Canley Today: “Not a Reassuring Neighbourhood”

Tags

1990s, 2000s, Cottage suburbs

In this guest post, Dr Ruth Cherrington brings her story of the Canley Estate in Coventry up-to-date, following earlier posts on the origins of the Estate and the growth of its community.  Ruth runs the Club Historians website and is the author of Not Just Beer and Bingo: a Social History of Working Men’s Clubs. You can follow Ruth on Twitter at @CHistorians.

Introduction

At the end of the previous posting, we left Canley residents busy shaping their community and social spaces.

It’s hard to pinpoint when exactly it started but some streets began to look unsightly from the early 1960s. Rather than growing flowers in the front gardens some tenants instead piled up rubbish and discarded furniture. There were instances of anti-social behaviour, though that term was not used back then: ‘problem family’ was the expression used instead. Canley residents would have been quick to name the streets that were ‘rough’ as distinct from ‘respectable’.

As time went on, other factors contributed to a more general decline. Social divisions were exacerbated by developments experienced by council tenants across the country along with Canley-specific ones. The focus here will be how the estate fared as social, economic and political changes presented difficult challenges.

Changes and Challenges

The Right to Buy Act, which became law in the early years 80s, had far-reaching consequences as council tenants who met certain criteria could buy their homes at discounted prices. Not everyone agreed with selling off council housing, preferring to rent and looking critically at those who bought. The take-up of this offer started to change Canley, as it did elsewhere.

A street of steel houses in Canley, 2016

Some newly-purchased houses showed the tenant-turned-owner’s desire to distinguish themselves from their council neighbours. Doors, even whole houses, were painted different colours. Some built garages onto the side, added a conservatory at the back, changed the windows and put statues outside.

These were visible expressions of the differentiation amongst the Canley residents that were not previously possible. Some viewed these stamps of individuality as out of place and ‘showing off’. We will return to the implications of private ownership later on.

Another major challenge was the troubled state of British car manufacturing. The Standard Motor Company, part of British Leyland by the 1970s, had long been a major employer.

‘Standard Motor Company Canley Road Works and environs’, 1946 (c) Britain from Above, EAW0000142

Short-time working and lay-offs had become common along with strikes during which management and trade unions blamed each other for the problems. The Canley plant was affected by what happened at others such as Speke, Liverpool. Families suffered when strikes became protracted. Hard times affected local shops, pubs and the working men’s club. The days of the affluent car worker when everyone had a steady job and income looked numbered.

A monument to the works, unveiled in 2000

After Sir Michael Edwardes took control at British Leyland in 1977, rationalisation gathered pace, bringing job losses and the eventual closure of three plants, including Canley. This was a major disaster as Canley had to some extent been built to house car workers. Thousands were directly or indirectly affected as many local businesses relied on the ‘Standard’.

Several generations of Canley men had worked there. Boys leaving school would take up apprenticeships and expected a job for life. This all ended suddenly in 1980 when the factory closed. Existing jobs and those for future generations disappeared along with expectations, ambitions and self-respect on the part of those made redundant. The Canley estate was bound to suffer from then on.

Herald Lodge sheltered accommodation, standing on the site of the former Herald Pub next to the Standard Triumph Motor factory (Photo: Robin Booker)

The last major manufacturing plant to close was Massey Ferguson tractor factory in Banner Lane, Tile Hill. Unemployment in the Canley area increased and school leavers found little on offer in the 1980s. By the 1990s Canley had become an area of social deprivation. Younger residents left if they could. Those who stayed had too much time and not enough money on their hands, never a good combination.

An alternative source of employment, though often low-skilled and low paid work, came from nearby Warwick University, right on Canley’s border. Opened in 1965, originally just outside the City’s boundaries, the fact that it took the name Warwick not Coventry, was and still is seen as a slight by locals. Its proximity to Canley didn’t bring it any closer to the experience of most of the estate’s residents outside of offering work. Warwick University employed some of those made redundant but could not absorb the growing numbers thrown out of work.

