Cathy Hunt historian

Kensington Road Part One

Here is Part One of a portrait of a Coventry street in the earliest years of its existence. Kensington Road, running between Albany Road and Earlsdon Avenue North, is a thoroughfare I thought I knew well, for it was in one of its 138 houses that I became, for the first time, an owner occupier, in a terraced property that was home to my family for almost ten years. I loved that house from the moment we moved in (our youngest son made his appearance into the world on moving day itself), which was just as well as we had no money to change or replace anything. Lucky for us then that the original window frames hung on long enough to serve us, even though the sash cords were largely useless and the single glazed glass panes defenceless against passionate garden football matches. It was years before we dared peep under the carpet in the narrow hall in case the Minton tiles we hoped would be there proved too badly damaged to expose. But there they were and although we were never able to have them professionally cleaned and restored, we were pleased they were back on show anyway (just visible under a sea of trainers), a proud feature of the original house. We never did risk removing the wood chip wallpaper that adorned the whole house, for fear it was all that was holding the plaster on the walls, yet even through its thick and uneven texture, we could just make out the pipes that served the gas lamps that once lit the front room.

Other parts of the house’s history revealed themselves to us bit by bit. A builder friend showed us how the force of bomb blast had shifted the top half of the house before it settled back into place but now ever so slightly out of kilter with the lower half of the building. Troublesome drains eventually led to an understanding of the extent of fractured sewage and water pipes running under the whole neighbourhood, a consequence of the pounding that Coventry took on the night of 14 November 1940, one of the most intense bombing raid on a British city outside London during the Second World War. Digging at the bottom of the garden one day, my husband’s spade went through the earth and kept on going down, revealing a shaft to ensure fresh air could reach the (long gone) air raid shelter that offered a safer space than the house did to its wartime occupants. I have always loved the story recounted by Ernie Newbold in Portrait of Coventry (1972) of King George Vl’s morale boosting visit to Coventry hours after the 1940 Blitz. Alderman Moseley, at that time Mayor of Coventry, lived at number 39 Kensington Road and, in the course of the King’s tour of the city, brought him to his home. The Mayoress, Moseley’s wife, was evidently taken by surprise, for she was at the back of the house dealing with fallen plaster and broken glass when there was a knock at the front door. She yelled out an instruction to come round the back because the door was off its hinges and then she saw who it was, ‘a tall spare figure in a military greatcoat’. I love the story not so much because of the thought of Mayoress Moseley yelling ‘ come round the back, it’s open’ to the King but because of what it says to me about women’s endless capacity for resourcefulness.

When we finally accepted that we had grown so much that we had run out of space and needed to move (albeit not far away), I cried when our Kensington Road front door closed behind us for the last time. Nearly two decades later, the Covid lockdowns of 2020/1 provided me with an unexpected opportunity to stay and work locally and to go for walks which took me on occasion back to this road which I held so much affection for. On some days, the traffic was so light that I could walk down the middle of what is normally a busy road and take photographs quite safely. It brought to mind a story I was told by Charles Evans, who came to live in Kensington Road not long after it was developed. As a boy, he and his siblings used to attach a very long rope to a garden gate on each side of the road. The rope, used for mammoth skipping games, needed untying only a few times in any one day, if a car or delivery vehicle needed to get past. A far cry then, from modern car ownership; when we lived there it was considered something of a triumph to be able even to park in the street.

One of the results of those local walks this past year is this blog, produced with the help of what I already had to hand – census material, newspaper archives and a good collection of books on Coventry’s history. There is – I know – much more still to discover in building plans, regulations and rates books, all to be explored when life is back to normal with archives offices and libraries open once again. I have thought long and hard about whether to post this, as it is so clearly unfinished but after years, I am finally beginning to understand that if I don’t put things out there, they will remain on the hard drive of my computer and running around my head but of no use to anyone. So this is a brave effort on my part to share and it comes with a plea; if you have any information, plans, deeds or stories about the street and its residents, please do get in touch with me so that the story can be expanded and enriched. I make no claim that Kensington Road was a typical Coventry street; the characteristics of the city have always been too diverse for it to be that. It is just a story of everyday life in early twentieth century Coventry.

Development

The houses in Kensington Road were built between 1907 and 1910 on land sold by the Sir Thomas White Charity to the Newcombe Estates Company. This development company was responsible for the streets of terraced housing now variously referred to as Hearsall or North Earlsdon and situated between the mid 19^th century districts of Earlsdon and Chapelfields. The best – and also the most visual  – description and analysis of the development, which began in 1904 with the development of Newcombe Road, can be found in David Fry and Albert Smith’s Earlsdon and Chapelfields Explored (Simanda Press 2011). They explain how the land was sold in stages to the Company and how, from there, it was sold on again to individual builders who in turn bought plots large enough to build several houses. In April 1907, in a column called ‘Expanding Coventry’, the Coventry Herald announced plans for new buildings including 11 houses in Kensington Road for Mr W Higgins, 20 for Mr C.J. Smith, 13 for Mr C.F. Woodhall and 10 for Mr T.F. Bird.  A first glance down the road seems to suggest uniformity but a slow walk along it shows precisely how it was shaped by the piecemeal development; here’s a run of houses with flat roofed bay windows, there’s another with small, pitched roofs over the bays and extending over the front door. Some houses are entirely flat fronted and a few more have bay windows on both levels.

