Butcher Row ('Great' and 'Little')

A really nice and early image of Butcher Row. Note the two jettied buildings on the left. Usually images only show one and a later brick building. William Morris Gallery

and an 1863 dated engraving looking the other way -

Some good detail here on a busy shopping day for one of our most favourite buildings in LBR -

NeilsYard, Nice clear photo, I do so wish we had a date, those iron bedsteads, where we used to have to polish the brass corner knobs, we used to unscrew them and leave little notes to each other inside them.

Sorry Kaga - I do try to add dates when I know them. Can never get enough of Butcher and Little Butcher though

NeilsYard No need to be sorry, I'm pleased with everything you post, but dates help me to re-live the part kinda. The Olde Curiosity Shop, did you note the window box at the top and the side, and I believe on the balcony just above the word Olde was a bird cage with a lovely singing bird that filled the street with song. Both the Row and Little Row were just called 'Market Row' - as everyone got pay packets in their hand on Fridays then the Row stayed open till it was almost dark. Most women knew the stall sellers and shopmen. The crockery man was called the Potman, he sold pots and pans; the fish man was Sourpuss, always grumpy; the fruit man was Gabby, talked too much; the the carpet man was Lino, and so forth - the women named them well. It was like a shopping lane, bootsale, and market all rolled into one. By the time I was six/seven my mother would embarrass me. She would stand at the pot stall, admire a painted mug or cup, ask "how much?" "Eight pence to you, lady", shake her head and walk away - few minutes later she would walk back, pick it up, "how much?" "Eight pennies", shake her head, walk away. Come back later, both she and the pot man had an uncomfortable feeling by now. "Do ya want it for six-pence?" he said. Mother picked up the mug, counted out six pennies, gave them to the pot man, who wrapped it in newspaper, grumbling to himself. Mother walked away smiling - times were hard but she gave me the two pennies she had saved, it took me to the tuppenny rush at the Rivoli next morning.

Brill, Kaga

Here a photo of the demise of Butcher Row, Neil.

Amazing, but very, very sad picture!

Neil Y. For people from the north parts of the city the trams stopped right outside the top of Butcher Row. So it was first point to visit, and to me always seemed crowded. There was always something cosy about Butcher Row, which always seemed longer than it really was there was so much to see, the pleasant aromas and bustle of the Row and more than what the address can tell you today. You could spend a good time looking at what was around you, the overhanging buildings, the nooks and crannies. The butcher's shop, besides all the meat, there were pork pies, some a foot across, tubs of lard, tubs of dripping, shelves of tins of oxo, gravy granules, jars of mustard, spices, and both metal and wood skewers (good for tent pegs). Across the yard wicker baskets and tin baths full of crockery, plates, pudding basins the like you won't see today, painted crockery with birds, fish, flowers. A shop had loads of pen-knives tied on thick paper, the knives about three inches long, half inch wide, with gaily coloured casing, all hung down the side of the door. A barrel full of mouse traps of all sizes and strengths, wooden clothes pegs, kids' paint boxes. The choice was endless, I loved it. All in a friendly way without agro.

Neil. Osmiroid. People, where you are putting this in neat order, streets, houses lists, I can't do that. I am working from memory so it's more like an autobiography for me. I believe Rob knows this, and I can only tell it the way it happened, or the way I saw it, such as . . . from the age of about three to about seven, I went to the same barber, he only knew one style, whatever your age you got the same style, if he was talking and turned the thing off before removing it from your head, tugged half your scalp off, Coventry 1930's style. Back to Butcher Row, Pepper Lane, Priory Row, all the houses were different, some farther back than others, upstairs overhanging, you know all this, but there was always an old man hanging around that tall wooden shack in Priory Row, we thought he lived in there, so we sang the 'Crooked Man' song to him but he and some of the traders would cuff your ears a tidy old whack if they got near you and you didn't complain, just wasn't done. At the bottom of Butcher Row and Palmer Lane, the houses did not run side by side, number by number, it was more like an L-shape with a house in the middle, so the numbers seemed to dart about - steps down and steps up, cobbled stones in places, seemed a mish-mash to me, but we knew our way around.

Kaga, yours is an outstanding contribution and almost unique in that you add colour to black and white images. You tell stories that aren't captured in celluloid. Your memory is wonderful given the time scale and your young age and sometimes an 'error' might be an unrecorded truth. In times of demolition, let alone war, 'normal' changes. New routes open up because properties and their boundary walls are demolished and become a handy cut throughs, even though they are never printed on a map. Shops immortalised in pictures, may have moved temporarily and were in places only you can tell. Some businesses would have hung on till the last day because they didn't intend to move elsewhere and shut for good when the demolition crew moved in. One of the first sections to be demolished was the north side (bottom) of Ironmonger Row and a large swathe of New Buildings (maybe why you never heard the name used) all the way to Hales Street. I'm not sure how long the first part took but it would be easy to see the halfway stage as how it always was.

I was born about the same time they closed Craven Colliery. My family's business of conveying coal from the Wyken pits into Coventry and other cities was brought to a near standstill. The Coventry Canal Basin closed, the wharfs and the great warehouses in Foleshill closed to become derelict, and people suffered in the depression. Meanwhile my mother dragged me into the city - the trams were exciting, the city fascinated me, its foundations lay in its past, its great churches and the cathedral, tales of its market marked by a great cross. In the 1930s parts of the centre of the city still remained medieval, of small narrow cobbled streets and courts, quaint century old houses. Butcher Row had been the centre of the meat market. In slaughter houses animals were stunned by a blow, and then bled to death - sometimes this happened in cellars below butchers' shops, and Butcher Row still had these century old (or more) buildings, and these attracted rats. Around 1936 the council pulled down a lot of these houses and courts. Rumour had it that workmen disturbed hundreds of rats, but as a kid I had little idea for the reason. Then came the war and we lost a lot more of our historic buildings - rumoured that thousands of rats ran down Trinity Street. Haifa was a large port in the Mediterranean controlled all shipping in the 'Med'. One morning just before dawn (1947), there was a very loud explosion - within minutes we were ordered to dress (Army) and line up outside. Two Companies boarded lorries and drove app. 12 miles to Haifa - terrorists had blown up the great big fuel tanks, this destroyed sheds, buildings etc, and disturbed thousands of rats, creating Bubonic Plague. I was one of 14 soldiers ordered to lay trays of DDT powder along a street, other soldiers were doing the same all through the city. We then, our group, had to stay and sleep for a number of nights on the railway platform - bedrolls were brought. Such was the panic of the authorities. This made me wonder if this thought had been behind and hastened the Butcher Row destruction? When I came home I made some enquiries, met with some strong language ticking off, even threatened with jail. I bought a book on the London plague of 1666 - found they had blamed dogs, and the rat population exploded. I suddenly remembered that thousands of household pets had been put down twelve months before the Blitz, could that account for so many seen during the Blitz?

Little Butcher Row painting by Tom Barnett c.1860 - thanks to P Thynne. Note Bull Ring on the right!