Wyken Slough

Helen, Ok, you have the maps, but try and find a burial or wedding document that says Potters Green in Wyken or Walsgrave or Henley. The Sowe river came through Longford Park, never in Wyken, the Foleshill Mill, it crossed under AG Road near Windmill Lane, ran all alongside Hall Green Road, went left around Bell Green, ran north of Henley Road - all in Foleshill during the life of the Craven. The only brook in the area, started at the brickworks and ran down Lady Lane, but really it wasn't a brook, it was the overflow of the slough in high water, on the east side of Lady Lane was the Craven. On the west side was the 14 acre field of Main Pit Farm, an old disused shaft right in the middle. When my father was made redundant from the Craven I am pretty sure he had dealings in Foleshill, about it nothing mentioned of Wyken. My uncle owned or leased the 'slough' and lived in huts at the waters edge. I am sure the post was Foleshill, the post office in Jackers Road was Foleshill - why wouldn't it be, Wyken was three miles away? Helen, it's not worth all the trouble to me to continue on, so let's talk of friendly things.

Dreamtime, Rob. Thanks but it's actually a good exercise. My knowledge of Coventry is built mostly on what I look up. Until Kaga asked, I had no idea where Wyken was. For me, Foleshill was the Foleshill Road, full stop. I vaguely knew where Walsgrave was but never thought of it as a big area of land. I have avoided thinking about the outer city because I thought I had enough to cope with within the city walls but in tracing some of the records I get references to families based outside. The old estates explain why some roads are older than others and which would have made their way into the old city.

Thank you, Rob. Although it does not show the 'slough' it's close enough to put everything on a borderline to find just where the people answered births, deaths, etc. Something else I know for certain is that 'Potters Green' came under Foleshill registry. Had I been younger I would have contacted my cousins to see if they had information on their address/rates when living at the 'slough'. But thanks.

Argon, The pool as you know it wasn't really the slough (meaning marshland), the slough was the boggy bit on the left of the farm track (now road) where the two streams met. The streams, then larger, then made their way right down the length of the pool and trickled out right at Lady Lane, meeting the river Sowe behind Bell Green. The pool we know today had a ridge of ground that led from AG Road, past the pool. A further ridge of high ground came along almost the length of the pool, separating the stream from the pool, so no water was fed in from the north. For about twenty yards the ground flattened out near the south exit, allowing the overflow to run all the way back to the farm track, that being a deep hollow and there's your pool. In hot summers the pool shrank to a mere pond. So putting a weir in the exit, you had more water and a bigger pool, and about 500 yards past the weir was the Craven 'pit', and the stream ran right and met the Sowe that ran left from Hall Green Road. More flooding than a large lake. Henley Mill had a large lake during rainy seasons, skating on all, so don't assume those papers knew one from t'other.

Hi Kaga, I hope you don't mind me trying to put to rest some of the things that David McGrory has been accused of getting wrong? I've looked at his book, and to be fair I can't see the same problems... 1. So why does McGrory say the Foleshill Road and district goes back to Roman times, all of the place-names associated with Roman times. He doesn't state that it is Roman, but that the connection has been long suspected. Many Roman finds have been made along the very straight (Romanesque?) road, from Mancetter down to Baginton, Roman forts at both ends. He only said that it's possibly Roman, and it certainly sounds feasible to me. 2. You said "He says Wyken was first mentioned in the 12th century, the first tenants on the estate were in the 12th century and it's his history that confuses me.". What he actually said was "The earliest known tenants on the estate were the Bruton or Bret family". All that means is that those people were the first that we have documents for - not necessarily the first people there. 3. He also splits the collieries up, putting Victoria 'pit' in Foleshill and the Craven 'pit' in Wyken. Well, these two collieries were 2 miles apart - Victoria pit near Jackers Road, well within the Foleshill boundary - and Craven pit, as previously discussed, near Walsgrave but within the Wyken parish boundary. 4. Potters Green in Walsgrave - how he did that I have no idea. Because it is! Potter's Green is just 1 mile from the centre of Walsgrave, well within the Sowe parish boundary, and closer to Walsgrave than it is to Foleshill's boundary. You may well be correct when you say "Potters Green came under Foleshill registry", but that doesn't alter the historic boundaries. David doesn't actually state that Potter's Green is in Walsgrave, however, he only includes it among the places within the area. All I'm trying to do is be fair to the author, who hopefully won't lose any sales if people read this and might have thought that he'd got everything wrong!

