Palmer Lane

One thing that I spotted for the first time is the gas pipes along the wall. That was one of the odd features about a mystery yard picture you posted some while ago. The article mentions that the only amenity he had was gas lighting.

About 1980 a schoolfriend and I were sketching around town when he pointed to a roof behind the Coventry Halfpenny and said 'there's some sort of old building behind there'. To cut a long story short we gained access to the premises via the jewellers on the Burges on the pretext of sketching the old court. There was a time lock mechanism on their metal door which meant we had an hour before they could reopen it. Suffice to say as soon as they shut the door we started exploring the building. It was like a time capsule, old newspapers and cigarette packets which I guess were Mr Morrell's were still on tables. Other than the thick layer of dust everywhere it looked liked someone had only just left. We noticed it had been demolished sometime in the mid-80s.

Great update Greeny - I did wonder. Shame reallly as we only have the Watch Museum section and the Weavers House as remaining elements of Court living.

Thanks to Alan Denyer, work on opening up the Sherbourne continues and we have what appears to be this old section of culvert/bridge opening up underneath the old layer.........

Terrific! The area in front of the camera might hold clues to some of Coventry's earliest development. The Sherbourne at this location was very man made from an early date. At some point there is supposed to have been a ford, which was later replaced by bridges on the Burges and Palmer Lane. Shelton mentions a possible location but I haven't worked out where. Even from very early, the river seems to have been well below ground level but the sides may have been more gently sloping and natural until sequential development saw it confined in stone embankments. Palmer Lane itself had buildings over the early bridge and only a passage joined the two halves in 1750. After the bridge, the river opened out into the Priory Mill pond. By 1850 the central building over Palmer Lane had been demolished but there were still buildings either side of the road on the bridge. A one storey slaughter house to the west (closest to the camera) and a two storey cottage row to the east. The river could still be seen after the bridge but the mill pond had been drained. By 1888 the building on the east side of the bridge had been demolished and the whole area towards New Buildings had been culverted and the cattle market moved into the area. It was the work for Trinity Street that saw the new concrete culvert built, moving the line of the river away from its old line, denoted by the brick bridge remains (assuming that it is brick?).

The Red Brick building centre photo is Tuck & Blakemore, builders' merchant, but if you could not find what you needed in Coventry there was always the chance you'd find it there!

Further to the conversation about the court at the back of the Burges, I've found my friend Tom's drawing of Mr Morrell's - can't quite work out the orientation, but this is summer 1980....

What a super drawing!

Ditto This is just a guess but I think that the view is looking west. What appears to be a doorway with an arched top, I think might just be an open door as per the photo below. The sketch would be at right angles to this photo, looking to the left. Where there is a little arched window on the left is in a block of new brick, which could have housed the bigger window in the sketch. In the sketch the doorway in the photo is just a patch of dark pencil infill.

From the Coventry Smorgasbord FB page - PALMER LANE One after another the narrow cobbled streets of ancient Coventry are being superannuated and left to serve as tradesmen's entrances to more modern thoroughfares in the vicinity. Cook Street, Silver Street, Well Street, Palmer Lane, West Orchard, and Greyfriars Lane are among their number. All of them appear in Speed's map of 1610 as streets of substance and importance. Palmer Lane, perhaps is the oldest of them all and only a week or two ago the last of its half-timbered frontages disappeared under the picks of a demolition squad. With the exception of a single court near the Burges end, this street is now completely denuded of dwelling houses. The palmers, the holy men, and a whole host of wandering beggars who gave the thoroughfare its name, were used, in mediaeval times, to skirt the Benedictine monastery in Priory Row on their way to the Hospital of St. John (converted after the Reformation to the Free Grammar School) there to be healed, cleansed, and fed at the hands of the kindly monks. The Guest House of St. Benedicts stood at the corner of Palmer Lane and New Buildings and was afterwards succeeded by the Pilgrim's Rest, a lodging house famous in the annals of Coventry. The Sherbourne, which runs beneath Palmer Lane before disappearing mysteriously into the gloom of the Burges culvert, has also played its part in the towns history. In Leofric's time the river formed the boundary line between the Abbot's half and the Earl's half of the community. Bitter rivalry existed between the two factions, and Palmer Lane, with a share in half, must have witnessed many exciting episodes as the result of the Abbot's efforts to obtain control of the whole town. In later days, Palmer Lane was a street of pleasantly gabled houses and important because of its ready access to the market in Cross Cheaping. At fair-times, too, it would receive its share of the many side-shows which overflowed Broadgate and the adjoining thoroughfares. Palmer Lane has provided us with tangible evidence of its antiquity. In the roadway at the bottom, was found a fragment of Saxon Cross, thought to be a part of the cross in front of St. Osburg's Church, destroyed by the Danes in 1016. Close by, also was a wooden plank - part of an old piled structure which forded the Sherbourne in the Burges. Lady Godiva may well have ridden on this very plank, which, with the fragment of Saxon Cross, is now safely housed in Mr Shelton's museum in Little Park Street. 🖋 R. I. Martin, October 1940.

A real nice one! I've been looking for more pictures of this building for ages. Thanks to Coventry Smorgasbord FB.