Coventry Pubs

Another picture from the Coventry Graphic. The Craven Arms in High Street. This pub had gone by the time the picture was in print in 1913

One record turned up while I was riffling through the Herbert archives - PA54/354/6 - 20 Aug 1691 Ralph Adderley (of Coventry, innholder) of the "George" inn on the northern side of Fleet Street (lying between a house occupied by Henry Pattrick on the east and one occupied by James Nailer on the west) with three stables, a coachhouse, two yards and a muckyard, a garden, a chamber over James Nailer's shop, a back kitchen which is part of J. Nailer's house (all occupied by Ralph Adderley) and a passage through Nailer's ground between the back kitchen and the inn's own, these altogether comprising a three-bay frontage, along with a stairway nearby Since I have pictures of a pair of yards drawn by Troughton, including exterior stairs that fit this description I'm thinking that The George Inn was next door to the building on the west Corner of West Orchard - the same location of the City Arms (not the one you're familiar with but an earlier version that sat in roughly the same place - see Board of Health map). In fact on the BoH map there is a George Yard, off West Orchard, which would have been where the stables etc would have been accessed, not from Fleet Street. In other words, the George Inn wasn't related to the later George IV opposite but to the City Arms.

Hello, It's bedtime story time, are we all tucked in? Once upon a time, I was waiting for the No7 bus to Sewall Highway, at the Lower Ford St bus stop adjacent to the Canterbury Arms & Foresters pubs.. You can't go to sleep yet! It was around 9pm, on a wet, soggy Sunday evening. I was returning home, after I had played piano for our chapel youth group. I was sheltering in the entrance of the Foresters, when a gent emerged to go into his home, next door to the pub. "You can't stay there in this rain, come inside", he said so friendly. I explained that I'm only fifteen. He then pulled me in, introduced me to the lady in charge. I explained that I was waiting for the No7 bus. She told me to sit here, where I could see it emerging from Priory St, so that I wouldn't miss it, & furnished me with a glass of lemonade. I will never forget that kindness. When I got home, mum asked where on earth had I been, I was smelling like an ashtray. That was the first time that I can remember ever being in a proper pub, legitimately. That act of kindness from both of those individuals, shaped me. I know it now as an act of 'Common Grace', my mum used to call it. Hope you liked that. Lights off now when you've drunk your cocoa. ps. The advent of time & my memory, it might have been the Foresters, not the Canterbury Arms. I had alighted from the old No3 at the Alex cinema & walked passed part of the Singer factory, so I would have picked the driest place to stand, where I could see the bus coming along Ford St.

A lovely story. Great photo too of the three streets in panorama. Taken as individual views it would be easy to imagine them in different places as they're quite different.

Hello Helen & thank you for that. I was brought up in a home where I was taught respect for folk in general. Chapel folk & pubs just simply didn't mix in my growing up experience. I knew folks in chapel who had signed proclamations of abstinence for one thing. That was based on an era at the turn of the century where I might have had some sympathy, but in the fifties, alcoholism wasn't such an issue. It became more of an issue in the seventies, particularly in my age group. On Thursday afternoons, mum's shops half day closing, mum would often meet up with her three shop managers for a treat somewhere. Usually a pub, following a matinee at the hippodrome.

This is a fantastic twofer from David Fry and Coventry Digital. Both the White Bear and the Livery Stables at the end of New Street are visible. It's pictures like this that fill in gaps in clearer pictures of individual buildings. It fits the older maps. It shows how the White Bear grew. The top map is 1850 and the one below is 1950. The pub starts as the three storey building. It then merges with a two storey building next door, which previously combined a stable and a house. Finally it's all reduced to two storeys and an extra extension is added to the east end. It's hard to know how much building survived from each renovation to the next but it shows how hard it can be to directly link later photos to early maps.

Wow, that's amazing research, Helen! Like you say, it just goes to show how difficult it is to match up older and later views when the shape of the actual buildings cannot be relied on.

When I first read the Real Ale Rambles site, the numbering and locations of the pubs looked confusing but I now realise that it's due to them changing names, moving about, expanding and contracting. The data invariably comes to me via our good members and yourself Rob.