An almost symbiotic relationship developed with this University, whose star had risen as manufacturing industry declined. The University sent in two different types of visitors: sociological researchers on the one hand and student tenants on the other. Canley became a convenient case study of industrial decline and social deprivation for the former and a convenient source of housing for the latter, as well as a supplier of local labour.

Shops on Prior Deram Walk and the playing fields (c) Wikimedia Commons

This is where we pick up on the impact of council house sales. Some residents who had bought went on to sell up once the statutory period was over and landlords were quick to seize the opportunities. The private rental sector grew alongside a diminishing council sector with fewer residential homes and more temporary accommodation. In one Warwick University study, Canley residents stated they felt pushed out by the foreign students.(1)

I’ve lived here for 34 years in the immediate area and there are a lot of students. I will leave as soon as I can.

It is pertinent that in the Wikipedia article about Canley, one of its key features is that ‘the area is home to a large number of students attending the nearby University of Warwick’. There are some signs outside several pre-war, redbrick homes along Charter Avenue only in Chinese, advertising accommodation. It’s obvious their market is for Chinese compatriots but such practices fuel dislike for foreign students in general among Canley residents:

Foreigners – loads of Chinese in the last five years buying houses and renting them to students.

The majority of Canley residents (around 90 per cent) are white. When former residential homes are sold and effectively turned into student dormitories, divisions widen.

Warwick University researchers have documented feelings of isolation with levels of community cohesion levels dipping sharply over the past few decades. Residents feel ignored, unheard by government representatives at local and national levels:(2)

Policy was seen in the context of political correctness, which had become a pejorative term meaning beneficial treatment to anyone who was not white working-class.

There was a growing separation between private owners, council tenants and student renters.

Anti-social behaviour also rose as well as the perception of it: drugs, burglaries and vandalism were part of this. Canley had moved from being a pleasant estate to ‘not a reassuring neighbourhood’. (3)

Regeneration: Plans and Reality

In the mid-2000s regeneration was put on the agenda and plans presented to Canley residents. Glossy pamphlets were distributed detailing the options, with the benefits to be derived from each such as the use of some land for new housing in return for better facilities and a community hub. In one option, the ends of several streets of steel houses were designated for ‘street realignment’.

The meaning of this was unclear until residents who would be affected made enquiries. Street alignment actually meant demolition of some houses, including the one I grew up in, in order to free up the space for denser housing. The generous gardens would be lost and built upon.

On finding this out, some residents were motivated into action with claims the council were trying to hoodwink them, that they were being treated as fools. Protests about this and other aspects of regeneration led to that option being removed.

The derelict Canley Primary School, 2006. Shortly after these photos were taken, it was burnt down in an arson attack

A master plan was agreed in 2007 that visualised new housing where the former Charter Primary school used to be on Charter Avenue. A new school had been built more on Mitchell Avenue, more central than the ‘old’ Charter Primary. More housing was planned elsewhere, a community building, and improved transport and retail facilities. Moreover, the money raised from selling land in Canley was intended to be reinvested in the area.

Current Situation

Some changes have resulted such as widened pavements along Charter Avenue, with an integrated cycle lane. Some locals see that as being more for the university students. Some new housing is being built, mostly in-fill. What was once a very large grass verge between steel houses on Howcotte Green and the railway line is now the nearly completed Cromwell Gardens. Forty-four homes have been crammed onto this one green space.

Cromwell Gardens: 44 new homes on a former piece of grass between Howcotte Green and the railway line

Another in-fill area is where a doctor’s surgery once stood on Kele Road. A dozen new homes stand nearly complete there now. More in-fill is planned around Canley.

Nearly complete new homes om Kele Road, where a doctor’s surgery used to be (and before that the old Charter Primary School)

New homes, however, have not so far brought plans for improved bus services and other facilities. Residents complain about the poor bus service, seen as the worst in the City, which adds to feelings of isolation. Whilst two bus services come up and down Charter Avenue, as they have done for decades, they do not both run all day, every day. The 18a via Cannon Park shopping centre finishes early evening and doesn’t run on Sunday.

Those wishing to shop outside those times have to walk. It’s over a mile from the steel houses to Cannon Park, the Phantom Coach pub and to the Cemetery where many locals have relatives buried.

