Coventry Trams

I don't think the above is a Coventry Tramway photograph! The uniforms are not the same as in this one taken in Priestley's Bridge depot of Clippies & office staff:

There seems to be an age difference as well, the ladies in your picture Manor House look a little older. The plot thickens ! The Coventry uniform is single breasted whereas the girls picture they are double. This is a picture of Roy's grandmother with a double breasted uniform, perhaps I should look at Midland Tram depots.

I suspect you might be right 20A-Manor House, but I also think that the uniform varied year by year. There seems to have been a summer and winter uniform. The drivers and conductors may have had different uniforms. I can't find a perfect match between many photographs of Coventry Tram staff. Male or female. link to Coventry Tram site

Remember this? There is a post card on Ebay of Post Office indoor staff set in an outside location with identical rounded top windows with heart shape insets and similar paving. May 1909 photo by Maule and Co. No odd screened windows like this one on the back left but could the photos have been the back of the post office ie sandwiched between Hertford Street (with tram lines) and Grey Friars Lane? I think it might. Maule and Co were at 27 Hertford Street and I don't think that it was the back of their premises but relevant that they weren't very far away. There was a fair bit of building going on in the early 1900s. Link to Ebay.

From this site "In 1900, a postal service was introduced on certain trams. Letters could be posted by members of the public at a surcharge in special letter boxes affixed to the trams. This continued until tram operation ended."

Not only letters. Note the sign, top left on this postcard:

Helen, I had a look at the Goad insurance map, it is difficult to make it fit the area behind the PO but there is one but that says iron over which could be the corrugated iron bit in the picture. Have you looked at it as you are mire an expert in that area. I used to be abke to look at older fire maps on old maps online but that has changed.

Hi Anne, I've had a look at several maps and no two are the same. Old Fire Insurance maps here. There are a lot of buildings mashed together and it's even worse now. I am fairly sure that the photos are somewhere on Hertford Street and the unusual window glass suggests that they're from different parts of the same property. There was a lot of demolition and rebuilding on Grey Friars Lane so views could change quite quickly. I certainly haven't nailed down the two locations but at least it's narrowed it down to part of the city.

From a 1937 Timetable:

Excellent work 20A-Manor House . Gives a very good link between the trams and the post office which explains why they might have been photographed behind the post office buildings. Well spotted seeing the sign in the post card too.

Absolutely spot on Sir! Does anyone know the connection between 20A & Manor House?

Manor House was the destination of the 20A bus. Not sure exactly where that was though. Possibly up by the Manor Guildhouse?

Hello That's another free breaky then! Thank you for answering. I think that the 20A to manor house service started when the last batch of fully furnished buses arrived, about 1952. They were sequenced as KVC 126 to 165. They were very plush, in fact lavishly furnished to match anywhere in the world. The utility ones that followed a couple of years later, very well engineered, but lacking the trim like separate boxed in lighting in the saloons. They arrived with the Manor House destination blind. I will wait to see what our friend has to correct of my failing memory.

So, you buy a bicycle (hopefully a Coventry made one), but, you're not going to ride it, but, pay 6d to take it on a tram!: Really Philip, as if I would correct you , no not me However.....from the 6th January 1957 the 20A started running to a terminus at the junction of Almond Tree Avenue & Honeysuckle Drive, 27th March 1977, the 20A was renumbered to service 40, 3rd June 1979, the service was extended up to the precinct at Bell Green, 26th February 2012, renumbered back to 20A, 1st September 2013, extended from Bell Green to the Universty Hospital. From the mid-90s for 10 years or so a service 20A ran to a terminus in Oban Road Longford. 20A-Manor House at what was the terminus of the 20A Manor House a few years ago: