Hearsall

Great stuff yet again Helen - thanks! I really need to go and take a closer look at bits like this.

Wow love this. Thank you.

That feature you link to Neil, is one of a set of 6 staircases along the road, some of them blocked up or overgrown. I can't see a reason why the leper hospital might have had them, so they are a modern feature. The steps didn't link specific homes on Craven Street to Hearsall Lane and were shared as far as I can see. The land was built over in fits and starts. The section to the north east of the red boundary area was still a field in 1850. Directly north of the red boundary on the south east, stretching to Craven Street was a substantial knot garden. Just to the south of that there is an over grown area served by those steps you link to. It didn't and doesn't seem to belong to the houses on the Craven Street side. The northern most three of the houses on Craven Street each had a small garden (with a shared path along the back of the houses of that block). No fences. The two houses to the south of them weren't built until after 1850 and their plots offered access to the overgrown area. It looks a bit like that area was deliberately set aside and wasn't unkempt back in 1850. Did they find bodies? It would be an interesting area for an archaeological dig. The rest of the section on Craven Street, down to the yellow boundary also seemed to lack private, fenced gardens but that may just reflect the newness of the properties at the time. Their rear gardens go all the way to the Hearsall Lane wall. In more recent years the communal garden seems to have been divided up. Some got steps, most didn't. To the south of those houses it was mostly common land and fields. In the north west corner of the red boundary there is/was a building (now Mathew Lewis Displays) there in 1850 with a pretty garden north, east and south. The building looks like a classic early Coventry watch factory. Was Craven Street totally new or a way into the hospital? It doesn't seem unreasonable to assume that the main entrance was on the Allersley Old Road (original route to Holyhead and Chester). Potentially the knot garden belonged to that building but it was an era where provision was made for new homes to have vegetable garden space so it could be communal. It's relatively easy to see the 1850 features in the modern landscape but how they relate to the leper Hospital is more difficult. There might be the odd rock in someone's garden. They've certainly found some of the sad occupants.