St. Mary's Cathedral Site, Bull Ring

December 1938

EXCAVATIONS ON THE SITE OF ST. MARY'S CATHEDRAL, BULL RING (now Trinity Street)

I have written in a previous article that the Cathedral of St. Mary (13th century) was in style and outward form believed to be like Lichfield Cathedral. The length would be approximately 390 feet, the width 145 feet, the height of the spires on the western front about 183 feet, and the central tower near Hill Top 258 feet. The foundations of the tower were discovered in the cellars beneath John Gulson's town house, now the Constitutional Club. The Cathedral ends beneath the east end of the house where Dr. Nathaniel Troughton lived in 1849, and will be best known as standing at the rear of the palisades next to the surgery of Dr. Duncan Davidson in Priory Row. Could all Hill Top be excavated what a vast amount of history would be revealed ! In the near future the site from Dr. Davidson's to Priory Row will be excavated, and much of the Bishop's Palace of 1086 will be found. Reader says in his book of 1810 - "The Bishop's Palace stood at the north-east corner of St. Michael's Churchyard; it was sold in 1647 to Nathaniel Lacey, Samuel Palmer, and Obadiah Chambers for £105, with a reserved rent of one mark." Part of this Palace was used as three tenements, and was pulled down when Priory Street was made in the middle of the 19th century. It is within memory of many people living to-day that a part of the site of the Palace was excavated, but at that time, no one appears to have been interested enough to preserve anything found there. Part of the Triumph Works stand upon the site, where Booth & Earle's timber yard stood previously. Running through that site was a stone wall which I believe extended to New Buildings, and joined up to the cloisters which were found under the present old Ragged School.

Since writing my last article a very generous and welcome gift has been accepted by the Coventry Corporation from Sir Alfred Herbert for building a Museum and Art Gallery for the City, costing approximately £100,000. This will fill a long-standing want, as would appear from the following letter written by W. G. Fretton in 1873: -
" . . . One great want remains to be supplied - an archaeological society and a museum. With a city so rich in antiquarian treasure and historical association, the entire absence of any organisation for the systematic preservation of what we have left to us, and for the promotion of a study of our local antiquities, is a reproach which I trust may yet be removed from us, and that some step may be taken at an early opportunity to form the nucleus of a city museum. Had this been done years ago, we should have been in pos-session of an accumulation of interesting objects connected with our local history, now for ever lost to us; and we are daily losing the opportunity of acquiring others. As in other matters, 'it is never too late to mend', and if we begin with ever so little, by all means let us begin."

Next month I will write about the site at the east end of the Post Office in Grey Friars Lane.

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