With the exception of one or two larger houses built on corner plots, the houses were built with two reception rooms, kitchen and/or scullery and (on the whole) three bedrooms. Some had entrance halls, others opened straight into the living room. The original specification for the majority of the houses was an outside WC next to the coal shed and all the houses had back access, via a series of alleyways, with gates to each property. This ensured that coal could be delivered without the need for it to be tramped through or stored in the house. I know I would have been particularly pleased with that, given the dirt and the dust involved in bringing in the coal.

Using the 1911 Census of England and Wales, we can see which houses had six as opposed to five rooms. It’s important to note that in the room count for each entry, bathrooms and sculleries are excluded. This does make it more difficult to know which of the houses were originally fitted with bathrooms or added them subsequently. There is some useful evidence in the local press, such as the notice of a sale by auction of number 26 Kensington Road in 1912, after the death of the owner occupier. This house was described as having a forecourt, a good piece of garden ground at the rear with back approach, 3 bedrooms, a fitted bathroom and WC, front and back sitting rooms, kitchen, scullery, pantry, coalhouse and WC. The deceased owner was a 71 year old widow who lived alone in the property with a servant. Neither servants nor sole occupants living ‘on their own means’ were the norm on this working class street of workers, families and lodgers so perhaps the bathroom at number 26 was added as something of a luxury feature. When selling newly built houses, builders often made it clear that finishings could be added at the purchaser’s request, to suit their budget and tastes, rising from a basic price in the region of £270 in 1909. By the time we moved into our house in the early 1990s, a bathroom had been added to the back of the kitchen, where once the outside WC and coal shed had stood. Upstairs, the third (back) bedroom showed signs that it  – or much more likely a divided section of it – had once been a bathroom, but without access to any documentation, I cannot be certain that the bathroom was an original feature (although I suspect that it was).

I recall another conversation with Charles – the young skipper – who moved into the road in 1912. According to the census of the previous year, his family’s house had five rooms; Charles told me that it had a scullery and I regret not having asked him what made him describe it as a scullery as opposed to a kitchen. On the whole, sculleries were for food preparation, washing dishes and doing laundry and were not big enough to count as living or even cooking space, thus distinguishing them from kitchens with a range and even a table around which family members gathered for meals and domestic jobs.  I have not yet been able to go and see any plans of the houses but I have turned to Fry and Smith for some help. They include a floorplan for a substantial terraced house in Albany Road which had both kitchen and scullery marked out. There is also a plan for a small (and much older) cottage in Warwick Street, showing the architect’s plans for its extension in 1911. This adds space for a scullery and pantry but with no mention of kitchen. My Kensington Road kitchen originally had a fireplace along the back wall of the house and small though the room was, the six rooms recorded on the census suggests that this had always been regarded as the property’s kitchen, with a walk in pantry under the stairs.

Selling the Houses

 Once the houses were nearing completion, builders used various methods to try to sell them. In the autumn of 1908, Mr Taylor of 65, Butts, put five houses on the market at a combined price of £1,100 (although they were also available singly), presumably hoping to sell to a landlord who would then let to tenants. T.F. Bird, a young builder and contractor (born in Dudley but by 1911 living with his wife in Earlsdon Street), who built extensively in Earlsdon and Hearsall, placed the following ad in the local paper in 1909:

“An Englishman’s Home” should be his own. Hundreds of our fellow townsmen realise this and instead of paying rent they buy their own houses and save the rent. Why not do likewise?

TF Bird seeks to make this possible for all. Call and see his houses in Kensington Road. They are designed for you. You can either buy them outright or by the payment of a deposit of £30 and the balance at eight shillings and four pence per week.

It’s interesting to see an advertisement from over 100 years ago playing on the British obsession with buying as opposed to renting, which is today as strong as ever. I presume that those who bought from the builder in 1909 remained leaseholders until they had paid off their debt, whereas those who had a more conventional mortgage were immediate freeholders. David Fry and Albert Smith note that owner occupiers lived in half of the road’s houses, a much higher percentage than some of the streets that surrounded it. I need to do more work to find out the average cost of weekly renting but I did see that a landlord with a house in nearby Newcombe Road was hoping to get seven shillings and six pence per week from tenants.

And now for those who lived in the street.

The People and the Census

There was an urgent need for housing in Coventry by the early 20^th century; the city’s population had risen from 46,563 in 1881 to 106,349 in 1911. The craft industries that had dominated Coventry’s economy in the nineteenth century – ribbon weaving and watch making – were both in decline. But new industries were changing the face of the city, providing employment for Coventry born folk and for those attracted in to the city by openings in bicycle and – increasingly –  motor car manufacture. Both were predominately male occupations and by 1911, along with the associated industry of machine tool making, made up the largest category of employment for men in Coventry. Across the city some 13,000 men were employed in these industries out of a total of 37,222 working men.

