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.