Warwick Row and Greyfriars Green

On a purely academic level the demolition of these last old buildings makes it very hard to anchor old images. Once they've gone you can't take measurements and then estimate the scale of old pictures. A pity.

Sick!!! As Joni Mitchell might have said, They paved architectural paradise, and put up an office block.

They have both now gone I'm saddened to say. I will pop down one evening and capture the desolation for all to see here when I can bear it.

Sad thanks to Dylan Parrin & Alan Denyer for the destruction image. Didn't want to make it any bigger for fear of the upset.

Neil, I daresay there are many out there that think like we do. I would be more angry than upset. I do appreciate being kept up to date via this brilliant Forum but it's so sad to see so many buildings unnecessarily sacrificed for the sake of modern bricks and mortar which will no doubt be subjected to the same process in a few years time. It's all about MONEY I fear.

Scan from a transparency I shot in 1960

Any more Cliff?!

Don't think so

A picture postcard if there ever was one, MR. We used to watch the carnivals from along there.

And it shows Warwick Rd Church where I was christened September 1938!

Found this one from 1976

It became a casualty of the April 1941 air raid. Note in the background, the John Carroll stationery shop along Warwick Row

I wonder why there are not masses of close up pictures of the cannon when it was in place? I don't know of a single one, only after it was bombed, the one above and another one of the barrel being loaded onto a lorry or similar.

I've a feeling that I've seen a close up but it may have been a picture of the one at Swanswell. Like a lot of things from before the war, nobody captured them on film because they never expected them to be destroyed overnight. What's very sad is how little was photographed before demolition after the war. Or at least how what images there were have been scattered across public and private collections. I would still like to see a call out by Coventry for old photographs, even just copies. Ditto copies of paintings and sketches. I know that they struggle with what they've got but there are real gems still out there and this is the right moment to try and find them.