Hales Street

And from that photo you can see why it was called the rope walk, and that's not surprising because the basin was just above and the biggest buyers of rope in the Midlands were the narrow boats. There were several 'Boat Offices' in Bishop Street, including my great grandad's. Along there had always been water, there had been a lake between there and the other side of Hales Street 1800 time with a set of iron railings between the pavement and the lake fed from the Sherbourne and the Radford brook, commonly called 'The Severn'.

A bit gruesome but apparently rope made in the ropewalk was used for the hanging of the last person to be hanged in Coventry. Mary Ball was hanged for killing her husband in 1849. The police kept the rope in the Police Museum. I wonder if they still have it?

I feel sure I read that Mary Ball was hung outside the County Hall, more or less where the Cross is today!

Mary Ball was executed outside the Coventry Gaol for poisoning her husband in Nuneaton. This was the last execution in Coventry.

Prof & Kaga, I'd say you're both right, as the County Hall and Gaol were right next to each other!

Thanks Rob!

One dark night, feeling lonely, thinking her husband wouldn't be home for some hours, a woman took her baby to visit some friends who lived in cottages near the Priory mill dam - a sheet of water then extended from New Buildings to Agnes Lane, which was fed by the river Sherbourne and Radford brooks. The latter was nicknamed the "Severn". The friends lived in a row of cottages which faced Hales Street opposite the Smithfield, and the mill pool extended almost up to them, leaving only a small paved causeway between the houses and water. After an hour's gossip she left the house to go home. It was a very windy night. Half an hour later the husband went to his father-in-law's house, which was at the back of the Golden Lion in New Buildings, telling him he said he could not find his wife, that she was not at home on his return. They found a lighted lantern and with the help of neighbours a search was made, the water of the mill was dragged, and they found the lifeless body of the woman. But the baby was not found till next morning, alive, having floated onto the roots of a large ash tree on the other side of the pool. After this the authorities put up the stone kerbing and iron railings in front of the cottages. The ash tree mentioned is shown in a engraved sketch of the mill pool in "Brewer's beauties of England and Wales", 1814.

The kerb and railings were still there in 1850, after the pond had been drained and filled in, the rivers culverted and Hales Street created. The small track was little wider than the pavements built for Hales Street but probably saw carts use it, as it connected up to the Swanswell Gate. You can get an idea of how it looked from the track going up to the arch of the gate house in the photo Neil posted recently. The dam bridge track was even narrower than those small roads but must have seen regular traffic as it was the route out to the gate to farming land and the Swanswell Mill from the priory.

Looking in the other direction!

This is the scene Kaga described. The ash being the big tree on the right? The Radford Brook comes in from front right and the Sherbourne runs behind the ash. The artist was stood on the road the poor woman 'fell' from*. The Priory mill dam/bridge is on the left, controlled by sluices. The scene looks like the Radford Brook was a substantial river and while it may have been a stronger flow than today, the depth was due to the restriction of the dam. Both rivers were artificially deep due to the mills along their length although they were probably subject to silting up. *I find the circumstances of her death and the child's survival somewhat suspicious.

Ironically enough Helen I was looking at that very image last night in a David McGrory book I found at my mum's that belonged to my late dad which I did not know he had.

Prof, great photo's. There was a story of a large grouping in stone of the Lord and his disciples in a house in Cross Cheaping which seems to have been brought from the altar of St Mary's Cathedral on the dissolution of the Priory in the time of Henry VIII. Each disciple stood under a canopied niche with Christ occupying the central one, but the sculptor displayed his humour and abhorrence for the betraying disciple by leaving the niche at the end intended for Judas vacant. A story goes that many years ago the floor of the back room of a house, which was immediately over the Radford brook, whose course had been since diverted, fell in one morning as the family was at breakfast, and it is said they found themselves - to their amazement - floating downstream sitting round the table. Don't you just luv old Cov.

Thank you Helen, the tree used to moan so much in the wind they called 'old nick'.

I also believe the pool was sometimes called Hobb's Hole, with Hobb being another name for the Devil or 'Old Nick'. Ha, no wonder with Hobb moaning in the background! I love how all these stories are now making sense to me. At first I couldn't visualise the locations, and so information went in one part of my brain and fell out another. Now I understand how the city was laid out, the stories stick. In many ways you have me at an advantage. The first I saw the city was in 1991 and then only small bits of it. The city thoroughly confused me. I've spent more time looking at the streets in Google than I've actually walked them.

It wasn't very far from there, but Hobb's Hole happened to be the small pool outside Mill Lane Gate, where Cox Street now runs. (Whoops..... I said Mill Street.... now corrected! )