17 July 2016 Chapel Lane Caravan Club site, Wythall near Birmingham

We woke late this morning and why not? It was Sunday and all the barriers to tourist travel that were there yesterday, were doubly so today. We had three more full days left to explore the Birmingham area and ideas for about six days touring. Something would have to go. Chris was keen to visit Coventry, the large industrial city passed by as we approached Birmingham last week, a city with a population of about 330,000. Our Rough Guide pays little attention to the city apart from mentioning the cathedral which was destroyed by the Luftwaffe and was later rebuilt adjacent to the burnt out shell.  Our British towns reference gives a little more information, but all in all suggested to me that there was little more to see than the modern cathedral. We decided to head that way, however I planned a second destination as an add-on suspecting we would be done by lunchtime. How wrong I was!

Coventry was subjected to eleven incessant hours of bombing in November 1940, bombing by 50 parachute mines, 1,200 high explosives, 500 bomber aircraft and 30,000 incendiary bombs, during which time 111 factories were damaged, 2,000 homes were damaged beyond repair, 1,024 people were injured and at least 554 people were killed.

While this may sound horrendous, the vengeful return bombing of Dresden five years later lasted for twenty four hours and destroyed over 1,600 acres of the city and killed almost 25,000 people. One does have to keep it all in perspective rather than simply calling one side “goodies” and the other “baddies”.

Interestingly the theme of peace and reconciliation kept coming through all day as we made our way around places of interest.  

In tune with this theme, one of the rooms within the city’s Museum and Art Gallery is divided into three main sections: War & Forgiveness, International Friendships, and Conflict and Peace in Coventry today. This excellent museum has a very good collection of Old Masters, some of which were originally kept in the Guildhall until the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum was opened in 1960.

Alfred Herbert set up a company in Coventry in 1888 to make components and tools for Coventry’s cycle industry, this becoming one of the biggest and most successful machine tool companies in the world. For his enterprise he was knighted in 1917. In 1938 he gave £100,000 to the City to build an art gallery. The Second World War interrupted the building process, but after the war, he gave a further £100,000 for a new scheme to build a gallery and so the rest is history. In fact his generosity is indeed part of the city’s history; he gave a share of his wealth back to the city, including money to Coventry and Warwickshire Hospital. 

We discovered the history section as we were leaving and could have spent a day in there alone, but time was getting away and we had other places to see and to go. But we did have time to learn a little more of the city’s story.

Horseriding Lady Godiva

Coventry’s manufacturing life and boom years began around 1700 with silk ribbon weaving, to be followed by watchmaking a few years later. One of the new companies to follow was the Coventry Sewing Machine Company, which in 1868 began to produce bicycles, the first in Britain. Then came the associated tool makers mentioned earlier, then in 1896, Harry Lawson founded a car company and the following year the first British built cars were driven out of the factory. I found that it was here in Coventry that Singer and Humber cars were manufactured, which made me wonder whether the 1965 and 1975 Singer Vogue cars I owned many years ago in New Zealand had originally come from here.

People moved into the city to take advantage of this prosperity, doubling the population between 1901 and 1931. Housing estates popped up everywhere. People arrived from South Asia, the Caribbean and Ireland all long before the Second World War, however the peak of migration was the 1950s and 1960s.

St Michael's Tower

We found our way to a multi-storied parking building in the centre of the city soon after 10am and discovered much to our delight the parking fee for all Sunday was a mere  £1.50. The city was still very quiet, because English people do not appear to venture out much before that time on a Sunday. We firstly found ourselves in a square with Lady Godiva sitting naked upon her horse. This was the first of many artworks we were to see during the course of the day portraying her in this manner. The legend goes that when her husband raised the tax threshold for his subjects, she pleaded their case seeing their hardship. He flippantly challenged her to ride through the town naked, saying he would repeal the tax if she did so. Boldly she did, only after he ordered the townsfolk to stay indoors with their shutters firmly closed whilst she passed through the town. And so they did, or so the story goes, except for one Peeping Tom who peeped out through a small hole and was dazzled by the sun, thus struck blind. The story was not recorded until one hundred years after the alleged event, so the veracity of the event is certainly open to doubt. However the story certainly appealed and has not faded with time.

High steeples drew us on through the town until we arrived within the rectangular ruins of the old cathedral, eerily beautiful. There in one corner we found the Information Centre and a tear off map. We were asked if we wanted to climb the ninety metre St Michael’s Tower, 160 steps to the top parapet from where the 360 degree views are amazing, so after paying our £1.25 each for the privilege, we struggled up the very narrow spiral and were duly rewarded.

Views from the Tower

As the art gallery and cathedral were not due to open until midday, we went next door to St Mary’s Guildhall, a truly unexpected treat. It is apparently one of the finest surviving guildhalls in all of England, and I can believe it. First built in the 1340s, the magnificent Great Hall, stained glass windows, carved ceilings and rare tapestry all delight. There are little rooms off narrow stairways and off the end of larger rooms, each a surprise and all quite wonderful. 

The Cathedral interior

After lunch we spent time in the wonderful Museum and Art Gallery, then made our way across to the Cathedral, first pausing to check out a few containers scattered about which turned out to be an art installation titled “The Strong Rooms”. We passed beneath heavy black curtains into the steel chambers and were confronted by an exhibition of spray painted portraits, posters and other medium compiled by a group of artists who had been commissioned to represent history with either sorrowful or hopeful themes. This was all strangely attractive; we were able to appreciate the artists’ intention and sympathise with their portrayal.

Then it was off to the cathedral, our original and only destination.

After the war and in the midst of rebuilding the badly bombed city, the building consent for the new cathedral was at first disallowed by the council who decided there were more important building works to be attended to. It was not until the intervention of the Minister of Works that construction went ahead. A competition had been run to choose a design and it was Basil Spence who won the contract. Building commenced in the late 1950s and was completed in 1962, dedicated with a specially written “War Requiem” by Benjamin Britten. It is an outstanding building, with narrow panels of stained glass unlike anything we have seen before. 

The cathedral exterior

The massive altar tapestry was designed by Graham Sutherland and was woven in France partly using Australian wool. This is the largest single woven tapestry in the world. Beneath the nave, where one would normally find dead monks, can instead be found an excellent exhibition about the old cathedral and the construction of the replacement. Despite the note in our guide book suggesting that Sunday entrance to the cathedral was free, it is not; it cost us the normal AOP price of £5 each.

By this time it was nearly 4pm, the time when shops here in England close on Sundays, so we found our way into the shopping centre, now buzzing with the populace, but not before walking up the hill directed by signs that said “Canal Basin”. We walked up scruffy streets, scuffing our way through litter and discarded drink bottles, arriving eventually at a rather sad and dingy deserted end of line canal, the Wyken Arm, closed long ago but restored by the Canal Society for pleasure boating. Building of the Coventry Canal was begun in 1768, mainly to transport coal and to firm a vital link between four rivers; the Mersey, Trent, Severn and Thames. It was not completed until 1790, although sections were in use well before that date.

Fords Hospital

Back in the town, we found a Marks & Spencer where we bought a few fresh provisions before heading back to the car park. Again we were distracted by the sight of an interesting building up a lane. There we found Fords Hospital, an old alms house for old ladies of Coventry, founded in 1509 and restored in 1953, having suffered the 1940 bombing like most of the city. Enough! This time we did head home, retracing the morning’s route in reverse; south on the A46, north on the M40 then west on the M42, before turning north toward our camp at Wythall. We had not had to resort to Plan B after all; Coventry had held our attention all day.