The 1911 census reveals that in Kensington Road, the motor, cycle and machine tool industries accounted for around 40% of male heads of household, lodgers, sons and other male family members and this was the single largest category of male employment in the street. By contrast, only one young woman in the road – the daughter in a household – is expressly recorded as working in the cycle industry (across the city over 1000 women were employed in the cycle and motor industries). Of the Kensington Road men working in these new industries, over 60% had not been born in Coventry; some came expressly to take jobs in workshops and factories where wages were relatively high. In 1913 a strike and campaign initially at the Humber, Daimler and Ordnance factories, resulted in a minimum wage of 26 shillings and 6 pence for a 53-hour week. This was as much as five shillings higher than the average paid at that time to a general labourer. These were undoubtedly good wages for Coventry’s factory workers, generally classified as semiskilled, and the agreement set a basic rate that was higher than anywhere else in the country, and on a par with London rates. The skilled engineers (the craftsmen – those who had served apprenticeships) may well have been somewhat irked by the fact that overtime pay for these semiskilled workers was paid at the same rate as their own.

That these industries were attractive to relatively young men is evident in Kensington Road, where the average age of men thus employed was around 30. The majority of these were householders, many married with children, some of whom – the vast majority boys – also went into this work. This certainly fits with the findings of a study that found that in 1911 over 75% of those in the cycle and motor industries were under the age of 35, and over 5000 were under 25.

Although employment in the city’s engineering factories dominated, there was still quite a range of employment in Kensington Road. Among men the next largest category of work (although at around 12% it was considerably less than engineering) was that carried out by craft and tradesmen – builders, decorators, carpenters and gas fitters were, with all the house building going on in the city, generally in high demand. In addition, there were railway workers, shop workers, a few white collar workers – clerks and insurance agents – and a few professional workers, including an accountant and a very few teachers.

The crafts of old Coventry – watch making and ribbon weaving – were both represented but in small numbers. The once thriving watch industry, so prevalent in Earlsdon and Chapelfields, was clinging on but the average age of the men thus employed (for on this street no women were recorded as working in watch making) was, at about 42, more than a decade older than the average in engineering. There was just one apprentice to the industry and whereas one might expect this to be because of local connections to watch making, he was in fact a young man whose father worked as a nightwatchman in a machine tool factory, the family having moved to Coventry from the south west of England. The husband and father who lived in ‘our’ house was a watch dial painter, and at 35, he was a relatively young worker in the trade although, unlike the apprentice, he was a Coventry born man who came from a watchmaking family.

Ribbon weaving, once such a proud feature of the city, had suffered a devastating and irreparable blow in the 1860s and although it remained, it had, by 1911, come to be regarded more as women’s work than employment dominated by skilled male craftsmen. What did this mean? That the women employed in the industry (of which, across the city, there were far more than men) received low wages, a consequence of it now being a woman dominated industry which in turn acted as a deterrent to men because of the low wages. There is just one man on the street  – a silk dyer – working  in the silk trade and a 77 year old ribbon weaver (despite the fact that by 1911 the State had introduced old age pensions, this man is described as ‘unable to work’ rather than retired. The fear of destitution lingered long in people’s minds). We need to be wary of assuming that the work had become de-skilled; true, the days of master weavers working in their homes with the help of their families was long gone, but among the few young women in Kensington Road described on the 1911 census as working in the silk industry, there is evidence of specialist work, including silk blocking and pearling.

Of the houses in Kensington Road that are listed as having male heads, around 70 show that no  occupation was recorded for their wives. There has sometimes been a temptation amongst commentators to conclude from such statistics that married women did not need to work because they were the wives of relatively well-paid male workers. This may have been the case for some families, particularly because of decent wages in the Coventry engineering industries. But if we look again, the census also reveals that of the households where women were not working outside the home, nearly half had lodgers, or accommodated one or more extended family member. Men of various occupations – including engineering – lived in houses with lodgers and there is little doubt that the work of ‘doing’ for the lodger would have fallen almost entirely on the women of the household. Having a lodger was certainly no easy way to make money. During these early years of the 20^th century, the local press is full of columns advertising rooms, such as this from 1909:

Board-residence Vacancy for Gentleman Boarder 43 Kensington Road. Healthy situation. 16 minutes Broadgate. Penny tram and motor bus stage. Every comfort. No children. Moderate terms.

Another at number 8 Kensington Road offered sole occupancy of a bedroom, a shared sitting room and a bath. Prices were not generally advertised, as the terms of residence were for private negotiation; some lodgers requested an evening meal whereas others would eat at the works canteen and opt for a more self-contained arrangement (the provision of meals and services was what usually distinguished a boarder from a lodger), perhaps needing only to share the family kitchen to make tea or light suppers. Boarders and lodgers alike added considerably to the laundry load and to housework tasks and of course there was the loss of family privacy – a stranger at the table for Sunday dinner, perhaps. There was the inconvenience of another person using the WC and washing facilities, the need for more hot water and heat. Kensington Road boarders and lodgers were overwhelmingly male and in Kensington Road the very few women lodging included a dressmaker, a nurse, a piano teacher and an elementary school teacher (living in a household where the daughter was also a teacher). Suitable lodgings for women workers were difficult to find during these years and there were public meetings organised by concerned campaigners to establish all-female lodgings where women could feel safe and secure. This was put forward as a moral as well as a practical issue (it being declared a ‘disgrace’ that Coventry had nowhere where women could seek lodgings other than newspaper columns and shop noticeboards), for the need to preserve women’s modesty and privacy in mixed sex boarding houses or households troubled many who sought to improve the lives of young and single women workers. When young women could no longer live with their families or had left their home towns in search of work, what they needed was to see advertisements like this one, for ‘superior apartments for one or two young ladies: board optional. No other boarders kept’. They still of course had to take the meaning of ‘superior’ on trust.