Canley Cemetery, Charter: the final resting place for many Canley residents (Photo: Robin Booker)

There was discussion by residents in one study about the importance of pubs and clubs as places of community interaction. That was when Canley had three pubs and the Canley Social Club, but since then the Dolphin Pub in Sheriff Avenue has closed down: it is now a building site for housing. The Canley Social Club in Marler has also closed.

Even in 2003 these were not regarded as vibrant places but as failing institutions that illustrated Canley’s problems. The lack of money to spend was one reason for their decline along with the smoking ban but also the declining percentage of ‘Canley kids’ who had grown up there or moved in when they were younger. Student renters rarely used these once thriving social centres.

The loss of the Canley Social Club is a very visual representation of the decline of the ‘old’ Canley. Established in 1950 as a humble social centre by local residents, the Club expanded across the decades with no shortage of members and activities provided for them when employment was high and there was money to spare.

By the late 1980s, the once luxurious concert room and lounge were less than half empty and severely underused. It began to look shabby and unloved, just as did the estate more generally. There were attempts to revive it including lottery funding that transformed it into a Sports and Social club but its future was decided when no buyers could be found in 2013. One night, members were in there enjoying themselves. The next morning it was locked and boarded up.(4)

Canley Social Club burnt down, August 2013

After suffering several arson attacks, it was finally destroyed by fire in August 2013 and demolished in April 2015.

Canley Social Club being demolished, April 2015

The site will now be sold for housing with nothing to replace this former social venue with its bowling green, football pitch and five-a-side all-weather space along with its lounge, small bar and concert room. Locals complain about the lack of social facilities, just as the early residents did in the 1940s.

The ageing ‘Canley kids’ lament the loss of the Club, of the pride of former residents, the loss of the old sense of community when most people had a job and a salary. There will come a time when hardly anyone remembers the early days of the estate, with its model housing and green spaces. Many of the latter are now designated for in-fill housing and these will bring not only different types of residents but perhaps more divisions and less cohesion.

If it started out as an estate ‘in parts’ and it looks more patchy today than ever before. The future may well see the trend for putting a bit of new housing here, a bit there, increase. Canley may become an estate ‘in bits’.

Sources

(1) This and the quotation which follows are drawn from Harris Beider, Community Cohesion: the views of white working class communities, Joseph Rowntree Foundation/Coventry University (2011), p42

(2) Beider, p56

(3) Victoria Nash with Ian Christie, Making Sense of Community, IPPR, London (2003), p13

(4) See my YouTube video, Canley Social Club in Pictures

See also David Jarvis, Nigel Berkeley and Kevin Broughton, ‘Evidencing the impact of community engagement in neighbourhood regeneration: the case of Canley, Coventry’, Community Development Journal (2011)

 

The Canley Estate, Coventry: Building the Community

Tags

1940s, 1950s, 1960s, Cottage suburbs

My thanks to Dr Ruth Cherrington for this follow-up post to her contribution on the origins of the Canley Estate last week. Ruth runs the Club Historians website and is the author of Not Just Beer and Bingo: a Social History of Working Men’s Clubs. You can follow Ruth on Twitter at @CHistorians.

Moving to Canley

My parents moved to Canley in December 1948 having been allocated a brand new three-bed British Iron and Steel Federation council house there.  We looked at these so-called ‘steel houses’ and the early development of the Estate in last week’s post.

They left behind their shared lodgings in the older district of Foleshill, with its emissions from the local gas works and back-to-backs. But they also left behind close family and friends.

What did they bring with them? A few belongings, three small children and another one very much on the way: mum was eight months pregnant. They also brought with them working class values and way of life.

At first, mum thought it was ‘lovely’ to see the boys enjoying the relatively spacious house and garden (though just mud at this point) nearby after the former crowded conditions. She wasn’t so happy about field mice also running around but they soon left. My parents stayed for the rest of their lives.

Garden of BISF House, Canley. Author (holding toy) with brother, auntie and friends, circa 1960 (R.Cherrington)

But my mother felt isolated. Hearing the trains on the nearby railway line was a relief: she felt ‘there was some life in the place after all, it wasn’t just a dead end.’ But it did feel like that at first.