Hi Rob. Look, I am worried that all this might damage the forum more than worried about McGrory. Yes, I'm pleased when people take me to task, because to me it's my memory, and yes I am beginning to make stupid mistakes. Now to me the first two questions - I read it, he was saying that Foleshill was recognised as being older than Wyken in that area, and as far as I know that was never changed. The third was a mistake on my part I meant to put Alexandra - the Victoria pit and its sister were actually under the cooling towers of the Power Station which was strange to me with all that weight of water over the old shafts. Now I believe the postal address of Potters Green, long before the Craven closed, was Potters Green, Walsgrave-on-Sowe, Foleshill, Coventry. My family have long and close associations with Potters Green. Now the Alexandra pit was about 200 yards north of the Craven and called Hawkesbury Collieries as far as I recall. But he does pose a lot of questions to me - why would they take coal by horse and cart all the way down the Walgrave Road, when they had built a railway and canal for that purpose, and where does he put Foleshill Manor? But Rob, just delete anything that you thing is wrong if you feel I'm out of step with this great forum Regards, Kaga.

I confess I don't know that area Kaga. Growing up it was always the other side of the city. I think we sometimes went to the bowling alley, and the Walsgrave pub used to have some good groups on in the 60's so I have nothing to add to the discussion but I wondered if you had read the page from British History Online as it may answer some of your questions.

Kaga, mostly the issues are not caused by your memory but that there are things discussed that are much older than you. I am not doubting your recollections or those of your forbears but some of these things are up to 10 times older than your venerable age. Some of the maps and images I'm working with are twice your age. Some of the historic stuff was still relevant by your time, some of it not. Some of the way things were in your day are different now. It doesn't make your memories wrong, it's the world that's changed.

Annewiggy That's brilliant and no, I had not read it, but it needs reading a number of times, but already solved a few problems for me and made others, but thanks.

Kaga, please, there's no need to worry - this forum can easily withstand a few of us having varying memories or different views of our history. Helen has put it so beautifully above, I can't explain it any better than that. We will never fall out over these relatively tiny things, and as I've mentioned many times before, your input is treasured by us all, with wonderfully written memories that none of us can come close to matching. My concern was genuinely more with "McGrory" as you call him (known to our family simply as Dave), a local Coventry kid who spends his life researching our city for the benefit of all interested. There's very little money to be made in local history as it is ("local" being the operative word!), so I didn't want this forum, which he does check out occasionally, to be the cause of anyone being put off from buying his many books.

Rob Then thank you, Rob. Then would you please look at the photo on 264 - here the water comes in from the far right hand corner and travels towards you at the bottom of the field on the right, all the way, passes behind the boat and round till it ran out in a small stream just off the side of the photo, on this side where the man is standing goes round right to meet the river to make it a small stream about four feet wide, now the kids are paddling in the shallow water this side, the other side is much deeper where the river flowed. Now there was a bank about three feet high and six feet wide, ran all the way from where the water came in to by that boat that parted the river from the pool, this was were the men fished. Where the boat is it tapered down allowing the water to swill over where the kids are and back to the far end. Now in a normal summer the two brooks that formed the river didn't have enough water to swill over where the kids are, it just ran straight on behind the photographer and down behind Bell Green down to Henley Mill. So the pool in summer almost dried up. Before the weir which is just behind the camera, the water was much lower than in the picture, so Rob, how would you catch a hundredweight of fish. From where the man is standing he could almost throw a cricket ball into the old mill yard. Now your friend visited the mill and gave a good description, he was so near to the slough, but I know he never visited the slough from his writing.

Annewiggy. Some time ago, weren't we discussing Eburne Bridge - you sent me maps. I think I asked if Deedmore ended at the canal as there was no bridge over the canal. I got no answer, but bingo! - it's in that history. It also said the brickworks were near Whitings Bridgeand not near the brickwork cottages. There were other things it confirmed to me, so big thanks from me, brill! Rob. Your friend said "The manor house of Foleshill is a problem as one would expect it to have been" - but look at post 25 of heritage and scroll down.

You could well be correct Kaga - it's possible that David McGrory has not visited the slough, I don't know for certain. If you think about the huge number of details on every page contained within that book, on each of our city's suburbs, and the depth of research required, I guess it would be impossible to know everything about every part of our city. As above, yes, it's probably not possible to be certain about the location of Foleshill Manor either. I don't know which publication "Heritage" copied that from in post 25, but it looks quite obscure. What, I wonder, would be the chances of any of us, if searching for Foleshill Manor, finding that book or booklet, and just happening to locate that sentence about Ruebin and Rhoda Smallman getting married and moving into the manor house? As a former betting man yourself, what would be the odds??? To be honest, you did an amazing job of finding that! I've also just had a look at an 1889 map around Lenton's Lane, and can find nothing at all to suggest the site of a manor house - not even the pub that it apparently became according to Heritage's book on here.

Rob The odds wouldn't be very great, The Crown Pub Had rumours that it had been something more, around 1930 time it had a huge 8/9 foot wall covering the back and round once side, the back wall seperated it from the 'iron' church, it was by the far bigger than any building from the others around, it was about a quarter of a mile from Hawkesbury Hall, it may have been even bigger than the hall.We had a member on here that said she lived in the Crown, but I asked her some other question she didn;t reply so I didn't get around to ask if it had an history, but we were that close.

PS. A guy called Parrott lived Hawkesbury Hall, he once owned the early collieries in the area.