 Taking in lodgers or being recorded on the census as ‘helping’ with the family business (I will talk more in the next blog about this) are all signs that extra income was needed to help make ends meet, to pay the rent or mortgage and to feed growing families. There was always a need to be as resourceful as possible, where work outside the home was not possible, practical, desired or permitted (by husbands). 

Amongst women who were heads of households, over half were widows, some of whom living with children who were working, one who was running a shop ( I will talk more about shop work in the next blog), another who had turned being a landlady into more of a formal arrangement and was letting out apartments. Of the single women heads of household, one acted as her sister’s housekeeper (the sister worked for a tailoring company) and two others were dressmakers, working at home. A couple of married women were recorded as housekeepers or carrying out domestic duties; I like to think that they insisted on these descriptions to show that their unpaid labour was of immense value but in reality it probably depended on who filled in the form or on how the given information was interpreted by the enumerator once it had been collected.

Most of the women listed as being in work were the daughters and female relations of heads of household. It is – because of the small numbers – much more difficult to try to analyse women’s occupations in Kensington Road in relation to the broad trends of Coventry employment in 1911 than it is for its men. It is just possible to see, however, that the majority of Kensington Road women did very broadly reflect the city wide trends, which identify domestic work of all kinds and work in the textile industry as the main categories for employed women. There was a handful of women working as servants or housekeepers in Kensington Road but with the exception of two (as far as I can see), they worked at home for their families. In addition, some women in the street were employed on different types of factory work, including cardboard box making and there were a few clerks and teachers.

If you’ve survived my riff on statistics and are still interested, do watch out for the next part of this blog when I’ll take a look at life on the street and offer some information on setting up home, buying and acquiring furniture and all the other things that make a house a home. I locate the street’s shops and think about food prices, meal preparation and lots more besides.

Huge thanks to David Fry and Albert Smith for allowing me to use their images of Kensington Road

Thanks also to the British Newspaper Archive

The study that I referred to when discussing the ages of Coventry’s new workers is by Brad Beaven and John Griffiths and is called Citizenship in the Industrial Boomtown: Narratives of work and leisure in Britain 1880-1914

Ernie Newbold’s Portrait of Coventry was published in 1972 by Robert Hale

I’m currently preparing a series of blogs about life in a working class Coventry street just over 100 years ago. I hope that the first of these articles will make its appearance in the next week or so. In the meantime, I am absorbed in – and far too distracted by – local press advertisements and references to the running of house and home. Today, feeling more than a little lockdown glum in the gloom of a wet mid February, I came across some delightful advice included on ‘The Women’s Page’ of the Coventry Herald 110 years ago. Entitled ‘How to Be Happy’, it grabbed my attention on a page full of subjects such as how tuberculosis is infectious (and how to render sputum harmless) and why you shouldn’t overheat your house (the heated air is detrimental to the mucous membrane of the nose). There are some cures for insomnia which range from taking a hot bath, using a hot-water bottle, reading a particularly dull book to the rather more specific suggestion of covering the eyes and ears with wadding. In a similar vein there is free medical advice provided to those writing in to the column. ‘Anxious M’ is told to ‘springe out the nostrils’ with a mixture of hot water and carbolic acid every morning, and sounding even more alarming than that is the advice given to ‘Concerned’ who is told that, ‘There is no connection between the discharge and the operation. Use a warm douche containing a little Condy’s fluid twice daily’. I think it’s best we don’t know what had been asked. I feel pretty sorry for the (presumed) infant of another Anxious who faced a cotton reel being strapped to his back using tapes passing round his waist to prevent him from lying on his back.

Also on the page are recipes for Crecy soup (a thoroughly boiled and sieved concoction of carrots, turnips, celery, onion, ham slices and beef broth), boiled mince roll (sewn into a cloth), mutton and macaroni (also boiled), Scotch eggs ( using up scraps of cold or sausage meat) and apple snow, served with redcurrant jelly and thin (boiled) custard. There is a pattern for a Spring skirt and a sketch for a an Easter bride’s dress.

The adverts are well chosen for the page and include mangle rollers, chimney sweeping, ladies blouses and Allinson’s Wholemeal Bread, available from the city Health Food Stores. There is a children’s column offering mathematical surprises and stories from around the world about the moon (women readers of newspapers and journals were used to sharing ‘their’ section with children, making sure that the loftier matters of politics and sport were kept far apart from household cleaning, fashion, food – oh and the raising of children. At least ‘Concerned’ could be reasonably assured that her ailment wasn’t likely to be read out at breakfast time).

The humour in the jokes section is cheesy enough for groans; “Now Patsy, would it be proper to say, ‘You can’t learn me nothing’? ” Patsy, “Yes, ‘m “. Teacher, “Why?” Patsy, “Cause you can’t”.

