Humber Road

This is the what I believe to be the hospital

The Council owned all of the land on the north side of London Road from the railway bridge to the Sowe bridge at Willenhall. It includes the site of the Waste Reduction Unit and the land behind Whitley Village which it may have owned since the 1850s when the first sewage works was on this site. I am not sure when the Pinley land was purchased but the Isolation Hospital was built in the 1890s and Whitley Hospital in the 1930s. The Water Pumping Station was built in 1908. Whitley Hospital would have been transferred to the NHS in 1948 and the waterworks to the Severn Trent in 1974. I worked in the property department of the Council from 1963 and the 'spare' land was only ever accommodation land and not one of our main agricultural holdings of which a handful remained. Also the plans for Allard Way and the industrial estate made the future uncertain. Len was only ever interested in accommodation land and when I first met him lived in Melbourne Road. You are right that when he lost the Pinley land he took on the remains of Home Farm at Baginton. I am pretty sure he is still around.

Humber Road showing Humber Works From the Coventry we have lost

Hi all, I was friends with a girl called Eileen (can't remember her surname) who lived at Pinley Farm in the early 1960's. I remember her showing me the hospital building, but at the time it seemed to be full of pigeons and the resulting poo! with a few tables and chairs in one room, likewise encrusted. My mother made me scrub myself almost raw when she heard where I'd been, she was terrified I'd contacted smallpox and kept me off school until I'd seen the doctor - wonderful.

Hi covgirl. Eileen is my cousin. Her last name was Mills. Her father was Albert, my uncle, and her mother's name was Vera. Eileen has sisters, Barbara and Maggie, and another sister whose name I can't remember, and a brother called Dicky. We spent summers playing quite innocently round the hospital completely unaware of the true use of the place. Happy days

LR Hugh Road, Hollis Road, Bolingbroke Road