Many women on new estates up and down the country felt the same. It was quite an expedition for mum to visit her own mother with four bus journeys needed there and back and four children in tow. Canley buses terminated in the ‘bottom’ part of Canley back then, which made it even more of a trek.

My grandmother visited as often as possible as did my dad’s mum. Their help was welcome as babies arrived, right down to the seventh, myself. Mum lost her mother when I was only six. I clearly remember her anguished cry of grief when told the news. It was a huge loss to her on so many levels.

Housing was the priority and the rest, it was thought, would come later. Homes had been built quickly but people need more than a roof over their heads in order to lead full lives.

Street Life

The town planners designed the estate to promote sociability. But did it? A group of researchers led by Leo Kuper in the early 1950s studied a part of Canley they called ‘Braydon’.  They found typical conflicts and friendships as families settled into the new estate.

The thin walls of the BISF houses through which you could hear what was going on next door and vice versa were disliked. There were complaints about the ‘back’ door actually being a side door opening out towards your neighbour’s. You could see over to their side of the fence and, if the door was open, into their house.

As time went by, people put up high fences to block this intrusive view. The new houses were seen as lacking privacy and perhaps disappointing in that respect. People didn’t want ‘strangers’ knowing their business. Some families appeared as ‘stuck up’ and distanced themselves from others. Perhaps they saw themselves as socially above the majority of working class tenants.

My mother was friendly with some of our neighbours but not with others. Some helped her out with the kids though they had their own and gave her some support.

Some life-long friendships were formed from a very early age amongst the children. Many made playthings such as trolleys from what they could find or ‘scrounge’ which they then shared.

Children of Hayton Green. Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Commemorative Photo, June 1952. (R.Cherrington)

Mostly kids played together on the street, in each other’s houses and gardens and boys often formed ‘gangs’. They would be off into the woods or down the brook as often as possible. But what did the adults do?

Pubs and the Canley Social Club

My father was typical in returning to former watering holes back in Foleshill in the early years. Many men maintained links with mates, pubs and communities elsewhere as there was little on offer in Canley. The Phantom Coach, at the bottom of Charter Avenue, was never destined to become a ‘local’.

An older pub from the city centre, The Dolphin, moved to a green wooden hut in Sheriff Avenue in 1941. Whilst being a bit closer for men on our part of the estate, it was not as appealing as the well-established pubs they were used to. Dolphin regulars were more likely to be those in the immediate vicinity.

A new pub was built in our end of Canley in 1951– The Half Sovereign. Surely this would be the local that men had been waiting for?

The Sovereign Pub (formerly the Half Sovereign). Photo R. Brooker

Yes and no. By this time a social club had been established which was already very popular and had boosted a sense of community in Canley. The new pub had to compete with the Canley Social Club, which was right opposite our house.

Coventry is a good case study of clubs and community building and the Canley Social illustrates this well. The Council was quite radical in the early redevelopment of the inner city and the outlying estates, deeming it necessary to provide sites for residents to establish their own clubs. Seeing these as potential community centres, they allocated five plots of land on new estates.

The Council went further, taking a ‘Coventry City Bill’ through Parliament to allow the financial arrangements for these new clubs to be obtained through city funds.

Canley men wasted no time in setting up a club on the Marler Road plot. The first proposal was submitted on 16^th December 1948, the month my parents moved to Canley. The Council approved this the following July. This drawing was the basis of the club as it developed with a billiards room, a hall for concerts and bar.

Money and building materials were scarce but enthusiasm in plentiful supply with locals keen to have their own club to use and run. An application in October 1949 was approved for a ‘temporary structure’ to be erected which was to be made permanent no more than ten years later.

Canley Club winning bagatelle team, circa 1960. Author’s father centre seated with cup.(R. Cherrington)

Canley Social Club’s founder members bought and put up themselves ex-Ministry of Defence wooden huts. The small club was open for business in 1950 and my father was an early member. It was the much-needed social venue for estate residents, somewhere to come together, make friends and experience the type of communal life they had left behind.