And on that note, here are the words of wisdom given to the women of Coventry in 1911 not just on how to be happy but how to stay that way, in ten steps:

‘Keep cheerful. Hunting trouble ruins more nerves than trouble when it arrives

Keep alert. Mental ruts make more hypochondriacs than does overwrought imagination

Keep physically active. The alert woman who hates to move is usually the greatest growler about her health

Keep clean. The close connection between the pores of the skin and general health is not considered carefully enough

Keep interested. There is nothing like a fad or an object in life to put aches and pains into the background

Keep your feet warm. more cold is taken through the ankles than in any other way, so do not run in low shoes all winter

Keep away from drugs. Walk more and take medicine less

Keep a curb on your appetite. Over-eating is the menace of the age

Keep out of debt. There is nothing like money troubles to worry one to death. Care will kill the nine-lived cat and what gives more care than a budget of debts with no money to settle?

Keep smiling’.

Lucky those, then, who could settle their debts. In my forthcoming series, I will be looking at the people who lived in the street I have chosen for the study, examining their occupations, their wages and how they got by. In the early twentieth century Coventry’s population was growing, new industries were providing employment not just for the local workforce but for those from other towns and cities, attracted by the prospect of a decent wage and a secure future. I want to look inside the census statistics, curious to get as close as possible to the realities of daily life. That’s if, of course, I stop getting distracted by discoveries along the way….

The page is from the Coventry Herald, March 31 1911

On May 7^th 1945, a few minutes after the announcement that the following day would be a public holiday to mark the end of the war in Europe, a reporter from the Coventry Evening Telegraph walked into his city’s central streets. He recalled having done so also on the day that war was declared in September 1939. Then, he wrote, people were grave but calm. In contrast, he now noted an air of restrained cheerfulness in streets ‘battered, smashed, rendered almost unrecognisable’ by the impact of war on the city. Its citizens had of course experienced much more than the bombing of their city. They were weary with war work of all descriptions, with coping with separation and loss, with anxieties for their families, with rationing and deprivation. It had been a very long five and a half years.

 

I have read differing views about this year’s VE Day commemoration. The implications of its post Brexit context include concerns about nationalism and over-emphasis on victory as opposed to international peace. The anticipated community celebrations of 2020 will of course not now be happening anyway, as we find ourselves in the middle of a global crisis of a rather different nature to 1939-45. Nonetheless, many people will be remembering where they were on 8^th May 1945 and others will still wish to hear about it, to learn more about an earlier extraordinary time. It was a day in history during which emotions were mixed, when joy and relief were muddled with pain and sadness and anxiety for the future. My own commemoration on this Bank Holiday, moved from May Day to coincide with the 75^th anniversary of VE Day, bears no hint of the political. For me, it will be, as for so many others, a private and reflective one and so this blog is an attempt only to share information about some of the ways in which Coventry folk marked the end of war in Europe.

Even when we anticipate an event with a degree of certainty, when it finally comes, it often induces shock. Germany’s surrender didn’t take the British public by surprise but when the official announcement came, on May 7^th, elation was no doubt mixed with incredulity that after so many years, the fighting in Europe was really over and that hopes of life returning to whatever normal was going to be, might just be on the brink of turning into reality, albeit very slowly. After the news of the surrender, came the announcement that the next two days – May 8^th and 9^th – would be public holidays, a chance for those who could to let their hair down and for others to contemplate the miseries and hardships for so long endured. In Coventry, as in other cities, towns and villages across the country, opportunities for fun were grabbed but these were not completely separated from times of quieter reflection or prayer. As the Coventry Evening Telegraph reported, amidst the joy of the holiday, no one forgot the victims of war and everyone was mindful that the war in the Pacific was not yet over. On VE Day, people went ‘in a never-ending stream’ to Coventry’s ruined Cathedral, many to give thanks and others perhaps just wanting to gather in a place that had already become such a symbol of the extent to which their city had suffered. Four services had been scheduled but there were so many people that many more were held, right up to and beyond midnight. As night fell, the Cathedral was in darkness, apart from the sanctuary which was lit to impressive effect. Many brought flowers to remember those who had died and the blooms, placed in vases so near to the cross of nails and the cross made from the charred fallen roof beams, seemed to a news reporter to bring ‘beauty to the tumbled masonry of the cathedral’.

Across the city, bands and public address systems provided dance music. Many Coventry folk gathered in Broadgate, as they have done so many times since. There, after a hesitant start, an on-duty policeman used ‘his persuasive powers and unofficial services as MC’ to get the dancing started amid the flags and streamers. More people danced outside the Hippodrome, at the bottom of Trinity street, with music supplied by the theatre’s orchestra which came out to play on the venue’s steps. In the evening, bands played across the city,in Edgwick Park, Naul’s Mill Park and the War Memorial Park. In the middle of the day, a tropical storm had reached the Midlands, bringing thundery rain that sent crowds diving for cover although its impact on Coventry’s entertainments seems to have been short-lived and dull skies did little to dampen spirits. Despite the fun, complete quiet fell at 3pm when the Prime Minister’s speech was broadcast to the nation. Through the loudspeakers, people listened to Churchill pay tribute to their sacrifices and their resolve. This was their hour, he told them. Rejoice and celebrate but be mindful of the hard work ahead to end the war with Japan. And then the fun began again, going on into the night. One of the most impressive evening illuminations in Coventry was a giant V of light thrown into the sky by searchlights, seen by those in the centre of the city.

