I Was Sent to Coventry

Coventry: Not as Bad as You'd Think

Last week I was sent to Coventry, don't worry I didn't do anything wrong and I'm not a Cavalier — the locals were actually very friendly and talkative. Was only there for the week, working on a photography job.

When you mention you're going to Coventry everyone tells you it's a bit of a dump. Starting with such low expectations, the place can only improve, right? This was actually my second trip to Cov, one in winter and one in summer, and I have to say both were genuinely pleasant.

Coventry is more than its old, burnt-out Cathedral.

If you bother to take the time and look around you'll still find loads of old medieval Coventry in various nooks and crannies. There's the obligatory but tasteful Lady Godiva statue in Broadgate — starkers on her horse, as per the story. Separate to that is the Godiva clock nearby, which is the one worth timing your visit around — every hour it strikes, doors open and she rides out on her horse while Peeping Tom pops his head out for a look before covering his eyes.

Just round the corner is Holy Trinity Church. It survived the war because on the night of the big raid in November 1940, while St Michael's Cathedral next door was going up in flames, the vicar, his curate and one of his sons spent the whole night up on that roof pushing incendiary bombs off it. No fire brigade or fuss, probably quite a lot of stress and warm feet and three blokes who weren't having their church burn down.

Inside there's a huge medieval "Doom" painting above the chancel arch, an apocalypse scene from the 1430s, dead being judged, sent up to heaven or dragged off to hell, still packed with detail six hundred years on. Above it, the roof timbers are painted a deep blue and gold. The roof itself was raised back in the 1400s when they added a clerestory of upper windows to let more light in, presumably so someone could
actually see the paintwork.

Spon Street's got a whole run of timber-framed medieval houses, upper floors jettying out over the street. Some are original, some got rescued brick by timber from other bombed parts of the city and rebuilt there. Either way it gives you an idea of what old Coventry looked like. One of the explanations for why we say "sent to Coventry" is that the city backed Parliament in the English Civil War, and its medieval walls were good enough that it was reckoned the best-defended city in England outside London — Charles I got refused entry and couldn't break in when he tried. Royalist prisoners ended up locked up there anyway, and the locals wouldn't even speak to them. That's the whole story. Charles II got his own back in 1662 by having the walls pulled down out of spite once he was back on the throne.

Most people believe Coventry's medieval heart was destroyed by the Luftwaffe, and a lot of it genuinely was, about two thirds or more. The raid on 14 November 1940 damaged or destroyed around two-thirds of the buildings in the city centre, over 4,300 homes were flattened outright, and roughly a third of the city's factories were destroyed or badly hit, with another third damaged on top of that. This was partly in retaliation for an RAF raid on Munich, where Hitler was giving his Beer Hall Putsch speech the week before, on 8 November.

Less well known is that the council had already been at it before the war too. Butcher Row and Little Butcher Row, whole streets of the really picturesque medieval stuff, were knocked down in the 1930s, years before the Luftwaffe turned up. That was slum clearance, and a fair bit of it was about making room for cars in narrow lanes that were never built for them. And of course the council carried straight on afterwards, ripping out plenty more in the 50s and 60s that had survived the war — it's progress.

It's easy to get nostalgic about "quaint" old buildings from the comfort of today but it's so much less quaint if you're the one living in 'it' with no plumbing, no light and damp! If the bombs hadn't finished what the council started, Coventry might've ended up the Midlands' answer to York. But that's a what if.

There are plenty of decent pubs, including two Spoons — The Flying Standard on Trinity Street and The Earl of Mercia on High Street! Each threw up a confusing oddity — The Flying Standard had Windsor & Eton's "Conqueror" Black IPA (as Dukey said, "a contradiction in terms," and he's right), and The Earl of Mercia had Nethergate's "White Stout", without being too stouty, the Guinness-looking one drank like an ale. It was like an old Heston Blumenthal menu, where it looks like one thing and tastes like another. And cos it's Spoons, the prices are like being back in the late 90s. Perfick.

Down by the canal there's a statue of James Brindley, the canal builder. Bit of a small world for me — Brindley built the Bridgewater Canal for the Duke of Bridgewater, whose family seat was Ashridge House, where I used to work and still freelance occasionally. There's still a monument to him on the estate. He also got the job surveying Coventry's own canal, then got sacked from it within a year. Harsh, but may be fair?

Nearby the statue is a café run by a Portuguese lady serving proper Portuguese coffee, cakes and beer. Including Pastel de Nata's, nice. Love an egg custard tart.

As last week was hot and sunny, it was lovely to just wander about and eat, then hunt out the oldy-worldy things. I'd say I found the majority of the people very pleasant and friendly and if you're visiting Warwick, Leamington Spa or Stratford for a few days, I reckon Coventry is worth popping in for a few hours or so.

Anyway, back to why I was actually there — I'll leave you with a few shots from the job itself.