The wooden hut served us all well during its lifetime before being replaced by brick buildings in the late 1950s. Locals recall a warm atmosphere with a lot going on for families, from boxing lessons for boys to bagatelle for the men. There were ‘free and easy’ concerts, ‘housey housey’ and children’s parties, all self-managed.

Children’s Christmas Party, Canley Social Club (R.Cherrington)

Canley Social Club 40th Anniversary commemorative glass (R. Cherrington)

We looked forward to nights out over the club, the Christmas parties and annual coach trip to the seaside. For many, this was the only time they would visit the sea.

Canley researcher Leo Kuper saw the club’s potential and was correct in thinking that it would be more popular than the purpose-built community centre in Prior Deram Walk.

As well as out-performing the community centre, the Club was up and running before there was a church on the estate.

What was their role in community building?

Canley Churches

Canley was described as a ‘godless’ place with no church before 1952 when Canley Methodist Chapel opened in Prior Deram Walk. In 1955, St. Stephen’s C of E church opened, ‘our’ side of Mitchell Avenue.

When he consecrated St. Stephen’s, the Bishop of Coventry, Dr. Neville Gordon, described it as ‘a new outpost from which Christian witness would spread’. He said ‘there were a mass of souls around the church in very great need of God’s mercy and truth’. They had lost contact with the Church when they moved to the district and had been ‘drifting aimlessly’.  He urged the congregation to pray not only for themselves but the whole community.

It may have been the hard experiences of the Depression closely followed by the battering of war rather than the move to Canley that had caused some of my parent’s generation to become ‘lost souls’.  Family, work, having a good time at weekends and keeping out of debt were the main preoccupations. Religion was mostly about the rituals of christenings, weddings and funerals.

St. Stephens Church, Canley. (Photo R. Brooker)

Those active in the congregation developed their own small community. Some of them were also club-goers but not all and in this sense there were distinctions between where people’s allegiances lay.

After years of being ‘godless’, Canley now had two churches. Then another came along, next to the Half Sovereign Pub. Its origins date back to 1950 when a group of young evangelical Christians decided to hold children’s services on a patch of open grassland on the newly built estate. These meetings proved so popular that a regular Sunday school was opened in the nearby Charter Primary School.

More regular services were started and planning began for a permanent church building but there was no suitable site available. Divine intervention perhaps came to their rescue as the brewery that owned The Half Sovereign were returning to the Council a plot of land they didn’t need. It was the very same patch of land where the open-air meetings had been held. This was purchased and the Gospel Hall opened in 1956.

Canley Evangelical Church today, with front extension and original building to the back. (R. Brooker)

Children enjoyed Sunday School there because they saw and made friends and could win prizes such as chocolate and books. Harry Hollingsworth lived in nearby Mitchell Avenue and was an early Sunday School leader. He remembered ‘the tremendous sense of community in the early days – a sense of oneness’.

Wednesday night’s ‘Happy Hour’ saw lively young audiences. We enjoyed singing the songs and learning about the Bible in a more interesting way than at school. When asked to find certain passages in the Bible, the first person to do so would shout ‘got it!’ and win a prize.

In some ways, it was like going to the club with these communal activities and experiences, which we remembered fondly for years afterwards. Another reason for sending children was so that busy mothers could have a few hours respite from their domestic chores.

Shopping

Shops are also community venues and places where people can meet. We had the ‘little shops’ consisting of a newsagent, Post Office and hardware store, chemist, grocery and a greengrocery.

The ‘Little’ shops on Charter Avenue today (R. Cherrington)

At Prior Deram Walk were the ‘big shops’ with a few more options including a Co-Op. Whenever we were sent there, mum always reminded us to collect the ‘divi’ stamps.

Other traders regularly did the rounds. Fifty years ago there were doorstep deliveries without the internet. There was the milkman, baker, coal merchant, Corona pop delivery and ‘Snowball’ laundry service. The ‘green van’ came round the estate selling fruit and veg. People complained about higher prices but these mobile traders saved a trek to the shops or town. Convenience, it seems, always has its price.

Few people had cars, especially women, in the 1950s. Going down the local shops or even to the ‘green van’ on the street could be a small gathering, a time and place for a bit of a chat. Even such short meetings helped increase sociability and sense of community on the estate.