Later, when the holiday was over, Coventry’s mayor, George Hodgkinson, would pay tribute to the crowds, impressed by their discipline and deportment that seemed to him to reflect the soberness and realization that there was still an enemy to overcome. Coventry’s Chief Constable agreed, saying that such behaviour was of the kind he had expected, ‘having regard to the fine spirit [people] have shown through the war and the good-neighbourliness that has prevailed’.

The mayor was certainly in a position to judge the mood of the people, after a determined effort to put in an appearance at as many events and street parties across the city as he and his wife, the mayoress, could manage. The Coventry Evening Telegraph reckoned that the residents of practically every other street in the city must have held a victory party during the holiday and the weekend that followed. A ‘staggering’ amount of food was produced for parties, much of it having been saved up in readiness, although it was reported that women had been out early on VE Day visiting food shops to get supplies for the holiday feasts.  The paper reported that ‘parents and neighbours did not forget what a lean time the younger generation had had throughout the grim years of the war in Europe’. At the end of a party in Willenhall, each child was given a packet of sweets, a parcel of cakes, an orange and an ice-cream. Older residents were not forgotten and nor were returned prisoners of war or those who had been wounded. The telephone at the Coventry Evening Telegraph rang with invitations for journalists to come out to witness and record the parties and although it wasn’t possible to go to them all, the newspaper was sure ‘that Coventry people in their week-end celebrations were thinking first and foremost of the young, the old and the deserving’.

The mayor was also on hand to give added ceremony to the lighting of a bonfire in Widdrington Road, one of many fires across the city (some complete with effigies of Hitler). Historian Angus Calder wrote of how, across the nation, fireworks delighted children who had never known a Guy Fawkes Night and Coventry seems to have been no different, with the noise and the flares heard all through the evening of VE Day. Curious about this, however, I asked my mum, who lived in London throughout the war, about VE Day fireworks. She told me that she had attended a big party in the garden of a house in her street; it was, by all accounts, an impressive affair, with outside lights strung up, a good deal of alcohol and party food that she had never before seen the like of. But there were no fireworks; we’d seen quite enough of them during the war, she told me. Quite.

Across the country, church bells rang out after years of being silenced. At 3.40pm on VE Day, Coventry Cathedral’s bells were broadcast to the world, along with those of Westminster Abbey, St Paul’s Cathedral, York Minster and other cathedrals. Thousands of miles away in south-east Asia, a serving soldier from Coventry wrote to the newspaper of the ecstasy he experienced whilst listening to a broadcast during which he heard the bells of Coventry Cathedral. Every chime he wrote, was perfect, every note ran up and down his spine, made his hair tingle and his throat lumpy, ‘and though it embarrasses me to put it on record, my eyes were unnaturally watery’. He prayed that it would not be long before he experienced this again ‘and when it comes along I want to be in a place where I can see the bell tower as well as hear those bells again’.

For those unable to attend events, the Joe Loss band on the radio Home Services at 7pm preceded a service of thanksgiving, a tribute to the King, songs and marches of the war, followed by the Benny Loban dance band (at the Plaza Ballroom) and music (interspersed with news) right up until 2am. Perhaps my dad, then aged 11, was allowed to stay up to listen to these bands, for he was certainly not allowed to attend the party in his London street, having just come out of hospital after being knocked unconscious by a lorry just days before VE Day (a reminder that in war and in peace, the stuff of life still has a habit of tripping us up when we least expect it). This may well account for why he remembers the drama and the fear induced by hearing the 1939 announcement of the outbreak of war rather than the broadcast announcing the end of the fighting in Europe.

As Coventry prepared to return to work, a formal thanksgiving service, attended by over 20,000 people was held in the War Memorial Park on Sunday 13^th May. A huge parade entered the park, taking nearly half an hour just to pass through its gates en-route to the War Memorial. It included representatives of all who had been involved in the city’s  war services and behind them came the mayor and the civic party, the Bishop of Coventry and other clergy and church choirs in full robes. From the steps of the cenotaph, came the National Anthem, prayers and scriptures, The Last Post and two minutes’ silence for the fallen and speeches, including this from the mayor, George Hodgkinson,

The leaders of State must not fall down upon their job after the heroic and successful endeavours of the men and women in the armed forces. We must be ready to adventure as a community on the home front so as to ensure that the fruits of victory may not slip away. The dangerous life of war-time, a willingness to put aside personal comfort and consideration in pursuit of a common ideal must be carried into the equally adventurous jobs of peace.

The fraternity and comradeship of war-time brought out the noble acts in every individual. The presence of danger created a loyalty and patriotism that leaped across the barrier of social distinction and personal prejudice. In this spirit we may confidently approach the problems of the future.

It was not just the mayor who was intent on delivering a message of encouragement. The Coventry Evening Telegraph noted that the words of King George Vl – ‘just triumph and proud sorrow’ – aptly described the mood of the holiday. After the thanksgiving and celebrations, it was time to get back to work, stated the newspaper, ‘with the consciousness that the war is not yet over, but with the confidence that, come what may in war or after, it will not be the goodwill and the energy of the people of these islands which will be unequal to the task’.

