Court Houses

My mother was born in Sherbourne Street in 1928 - she always reads and enjoys this forum when she visits me. This thread triggered memories that she has never shared with me before. I knew the street she was born but not that she was born in a court, Court 1, Sherbourne Street. She lived there until she was six. She remembers it as being a wider court than they normally were, with buildings on three sides and the River Sherbourne on the fourth side. There were two entrances to the court, one from Sherbourne Street and the other from Spon Street opposite Spon Street school. The Spon Street entrance was called "the double" and had houses on one side and a wall on the other. The outside toilet was shared with one other family. It was kept locked and in my mother's home the key was attached to a cotton reel and hung on the wall. The wives took turns in keeping the toilet clean. My grandmother paid either 1d or 2d a week to use the wash house. Her designated day for laundry was Tuesday. My granddad would light the copper before he went to work in the morning and my gran's widowed sister would bring her laundry over together with their mother's to put in the wash. Neighbours would ask for a bucket of suds so they could wash their floors. The communal water tap was outside my mother's house and it often fell to my granddad to thaw it out on cold mornings. Mum cannot picture a sink in their house but remembers the stove and black lead range clearly. There was one room downstairs, she thinks, and a winding staircase up to a bedroom. A second bedroom led off the first. Someone said elsewhere on the thread that these houses were kept very clean, and Mum remembers this too. Also, that the neighbours were all considerate of each other. One morning a policeman knocked on the door and woke them up - the Sherbourne had flooded and the downstairs had dirty river water covering the floor. Apparently, when the Sherbourne did flood, it was common to see household items, including chairs and once a mangle (!), floating along.

That side of Sherbourne Street was cleared just before the war and an L-shaped low-rise apartment block built where the courts had been. The low-rise block was totally flattened in the war and its enormous basement used as a static water tank for some years afterwards. It was then rebuilt from the ground up in the early 1950s following the same L-shaped floor plan. 1950 map

Hi Dutchman, somewhere there, there was a "court" of houses, just by where the butterfly block is now. Maybe I should have said, not that court but a court.

This map may help? It's centred around what is now Spon Gate House: Old-Maps.co.uk By the way, those 'wings' on the top of the tower-block are meant to represent the aircraft industry which Coventry once had.

Great maps, Dutchman, thank you. When I get home from work, I'll have Mum have a look at them and see if they stir any more memories.

Since looking at the map that shows the Sherbourne Street courts, Mum realises that "the double" was actually Court 28. What she thought was a wall was the back of houses - presumably they were windowless. When she looked at Court 1 on the map, she could name the families who lived in several of the houses - some of them ended up related to us by marriage so I guess it was a close community indeed! One of the residents made ginger beer to sell in big stoneware jars. Mum doesn't want me to publish the names in a public forum, a respect for others' privacy that marks her as from a more discreet generation! Other memories - her mother, along with many others, taking jugs of hot cocoa up to Spon Street school at lunch time so her kids could have a hot drink. My grandmother shopped at Trepass the butcher on Spon Street near the entrance to the double, Millerchip's, a general shop in Sherbourne Street, Blakemore's the greengrocer on Spon Street before the arches. Also on Spon Street, on the other side of Windsor Street, was Sadler's, a shoe repair shop that also sold toys. My gran paid into the Christmas Club and that was how my mum got her beloved celluloid doll.

This is supposed be a Coventry court

It's typical of the courts in the Thomas Street and Moat Street area of Spon End. Note how boys of all ages played football in the yard together, they were still doing it as late as 1967.

My week off work this week (shift-worker) and now I'm back in Earsldon - I did something I have not done for ages and actually walked into town - specifically off the back of the Forum threads here. Wandering all around Spon Street the old court plaques are also still there for Courts 1, 4, 5 and 6 as well as number 7, although as Dutchman says probably not in their original locations. Nice to see though.

As a child my father used to take me to see my uncle Fred who owned a newsagents shop in Far Gosford St. I recall a couple of these courts on the left hand side somewhere opposite the cinema. I could be wrong because I was very young at that time. Uncle left Coventry to open another business in the Lake District but came back at the start of the war and was housed in the Wyken Hostel. Les

There were some at the bottom of Gosford Street too but I was oblivious to them even when passing every day as the only clues were narrow entrances between the shop fronts. I only became aware of them recently when studying town planning maps. Another survived near the top of Gosford Street but, being completely exposed on one side, I never thought of it as being a 'yard'.

I have linked some of my favourite shots from 'Pictures of Coventry'. Court 11, Gosford Street Gosford Street, showing Old Malt House Buidling