To Summarise…

Canley did develop as a community, perhaps several given the divides of the pre-war ‘bottom’ end and post-war ‘top’ end of steel houses. There were those whose social lives were centred around the Club whilst others were more ‘churchy’. It became a place to call home as time went on with more amenities, services and schools. Gardens bloomed, as did friendships, courtships and marriages. There were the teething troubles of any new estate and later on the deep problems caused by industrial decline and social change. That part of the Canley story will be told another time.

The Canley Estate, Coventry: ‘The Place Where I Grew Up’

Tags

1930s, 1940s, 1950s, Cottage suburbs

I’m very pleased to feature another fine guest post (and would welcome others), this one from Dr Ruth Cherrington.  Ruth runs the Club Historians website and is the author of Not Just Beer and Bingo: a Social History of Working Men’s Clubs. You can follow Ruth on Twitter at @CHistorians.

I wasn’t sent to Coventry: I was born there. Though I left a long time ago I regularly visit family still living there and the familiar sites of the estate where we grew up: Canley. We can take ourselves out of our childhood homes, but do they ever really fade away from our own sense of attachment and place? For me, the answer is a resounding no. I’m still very much a ‘Canley kid’ at heart after all these years.

I’ve seen many changes, of course. But the constants are clearly visible such as the strong element of working class identity that remains, though now embattled in many ways. I’ve been in a good position to observe the life and times of Canley given my lifetime’s experience of this former council estate. From my recollections and observations I have compiled a two-part blog about the place where I grew up. I write about what made Canley similar to other post-war housing estates but also what made it special not only to me but also in historical terms.

 What and Where is Canley?

Canley existed long before Coventry Corporation bought 20,000 acres of the land from local landowning family, the Leighs, in 1926. It is mentioned in Medieval documents, linked to the nearby Fletchampstead, Westwood, and Stoneleigh estates. These historical aspects are important, reflected as they are in names of roads and schools but also in the attempt to design into the new estate a village feel.

The Canley we now see is largely the result of a pre-war vision of a ‘planned neighbourhood unit’ on the outskirts of Coventry. Building began in the 1930s mainly to rehouse people from city slum clearance programmes but the war halted construction. It continued with renewed haste thereafter, especially given the severe bombardment Coventry suffered. The first bombs to fall actually landed in the industrial area of Canley on August 18^th 1940.

Coventry city centre after the 14 November 1940 air raid

Then came the blitzkrieg, lasting until mid-November with three quarters of the city centre destroyed. This included the 14^th century cathedral, with only its shell remaining once the fires had died out after the single most concentrated attack on any British city during the War on the night of November 14^th, 1940. A new word was coined to describe such sustained heavy bombing – to ‘Coventrate.’

Residential areas were badly damaged such as the older district of Foleshill where my parents, still single, were living with their families. Over 41,000 homes were damaged, many destroyed completely and 550 people lost their lives. It has been said that the German bombers continued what the town planners had begun before the war – the wholesale modernisation of the city. Coventry Corporation had intended to implement grand designs for a new city centre surrounded by healthy suburban estates such as Canley.

When Coventry was the city of the future: the Precinct, 1955

The war left a scarred landscape and a severe depletion of the housing stock. Resuming the construction of Canley was part of the post-war drive to provide new homes. The pre- and post-war parts of the estate not surprisingly have a different look to them reflecting the changed contexts of the grand 1930s plans and the pressing post-war needs.

Growing up there in the early 60s, the countryside never seemed too far away. We kids were often out and about, playing in the woods, making dens and tree swings, watching cows graze in farmers’ fields and scrumping in nearby orchards where Warwick University and Cannon Park shopping centre now stand. There were brooks to jump across (or fall into regularly in my case) and an old Roman ford near to the busy A45.