Coventry families undoubtedly needed and appreciated the relief that VE Day celebrations brought. Whilst some anxieties were over, much hardship and uncertainty remained. The post war challenges faced by the city were enormous with homelessness being one of the most serious problems. There had been housing shortages before the war began and these were exacerbated by the destruction caused by the air raids – bombing caused damage to over 50,000 houses, with over 4,300 homes destroyed. People lived in hostels, on disused army sites, as well as in caravans and railway carriages on bomb sites. Just after VE Day came the announcement that the city’s first temporary bungalows (prefabs) were soon to be erected on the Whoberley Hall estate at Brookside Avenue. These ‘Phoenix’ houses, using aluminium sheets no longer required for war production, were made in factories and put up on site. These alone, however, were not enough and in the years that followed, the Council’s housing list remained desperately long. There was a desperate shortage of school places, much of the city centre still lay in ruins and there was enormous uncertainty about the economic future of the city.

On VE Day, all this lay ahead and so the jolliness of a few days of partying was a chance to raise spirits and to relax a little. As life settled down again, chances to dance continued at ballrooms and clubs across the city (such as the Anglo-American Victory Ball at Neale’s Ballroom on Albany Road, with an entrance price of 3/6), there was a range of films to choose to see (including Dead Man’s Eyes at the Alexandra, Little Nelly Kelly at the Roxy, The Hairy Ape at the Regal, Jitterbugs at the Standard) and there was greyhound racing at the Coventry Stadium on Lythalls Lane. Life would go on and Coventry folk, like those all over the country, continued to endure and to hope for a better future.

 

 

*This was a headline in the Coventry Evening Telegraph May 8th 1945

With thanks to the British Newspaper Archive, Coventry Evening Telegraph, 7^th to 14^th May 1945

Angus Calder, The People’s War: Britain 1939-1945, 1969, Jonathan Cape

Bill Lancaster & Tony Mason, Life and Labour in a 20^th Century City: The Experience of Coventry, 1986, Cryfield Press

The City We Have Loved, wartime publication, Three Spires Publishing, Coventry

Sheila Gibbons and John Gibbons for their reflections

 

May Day in Coventry 100 years ago

Whilst not a British Bank Holiday until 1978, the Midland Daily Telegraph reported on May 1^st 1920 that between 6 and 7 million British workers intended to treat the day as a general holiday, with demonstrations and processions up and down the country. In Coventry, there were few expectations that the city’s celebrations would be as impressive as those staged in 1919; that year was the first May Day since the end of the First World War. Not only had there been there a widespread stoppage of work, with workers staying away from the large engineering factories, there had been no trams or buses running and no bread was made or delivered. A gathering of thousands at Highfield Road football stadium had been followed by a fancy dress rugby match and a grand festival ball at the Drill Hall to end the day, with space for a thousand dancers.

Coventry’s May Day 1920 was a much smaller affair. Many industrial workers observed the day by staying away from the factories but transport ran as usual, along with much of the general business of the city. Organisers had anticipated this; May 1^st 1920 fell on a Saturday and this meant that Highfield Road was otherwise occupied (in fact, Coventry City was playing a vital last game of the season against Bury. In front of a crowd of 23, 506 – the second highest in the league – City won 2-1, thus avoiding relegation out of the Second Division and into the Southern League. Quite the May Day, then for City fans) and in addition, it had not been possible to book the Drill Hall on Queen Victoria Road for dancing and instead smaller dances were due to take place at the different trade union clubs. Nevertheless, hopes for a good day were high and there was certainly plenty for Coventry folk to see and hear.

The day began with the various trade unions setting out from their respective offices across the city to gather at Pool Meadow, so often the site of glorious demonstrations. Banners and placards were handed out to the unions and organisations taking part, all of which had to adhere to a strict order for the procession through the city to Spencer Park in Earlsdon. Heading up the march was the Coventry Silver Band and behind them, in pride of place was the National Union of Ex-Servicemen, a socialist organisation formed in 1919 with branches across the country. Then came trade unions large and small, representing men and women. The Co-operative Society, which had closed its shops for the day, decorated several lorries and was accompanied by other organisations, including the Irish Club, with an Irish flag and placards drawing attention to the fact that 200 Irishmen were incarcerated in English prisons, ‘untried and starving; were they to die?’ (the Irish War of Independence had started in January 1919). In addition, there were union bands playing and representatives of ‘Hands Off Russia’ (a national movement formed in 1919 to secure non-intervention in the Russian civil war and peace with the Soviet Government). Flag sellers were kept busy along the route, collecting money for the establishment of a Trades Hall for the city (this was to be a long time coming, finally being inaugurated as the Tom Mann Club in Stoke Green in 1947). Crowds came out to watch the procession and many accompanied the marchers to the park where six platforms had been put up to accommodate an array of speakers from the labour movement. Apparently, RC Wallhead, who had stood (unsuccessfully) in the 1918 General Election as Coventry’s Labour candidate, was due to be the main speaker but was not present, having gone to Russia!

