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1. The Arno Motor Company of Coventry 1908-1916, by Damien Kimberley
2. The Beech on Wheels, by Derek Robinson and forum member Foxcote
3. A brief history of Saint Osburg's, in pictures, by Damien Kimberley
4. The Brough Superior, by Damien Kimberley
5. Coventry Volunteer Fire Brigade - Illustrated London News, Jan 4th 1862
6. Coventry's Great Flood - London Daily Graphic, 2nd January 1901
7. Coventry's Rich Heritage, by Pete Walters
8. Coventry, the Home of the Cycle Trade - 1886 magazine article
9. Coventry, the Silk Trade and the Horsfall family, by Ian West
10. D-Day and Monty's Staff Car, by Paul Maddocks
11. The Dragoon Cycle Company of Coventry, by Damien Kimberley
12. Edwin Brown, Victorian Animal Artist, by Stephen Catton
13. The First Tudor Feast, by Richard Ball
14. The Great Flood of December 1900, and the lost Bridges, by Damien Kimberley
15. Henry Cave, and the 'Lady' Autocar of 1899, by Damien Kimberley
16. The Ira Aldridge Trail, by Simon Shaw
17. Let's talk about Rex, by Damien Kimberley
18. The Lion Bicycle Company of Coventry & Wolverhampton 1877-1882, by Damien Kimberley
19. Miss Bashford, a Teacher's Tale, by Simon Shaw
20. Motor Panels (Coventry) Ltd, by Damien Kimberley
21. The New Bablake Schools - 1889 article
22. New Drinking Fountain at Coventry - 17 Sep 1859
23. Not Forgotten, the 1939 IRA bomb attack, by Simon Shaw
24. The Old Vicarage, Binley, by Anna Eddleston
25. Phil Silvers Archival Museum, by Paul Maddocks
26. Proposal for St. Michael's Campanile c1890
27. Public Baths - The Building News, Jan 24th 1896
28. The Saint Joseph the Worker parish in Coventry, by Terence Richards
29. A short history of Coventry's Theatres and Cinemas, by Bill Birch
30. Sixty Years of Cycling - 1897 magazine article
31. The sound that almost killed my Dad in the War!, by Paul Maddocks
32. The Tapestry and its Hidden Secret, by Paul Maddocks
33. Transport Museum pt.1 - How the Queen's 1977 visit sowed the seed, by Paul Maddocks
34. Transport Museum pt.2 - New Hales Street Entrance in 1985, by Paul Maddocks
35. Transport Museum pt.3 - Creating the Blitz Experience, by Paul Maddocks
36. Transport Museum pt.4 - Coventry's Land Speed Record Cars, by Paul Maddocks
37. Transport Museum pt.5 - The 1987 F.A. Cup Winners' Sky Blue Bus, by Paul Maddocks
38. Transport Museum pt.6 - The Royal Cars, by Paul Maddocks
39. Trinity National Schools - Civil Engineer and Architect's Journal, Vol.XVII, 1854
40. What links a Spitfire's landing gear to a baby buggy? by Paul Maddocks
41. What links R2D2 to a Coventry Hydrogen/Electric cab company? by Paul Maddocks
42. Whitefriars Gatehouse and Toy Museum, by Paul Maddocks
43. WW1 and Wyley of Charterhouse, by Paul Maddocks
44. 1930s Austin's Monthly Magazine articles, by John Bailey Shelton MBE
45. Plan for the City Centre - The Architect and Building News, 21st March 1941
 

Coventry's Rich Heritage, by Pete Walters

Author of best selling book, The Story Of Coventry

Bayley Lane As the voices of the Binchois Consort lifted into the high beamed roof of St Mary's Hall, the centuries fell away and we were back in the city's golden age.
In my mind's eye, the modern-day audience of experts in pre-Renaissance music, drawn from all over Europe and the United States, turned into a crowd of richly-gowned merchants and the officials who ran their guilds and their civic administration in fabulously wealthy, fifteenth century Coventry.

Only the music was the same, a Caput, or composition for voices, commissioned by those merchant oligarchs and almost certainly sung in the presence of a king, Henry VI, when he came to honour their town with title of city and county.

It's such an easy thing really, finding our way back into Coventry's illustrious medieval past. And it is extraordinary that we don't do it more often.

Godiva

People will say that Lady Godiva passes for ancient history in Coventry, that the fable of a saintly streaker braving indignity for the good of the townsfolk is all we need.

But Godiva is a wraith, her naked ride a figment of monkish imagination. The fifteenth century is real, still all around us in Coventry in tapestry, stone and painted window, in parchment manuscript, timber frame and even song sheet. And it's time we let others share this amazing secret.

The Cousins' War, or the Wars of the Roses, as we know it better, has a new currency at the moment, in drama and documentary on screen, and in the written word too.

Why are we not proclaiming Coventry's part in it, both as trigger, through Richard II's aborted trial by combat on Gosford Green in 1397, as command post of the Lancastrian interest and royal government in the 1450s, and finally as first port of call for Henry VII, father of the Tudor dynasty, after his victory at Bosworth Field in 1485?

That whole century of national incident has a distinctly Coventry hue to it. Yet current promotional literature for the city boasts about a place with Bronze Age roots, a frankly bizarre mis-reading of history.

We trot out Godiva, but so little is known about the real woman that we can't get beyond the mythical ride. Why aren't we putting ourselves on the visitor map with events and celebration of the fifteenth century cast of real flesh-and-blood characters who shaped the future of England right here?

Medieval stained glass

There is nowhere else in the country that can better showcase the culture, art and political life of late medieval England.

Don't take my word for it. That judgement comes from television historian Jonathan Foyle, who in his day job as UK Chief Executive of the World Monuments Fund has been helping to preserve just one aspect of that magnificent heritage, the cathedral's astonishing collection of medieval stained glass.

Quite forgotten to tourism, he says, the surviving art and buildings of Coventry reveal the medieval mindset at the heart of the Lancastrian stronghold and tell the story of the formative years of the Wars of the Roses better than anywhere else.

We have the evidence - the city records for the late Middle Ages are fuller than just about anywhere else's.

Charterhouse

We have the buildings - not just St Mary's Hall, surely one of Britain's great hidden glories, but our imposing central churches and compelling survivors like the Old Grammar School, Cheylesmore Manor, Whitefriars and the Charterhouse.

There is a groundswell of new ideas emerging, from a virtual tour of medieval Coventry to an event highlighting Henry VII's civic welcome in this city just two days after Bosworth, effectively the first feast of the Tudor Age.

There is work already beginning to make the Charterhouse the focus of an ambitious scheme of landscape and building restoration that will bring a whole string of Coventry's dormant assets back to life.

The time is right, surely, for all of this to be drawn together into a celebration that in future years would build into an annual summer festival able to draw serious visitor numbers to Coventry, making the city more than just an afterthought to Stratford and the castles of Warwick and Kenilworth.

Whitefriars

Perhaps the currently disused Whitefriars, another hidden gem, could become the focus for some of this story-telling? For this is all about story, that timeless impulse we all have to make sense of our world.

In Coventry we have a terrific story to tell and as our neighbours in Leicester prepare to celebrate their posthumous connection with Richard III with a new visitor centre in their city next year, the time has come to tell it better.

If we are serious about putting together a City of Culture bid for our city, we shall need nothing less.


 
 
 
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