Canley Ford circa late 50s/early 60s (unattributable source)

Canley Ford Milk bar – a popular place for kids in the summer holidays circa late 50s/early 60s (unattributable source)

There were two woods very close to our house. Ten Shilling Wood was so named because that was how much a licence cost to shoot there in former times. Park Wood was at the top of our street though we never called it by its proper name: I’m not even sure we knew it then. To us it was the ‘top wood’ with Ten Shilling Wood being the ‘bottom’ one. Park Wood was also known as the dark woods or the bluebell wood because of the wonderful displays in springtime when we would collect huge bunches for our mothers. Both woods were remnants of the ancient Forest of Arden.

Canley has three main ‘boundaries.’ Fletchamstead (N.B. Modern spelling) and Kenpas highways, comprising part of the Coventry Bypass (A45) was one of these. This major route links Coventry to Birmingham in one direction, and ultimately to London, about 100 miles away, in the other.

There were older parts of Canley on the other side of the Bypass, however, including some pre-war council housing along Burnsall Road from the early 1930s estate construction period.

Burnsall Road, November 2015. (Photo courtesy Robin Brooker)

There is also Canley station, formerly Canley Gates, opened mainly for workers at the Standard Motor Works in 1940. This is on the main London to Birmingham railway line, which forms another Canley boundary. Constructed between 1833 and 1838, the railway cut through number of farmer’s fields and several small bridges and crossing points were put in place as access for the farmers and their livestock. Rather than being used to move cows between fields, it’s now a main thoroughfare from Canley to Tile Hill and beyond.

Former cattle crossing point under the London to Birmingham Railway Line at Wolfe Road, Canley (Ruth Cherrington Aug. 2006)

Charter Avenue, the main road into and out of the estate, forms the third boundary. It begins at a junction with the A45, marked conveniently by the Phantom Coach pub. This is typical of many built in the interwar years, being spacious when compared to older city centre ‘boozers’, with gardens back and front. It was intended to serve the expanding new estate as well as to pick up passing trade from thirsty travellers on the A45.

Phantom Coach Pub, Charter Avenue/A45, Canley. October 2015. (Photo courtesy Robin Brooker)

Moving westwards along Charter Avenue, we see all key Canley estate roads branch off to the right hand side in ribbon style development. The road is a dual carriageway as far as Mitchell Avenue, where building stopped before the war. This also represents an internal ‘border’ within Canley, marking the older from the newer part, the top from the bottom end of the estate. Charter Avenue continues as a single carriageway from there till it ends about a mile later at the junction with Cromwell Lane. This marks the edge of Canley and in the past of Coventry City’s limits.

Charter Avenue is Canley’s main road and buses to and from the city centre still pick up passengers from stops along here as they have always done.

Charter Avenue, looking towards bus stop at junction with Wolfe Road (Ruth Cherrington, 2006)

Canley’s Early Residents

Coventry was in many ways a ‘city of factory workers’ with so many engineering plants, some of them in the Canley area. It was arguably one of the most industrial cities in Europe and my own ancestors had mostly pitched up in Coventry looking for industrial work of various kinds in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

Canley was also to be all council housing, offering decent homes for the workers many of whom were living in overcrowded conditions in older parts of the city. Some residents were to be migrants from other areas of the country in search of work. Industrial Coventry had long been a magnet for those thrown out of jobs, whether from the mills of Lancashire, shipbuilding yards of Tyneside or collieries of South Wales. Coventry welcomed skilled and unskilled labour and Canley would count among its own resident a broad mix of people from across Britain.

The ideal was fair rent, with no family expected to live in a house too small for its size, with the council as a non-exploitative landlord. Acting upon a belief that ‘environment makes the slum dweller’, the Corporation wanted to make ‘better’ people on a new estate with a ‘healthy and pleasant environment.’

Building an Estate of ‘Happiness and Health’

An article in the Midland Daily Telegraph in 1938 (May 17^th) declared that ‘Canley Contributes to Coventry’s Happiness and Health.’ It was referring to the 150 houses already occupied in the Prior Deram Walk and Queen Margaret’s Road area. The layout of the new streets and houses led the writer to conclude that:

Canley is, without a doubt, a very healthy housing estate. It is already becoming attractive in appearance, for many of the front gardens of the first 100 houses built are a mass of colour.

Clearly the residents had been very busy in their gardens.

The good-sized gardens front and back were for the men to grow not only flowers but also vegetables and to breathe in fresh air. They were for kids to play in but there were plenty of planned green spaces as well.

