either. As you entered the shop a small eastern bell tinkled as you closed the door behind you. A large room with narrow tables full of antiques, Chinese porcelain vases, trinkets, gift clocks, fans, in a mass of colour. Pieces of statuary pictures on the wall, faded print dresses, small foreign stamp albums of decorated wood. More antiques on shelves. Chop-sticks, small boxes of coloured candles and a sweet smell of perfume. As a kid you just couldn't take it all in in one visit, so I went a few times. I have no idea of what the shop was called but the shield does jog the mind.

Very atmospheric Kaga! Could it be the shop next door, William something? Although it does sound like it should be a place named YOCS. I'm wondering about that, saying "cabinet maker" etc below the shield, if the following owners just kept the shield sign and let it fade. Although in the photo a lot of small items in the window- not looking like a carpentry shop. ?x1000!

Osmiroid, I see little difference in what the old folk called Yocs and Antique shop of course the main difference for me are all the old photo's were taken with few people and very clean. But I as a kid with those narrow streets felt they were packed with people and could see little of the big picture of today, or little difference in the streets, all narrow, over jutting and the streets very messy. As you say shopkeepers, they could talk to one another and still be in their own space to conduct business. I had a young aunt who was still in the mood of the twenties with beads and loose flowered dresses, head bands etc. who we all adored but would drag me and my sister into that particular shop. It sold a lot more than I can remember. I believe it was a great place to live in those days despite the set backs (toilets etc) we see of it today.

Here is a bit more on next door to YOCS, William Franks, who I'd heard of, can't remember seeing it visually until this.

Thanks, nice quality

But in the middle thirties all talk was about the coming war, plus Coventry being foremost in motor production. I think councillors would be more geared to widening roads than to losing the character of the city. Radio and cinema newsreels, China and the Japanese war, the Spanish bombing in the civil war, so they anticipated destruction on a large scale. Many predicted levelling of cities by aerial bombardment. So we have to look back at the minds of people in those far off days to understand some of the things they did.

Once again Kaga we are indebted to you for your insight into the past. It's easy for us nowadays to criticise what appeared to be poor decisions before the war, especially the "butchering" of many old streets, but as always, with a bit of perspective given to us by someone who lived through those times, we are able to glean some of the reasoning that might have been used in those far off darker times. Many thanks for helping us to understand our heritage a little better.