The resolution put by each of the speakers and carried unanimously makes interesting and – in part – highly disturbing reading. It was in broad alignment with the messages coming out of other cities and countries, sending greetings to men and women of all nations ‘who are working for the complete freedom of all peoples and especially send[ing] its congratulations to the people of Russia in its heroic struggle for liberty’. It reaffirmed its belief in the principle of self-determination for all nations and ‘pledges itself to strive for its establishment in Egypt, India and Ireland’. It demanded an end to the blockade of Soviet Russia (just days later, in a famous incident, London dockers would refuse to load weapons intended for use against the Red Army onto the SS Jolly George). There was a broad pledge to abolish capitalism and to establish a Co-operative Commonwealth.

To me, the most disquieting clause in the resolution was the one demanding the immediate withdrawal of all black troops from occupied areas of Germany. This was an overtly racist campaign widely supported by the international labour movement and it related to French colonial troops from Africa stationed in Germany after the First World War. The moral panic was that the presence of the black troops was placing German women and girls at risk of rape from ‘primitive’ – as opposed to ‘civilised’ – men who were unable to control their sexual urges. Support for the withdrawal of the troops was encouraged in Britain by the left-wing Daily Herald newspaper which published articles by ED Morel, author of a pamphlet entitled ‘The Horror on the Rhine’, about the perceived dangers of black soldiers deemed to be oversexualized. Both Morel and the Herald wanted to emphasise their determination to support and champion the rights of Africans in their own countries but believed that their temperament made their presence dangerous when they were being used ‘as a passively obedient instrument of capitalist society’. I include here a link to an article which gives more context to these deeply shameful, racist views and the way in which they gained support from large sections of the left. https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0020859000000419

With thanks to the British Newspaper Archive

 

 

 

 

I have been visiting Canley Ford in Coventry for over 30 years, discovering it first one Boxing Day afternoon in the mid- 1980s, on one of our extremely long walks with a three month old baby who would only sleep when togged out in his voluminous stripy Andy Pandy outdoor suit (Mothercare) and wedged into his ‘Cosytoes’ bag (Mothercare) , lying in the sturdiest of buggies (Mothercare) encased in the rain cover (for even extra warmth – we were anxious parents).

As our family grew, we returned regularly to splash in the ford, to look and listen for the signs of the seasons, delighted then, as now, that we had this green lung so close to home – especially important for us as in those days we had no car and no garden. In a wonderful guest blog for the website Municipal Dreams, my friend and fellow historian Dr Ruth Cherrington described her playtime experiences of the ford, 20 or so years earlier as a child of the 1960s.

During the current Coronavirus crisis, my daily visits to the ford, a short walk from my suburban house, have become hugely important to my physical and mental health. Reached by strolling down a leafy lane, displaying richer shades of greens with every passing day, with celandines on the verges, the ford is surrounded by three meadows, framed with blackthorn (just coming into flower), hawthorn, mature oaks, birch and ash trees. Just now, there are clumps of magnificent daffodils catching the eye and the little pond is alive with hatched frogspawn and the marsh marigolds are coming into flower. I have seen and/or heard great spotted woodpeckers, chiffchaffs, great tits, goldcrests, robins, a sparrowhawk as well as a buzzard circling low, surveying the scene. Best of all have been the emerging butterflies – commas, peacocks and brimstones – dancing ahead of me, alighting on the blackthorn, even settling briefly on the grassy path ahead a step or two of me.

After my first seasonal sighting this week of a brimstone, I wandered home thinking of the delight that the first signs of spring have given to so many people across the centuries – and for so many reasons. I searched and came across this delightful piece of nature writing in the Coventry press, published exactly a hundred years since my own brimstone walk and in these unsettling times, it offered me calm and reassurance. The changing of the seasons will continue to remind me that there are some things I can be certain of. I thought I would share a little of these ‘Countryside Notes’:

…What gleam is there on the sun-ward bank, where the celandines have opened their enameled petals to the effulgence that brings the brimstone butterfly forth, and the enamoured sky-lark’s song? Clear of hue, like freshly opened primrose flower untouched, unsullied, the brimstone butterfly came from over the lea for the first time since the frail blue harebells withered there in October’s surly time.

Through winter’s inclement season the brimstone butterfly has survived frost and snow, and the dismal skies sending rain, while cold winds with searching severity swept across the field to the wood, hurling many a withered leaf far across the glade. Remarkable that it now comes forth as unsullied as the celandines there, opening their enameled bosoms for the first time to the sun.

…Not sights alone but sounds compose the fascinating factor that dwells in field and wood. Where the bee went to the flowering gorse we heard the wail of the plover, heard the whistle of the partridge across the furrowed field, and the cry of the yaffle was a wood sprite’s voice in the silence of the pines where intermingling larches are daily growing from brown and buff to the broadest tone of spring.

When most articles in the press at this time were either anonymous or signed with initials only – in this case F.S.C. – we know nothing about the author, or of the place she/he was describing. When it was written, the world was still in recovery from the enormous impact of the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-9 that had inflicted pain and suffering on families, so many of whom were desperately trying to rebuild their lives after the ravages of the First World War. I am sure that the descriptions of the coming of spring comforted many Coventry readers in 1920 but I wonder if the writer considered just how poignant the words would be for this reader, a century on, in the midst of a growing crisis.

Midland Daily Telegraph, March 24^th 1920, from British Newspaper Archive