On this day, in Coventry . . .

It should be fairly easy to find something for 2nd June - Coronation Day 1953

4 Dec - In 1937 the Division 2 game between Coventry City and Southampton was abandoned at half time because of snow - the Bantams were leading 1-0 at the time - they won 2-0 when the fixture was replayed in Jan 1938 22 Feb - The Bantams lost 1-7 at Southampton in 1958 - they would finish in the bottom half of Division 3 South, causing them to line up in the new Division 4 the following season

Excellent stuff... down to 32 remaining dates now!

Not a date you're missing but a good story. On the 3rd of May in 1519 it started to rain and apparently didn't stop until Christmas. The day fell on Hock Tuesday - second week after Easter. Source - page 55 Desolation of a City. The weather was one of the steps in Coventry's demise. Hock-Tuesday was an important term day, rents being then payable, for with Michaelmas it divided the rural year into its winter and summer halves.[3] Some evidence allows us to see that Hocktide was considered an important festival in some parts of Late-Medieval England, and was a chance for the women of the parish to raise money for the local church. Katherine French's work has allowed us to see that women would capture and tie up local men, and release them in exchange for a release fee, which would then be donated to the church.[4] At Coventry there was a play called The Old Coventry Play of Hock Tuesday. This, suppressed at the Reformation owing to the incidental disorder that accompanied it, and revived as part of the festivities on Queen Elizabeth's visit to Kenilworth in July 1575, depicted the struggle between Saxons and Danes, and has given colour to the suggestion that hock-tide was originally a commemoration of the massacre of the Danes on St. Brice's Day, 13 November 1002, or of the rejoicings at the death of Harthacanute on 8 June 1042 and the expulsion of the Danes. But the dates of these anniversaries do not bear this out. Until the 16th century, Hocktide was widely celebrated in England after Easter, although the massacre of the Danes in 1002, by order of King Ethelred the Unready, took place around the feast of St Brice, on 13 November and Hardicanute's death in 1042 occurred on 8 June. The festivities were banned under Henry VIII as they were thought to encourage public disorder, but Elizabeth I was petitioned to reinstate the tradition in 1575, an event recorded in Sir Walter Scott's Kenilworth. How popular the revival was is not recorded, but a number of towns are known to have re-established the tradition. However by the end of the 17th century the festival was largely forgotten. Hocktide

April 18th 1450 - worried about Jack Cade's uprising it was resolved in the Coventry Leet that 40 men should keep watch from the 9th hour (when the gates were shut for the day) till the ringing of the Day Bell (4 or 6 am?). On the 24th January 1642 a watch at the 4 main gates was set of 17 'able men both of estate and persons' because of the Civil War. The bar gates (Spon, New, Bishop and Gosford) were to be chained up till 4am and guarded by those men. The other 7 gates were shut up every night. All other postern gates were walled up. On the 30th July 1642 the watch was increased to 40 men at night and 12 were to ward (?) by day.

By co-incidence on 3rd June 1643 William King was told that his brew house outside the Bishop Street Gate would be demolished or burnt down as part of the clearances round the gates. He took the lease of a decayed building on part of the Free School land and promised to spend £100 doing it up over the next 3 years.

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