The houses were mostly redbrick, semi-detached, typical of those being constructed across the country. Coventry planners aimed to avoid ‘displeasing uniformity’ by building in blocks of four, some of them being set back a few feet. Variety would promote ‘beauty and harmony.’ Different colours were used for roof tiles and also for the doors and the pebbledash. No two blocks were to be painted the same.

Inside the one, two, three and four bedroomed houses there was light and space, fitted cupboards, storage space, picture rails and kitchen ranges. The houses were the sort of suburban home middle-class couples might aspire to buy but these were not for sale.

Redbrick houses along Charter Avenue (courtesy of Robin Brooker)

Nearby this new ‘township’ was a row of shops, which were later on referred to the ‘big shops’ after the construction of the ‘little shops’ in the post-war part of Canley. There was a brand new primary school as well, named after the son of local tenant farmers, Sir Henry Parkes, who grew up in nearby Moat House Lane. He went on to become Premier of New South Wales in 1872. A statue of a kangaroo was erected in front of the school to mark this link. A small public library was also built next to the school.

Prior Deram Walk shops today (November 2015, courtesy of Robin Brooker)

The City Corporation planners were forward thinking and included small retirement bungalows in their scheme, many of which remain today for retired people. The street is nicknamed ‘Pensioner’s Row.’

Two and three bedroomed redbrick houses were built along Charter Avenue as far as Mitchell Avenue. A few houses were built just inside the new turnings intended to be fully-fledged streets but the war came and these were put on hold.

After the war, the builders, including some of prisoners of war, returned. The ideals were not to be diluted but construction had to be speeded up. The decision was taken to use a new type of house specially designed in this period: the British Iron and Steel Federation or BISF house. (1)

Row of BISF or steel houses, Charter Avenue/Marler Road junction. (R. Cherrington 2006)

Looking down Marler Road, BISF houses (R. Cherrington, 2006)

To us locals, they were simply steel houses, built around a steel frame with part of the outside cladding steel as well. They are ‘non-conventional build’ because they are not brick with slate tiled roofs. Whilst the materials may be non-conventional, they are, in fact, traditional three bed, semi-detached houses. They were also meant as permanent, not temporary homes and differed from wholly prefab houses.

View from a BISF house, looking into the garden. (R. Cherrington)

A plot of land near Prior Deram walk saw several rows of steel houses go up, around Thimbler Road and Sheriff Avenue. Some prefabricated bungalows were erected along John Rous Avenue and Mitchell Avenue thus largely finishing more quickly and cheaply the construction of Canley. The prefabs have long since been demolished and replaced with brick houses but the steel houses remain.

The prefabs were praised in a Coventry Evening Telegraph article in 1945 (October 30^th) as the ‘Coventry’ experiment. Not only had the Corporation ‘pioneered a house of novel construction and design’, but had cut through red-tape. This referred to the fact that the plumbing system contravened building by-laws, but the pressing need for housing was seen as justification.

The compact homes were described as cosy due to good insulation, with no wastage of space: much research had gone into their design and construction. Coventry’s Lord Mayor described them as being good for housewives. By easing their burden, he believed the homes made a great contribution to society and also recognised the part women played in the war. Many women had worked in ‘men’s jobs’ but in peacetime were expected to return quietly to the home and domestic roles.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s several four storey blocks of flats were built plus some maisonettes in Donegal Close and Penrosa Walk. This renewed building in streets behind the ‘little shops’ and also further up Charter Avenue was done in a thoughtful manner, with variation of style and of colours.

Flats at bottom of Donegal Close, November 2015. (Courtesy of Robin Brooker)

The aim of providing light, airy houses, large gardens and green spaces remained as Canley expanded with the view that creating a better environment would create better people. Canley was still a planned neighbour, despite the war intervening, and was a practical example of current town planning ideas and ideals.

I will consider in the next blog to what extent the blueprint of architects and planners succeeded in promoting a sense of community across the pre- and post-war built estate.

Notes

(1) You can find more images and detail on post-war British Iron and Steel Federation homes at the BISF website.