Alderman's Green Primary School

I just saw the back of him, yesterday. He had just been to the corner shop on the corner of Canberra Road. This incorporates the Post Office which he and his late wife used to run. I will pass on your best when I next see him. By the way, did you know Jack and Lizzie Gibbs?

Greg, Yes I remember a boy named Gibbs, Trying to place were they lived, need a reminder. back to Billy Oldham,amazing to me, he only lives a few doors away from where he grew up, but his younger brother Derrick came to live a few doors away from me in Brighton about twenty years ago.The big gun was in that field behind where he lives now.The barrack rooms were at the bottom of their garden.

Yes, we remember Derrick (he ran a small hardware shop next door to his brothers` shop for a while) and thank you for the info about the gun and the barracks. Jack and Lizzie lived in a cottage om the RHS (coming out of town) and, apparrently, it was so close to the railway line from the mine that they could lean out of the window and touch the trucks. They were neighbours of ours for many years (until they died) and good friends to us. Like a few others they were displaced by the building of the M6. Jack was a bus driver and also worked part time at the flour mill.

Kaga, I thought you might like to know that I called to see Bill Oldham, this afternoon, and told him about being in touch with you. He seemed delighted and straightaway mentioned how his brother had bumped into you. Sadly, his eyesight has deteriorated and he can no longer drive. It is a form of cataracts and he has a blind spot which also makes it difficult to watch TV but he still seems in good spirits. We had quite a chat and he filled in one or two gaps in my knowledge of local history and people.

Greg, thanks, I hope he told you all about our Ag/ school, we were in the same class there and at Foxford. Yes I too had a Cataract removed a few months ago, also two skin cancer spots, but no worry, not painful. looking back over my childhood, I believe now I was very fortunate to live just inside the boundary of Coventry. I had the rural and farming side as a child and the industrial side of a great City in my youth. I also had the old fashioned way of life, and the new modern way of today and the computer age. My parents were born married and died in Foleshill. never had a bathroom, toilet, or central heating in any house they lived in, and only had electric when they where in their sixties. They also lived within a stones throw of the canal all of their life. I believe they both attended Ag- school, if only at odd times due to boat trips, around 1905 time.

Kaga, at the risk of going even further off topic, I have taken some picture of old cottages on the Aldermans Green Road. I have put two of them together to see if you can remember anything about them. There are three cottages in all and they are all derelict. I would love to know their history before they are bulldozed.

Greg Please pass on my best wishes to Bill Oldham. My name is Bill Ross and went to school at AG and Foxford with his son David. I have fond memories of having tea in their back sitting room whilst Bill and his wife ran the shop and Post Office out the front. When we had left school we persuaded Bill to manage our football team based at the Miners arms, he was easily persuaded as he was football mad. A lovely man, delighted he is still with us Bill

Greg. I have no idea who lived in those cottages, but they seemed to own the garden that stretched along the road to May mittens house, the garden was about the width of a football field. The road as been widened since I was a boy. Now how can we keep to topic, when there are so many open questions. Sorry but I have no idea where to put this other than here. BillR, Bill Oldham was my class mate at both schools, we often fought but friendly, but then, AG school was in Lentons Lane, now they seemed to have moved the school to the far end of the street. Now the miners arms had a football team way back in the thirties, the captain was chew-chew Welford, is old man owned the pub, they had loads of pictures on the wall of the team, (won many trophies) along with photo's of the 'slough' and they played in the field right opposite the entrance to the post office street, behind Rowleys the green grocer, and were the two streams converged before entering the Slough. I find it very strange, but when I was a boy there was barely six cars in the street, and the bedroom I slept in was never disturbed by traffic, now there is a huge motorway with thousands of cars passing right over the spot where I lay,for seventeen years. All in one lifetime.

Thank you for that info, Kaga. You probably know that AG school is now behind those cottages (between them and the Slough). I am fascinated by local history and there are still quite a few very old buildings etc. round here.

Greg hi, No I thought it was opposite the mill lane, by the old footpath. Do you know if the old houses up by the Basin are still there,One ran parallel with the rail track, it had a huge shed like structure at the side, I was told at an early age what the working of the shed was about, something to do with the old railway, but I can no longer recall, and I used to wonder why the other four houses formed a three side square with two house on the slough side, you think we should move this to railways and canals?

I was aware that there used to be some cottages there but they had certainly gone 40 years ago (when I bought my first dog). The only remnant of the old railway is two parallel rows of bushes, across the top of the Slough where the branch across to Deedmore Road and Henley Road apparently ran.

Just thought, for those of you who no longer live here, that you might like to see the current Aldermans Green Primary School. This frontage faces the access road to Wyken Slough and the canal basin.

Hello all Thank you for the picture. Not just confined to any particular school, but what a sad reflection on our society in general where our primary schools have to be barricaded like a prison, as in the picture here. At my Stoke primary in Wyken Grange Rd, in 1953, we had a three foot wicket fence with no gate.

Morning Philip, Are Caretakers a thing of the past. Something else on the 'can't afford' list.