Braydon Road and Houghton

Hi there. As a sociologist I've studied Canley, which is also where I grew up and I found the L Kuper book in the library when I worked at Warwick University. Being familiar with the estate all my life, I located 'Braydon Road' as Thimbler Road, to give it its real name. This is off Freeburn Causeway/Prior Deram Walk. This road has several sub-sections with almost a village green between several rows of houses. One part of the green now is home to George Rowley House, sheltered accommodation for elderly people. The layout fits exactly Kuper's "Braydon Road'. Manor Road is really Charter Avenue. If you want to discuss more we can connect. I'm also a sociologist. Unfortunately didn't get any of my Canley work published but have published about working men's clubs. I run a website on clubs and I start with the Canley Club, which Kuper called The 'Houghton' Club - it was just being set up as he was completing his research. All the best Ruth

My family moved into the BISF housing off Charter Avenue in February 1948. We had moved from Hillfields because my father had been appointed to caretaker at the Canley Teacher Training College. For quite a while we had to walk to the bus terminus which was then at the corner of Charter Avenue/Mitchell Avenue. The terminus later moved further up Charter Avenue/Marler Road and later still to Charter Ave/Bradney Green. The nearest shops were quite a walk (for me as a four-year-old) being in Prior Deram Walk, almost a mile away. For a number of years the area immediately east of the BISF estate was the Canley hostels. The original Charter Primary School incorporated some of the hostel's more substantial buildings. It opened in September 1949. My elder brother went to Sir Henry Parkes School for a year or so before Charter Primary opened. I find it difficult to understand that even now it takes the local council years before they put in the infrastructure to serve new popuation areas. It took years before there was a reasonable bus service for Warwick University.

There were more than 30,000 BISF/Steel houses built in Britain between 1946 and 1951. Most were of the A1 type, as those in Canley, but even the A1 category there were various internal layouts. Of the 30,000, more than 500 were built in Canley, 420 dwellings to the north of Charter Avenue and the rest off Freeburn Causeway. The Canley houses are 3-bedroomed (2xdouble, and a single) plus bathroom/wc. Downstairs there are 2 reception rooms and a kitchen, with an outside wc, coal storage, and shed in a single story side extension. A side pathway led to the garden. Radiators in the dining room and two double bedroom were supplied with hot water from a back-boiler in the open fronted grate. It also supplied hot water to kitchen and bathroom. The large windows gave a light and airy feel to the interior. The light and airy feel was continued outside too, with wide grass margins before the roadway. The roadways on the estate were only sufficient for two cars to pass (and only single track on the 'closes'). This reflected the time that the estate was built - prior to the 1960s car boom. On the bigger of the two estates all the houses were the same, so the estate is what planners would call low density. It was an estate built for families. Parents felt safe with their children playing in the ample-sized gardens or on the buffer zone between house and road. When compared to the slightly later developments of Tile Hill South and Tile Hill North The Canley estate may seem somewhat of a monoculture. The Tile Hill estates are both of mixed dwellings: semi-detached, terraced, maisonettes, and flats. By varying type of home it also allows for much higher density of dwellings within the same area.

Hello colleagues. Have we any offers on the name of the disused farm that was turned into Canley Community Centre and the name of the large house that stood back of Queen Margaret's Road near the Canley Youth Centre?

Yes, it was Fletchamstead Farm, as opposed to Fletchamstead Hall which was on the other side of the railway and on a line between Wolfe Rd and what was earlier Templars School on Tile Hill Lane.