Note - 2018 - Although I haven't seen a copy of this article yet, my piece below is referenced in Selina Todd's article for those interested Phoenix Rising: Working-Class Life and Urban Reconstruction, c. 1945–1967
Photo - Coventry City Centre Precinct in construction early 50's - More photos below the article.
Toddling with my parents around the City Centre; a chaos of post war Coventry scaffolding, construction and clearances. Seeing the opening of the Woolworth building, the other end was True Form, buying a mega silk-screened tie there, for Sunday best, mum thinking it too big and flash, but it was smart, nothing packaged like today. Gaunt cranes and towering buildings, ever changing, with every Saturday visit. Seeing British Home Store and Marks and Sparks emerge. A brand-new city Centre taking shape as I slowly grew, and the Phoenix rose from the ashes of war.
Being taken into Timothy Whites, the half-timbered hardware store in Trinity street. Walking around the back by the old market, fish smells, meat market, haberdashery, 2nd hand books, slow crowds hovering around stalls, tall folks, adults, long 50's overcoats and hats, grey and sober, the sound of market mongers flogging their wares - theirs was always best, always an angle, through the quiet parts of the market, finding an exit, clear air, all in a temporary flux of giant change, the smell of something emerging, just like me, growing up, a new city for a new age, the 60's, full of hope, looking to peace and love and creativity, hope for mankind.
"A Leap year for Planning" said Alderman Hodgkinson in 1954; old Fords and Morris Minors' "any colour so long as it's black". New car shapes emerging, new brave colours, Rovers, Riley’s, Jags and Daimlers, Humber, Hillman, Sunbeam, Singer - car-city, booming production lines, asway with buses, cloth-capped, fag in mouth city sidewalks, the Coventry Evening Telegraph sellers standing like Socrates outside the Acropolis of the National Provincial Bank, one of the biggest city centre buildings that the bombs were too scared to hit; their megaphone voices defining our world for history, in half-audible headlines.
New Brave city, a sense of space, a sense of modernism, a sense of regeneration, triumph in austerity, a symbol of world peace where the Lennon's would soon choose to plant their acorns, center stage in times to come for little Broadgate Gnomes (Coventry's first underground mag), planting creative seeds in the bomb hole art gallery outside the Golden Cross Pub and wandering musical Hobos (our magazine in the 1970's), the arena of the forthcoming Coventry music scene but meanwhile back in the 50's...
Being 3 or 4, moving from a flat in Allesley village to a council house in Meadfoot Rd. Willenhall, where the Coventry to Euston line ran aback of the houses. Waving, flag in hand, to the Queen as she passed on the Royal Train, from the sandy embankment at the back of the house, while other boys threw stones and were caught by the coppers. The age of steam was giving way to the age of diesel as the 50's shunted on. You could witness technology fast-track from the back of your house, speeding down the lines to the innovative 60's while out the front it was the 10.am break from hoovering the hall, dusting the sideboards, sitting on the red polished doorstep. My mum and Pat next door, the mothers’, morning gossiping, Players and Woodbines, jiving in the street to Rock Around the Clock on the radio; chugging down the line to full blown youth culture, See you Later Alligator, in a while Crocodile was the catch phrase, a wake-up call to dormant youth, the first sprouting of the Coventry music scene. There was a sense of excitement, a sense of fun in the music, a sense of life on the world's Martian cultural landscape. I felt sandwiched between the pace of the trains outback and the pace of the music out front, on board to make some changes myself, waving flags to our highest aspirations.
Sitting on my father’s lap, watching the Six-Five Special, trains and rock music were synonymous, for none more so than Pete Waterman of course, growing up over the other side of Coventry, digging rock and soul and loving trains; you could feel it, it was in the air, there was a change to come, you didn't know the destination, how it would pan out, but the 60s were defining their character in the fifties, each year was a station on the way.
Learning to read pre-school with my mum via the TV Comic, watching Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men (who later moved to San Francisco!), Sooty and Sweep, reading The Beano, The Dandy and later The Eagle, Dan Dare, The Lost World - Conan Doyle, watching Dixon of Dock Green, The Army Game. Sunday afternoon war films, Ealing films, George Formby, Sunday Night at The London Palladium, Juke Box Jury ("I'll give it 9"), Oh Boy. I was a TV addict in the fifties, never wanting to miss anything by going on holiday, but when I got there, I didn't miss the TV at all! Strange, because after the fifties, I was never again that interested in TV.
Remembering the Radio Times and at one stage, mid-fifties, they went on strike and it was replaced by an economical Broadsheet, printed in France while the strike lasted. Seeing an entry in it about Elvis and his hips on the Ed Sullivan Show, sounded exciting. I wanted to watch it but my parents, although they liked rock n roll, did their parental duty! Although Presley's music must have been all around, I don't recall much else of his until 1964 when I started to become a fan because everybody else was going bananas over the Beatles and I so hated being a clone! I did love the Beatles but I refused to wear the badge, as it were, until the Beatles became a whole lot more interesting to me! I more remember Cliff and The Shadows, Tommy Steel - the British rockers.
Ah, but the fifties flipped by like rail carriages, and me running up the hill at the back of the house where the digger trucks dumped the soil from new Willenhall Wood housing estate. Trees felled for houses, a new council estate, where we would live in the 1960's, now not so pristine and idyllic son 50 years on, I'm told, but back in the day it was a brand new peaceful estate, based on the Radburn plan, pebble-dashed with the tradesman entrance at the back and spacious grass and trees out the front, a safe play area but no ball games! Sliding down the hill, wearing out our trousers, playing hide and seek, cowboys and Indians, making daisy chains, riding your bike over the mounds and through the long-grassed waste ground that was living in fear of concrete and another new estate being built on it, late, much later.
My dad, learning to drive on Coventry buses, early 50’s. Walking with my mother, each morning to the Binley Hotel bus Terminus with a white metal flask of tea and sandwiches, along the very wooded St. James Lane, before the trees were felled for the Willenhall Wood estate. Sitting on the bus behind the driver’s cabin, my dad in the cabin, while he three-point-turned the bus around, him handing me a new Dinky car out the sliding window panel. Sitting with the conductor we called Whiskers, the life and soul of the bus with his patter. You got your money's worth on that bus; he'd make you laugh, he'd even sing. The No11, Binley Hotel to Glendower Avenue, bus, passing Binley colliery, the GEC Stoke works, the Humber car plant, Gosford Green to the city center and on to Glendower Avenue up in Chapelfields.
You could change your job every year back then and walk into another, no CV's, Personnel officers, training schemes - My Dad saying, 'there's always someone to show you what to do there'. My dad driving for Frances Barnett - the motor bike firm in Pool Meadow, me going on some of the trips with him in the wagon, as nipper, as he delivered 50’s motor bikes to Nottingham, Derby, the midlands. Later, him working at the GEC, bringing home discarded phone exchange switches with counters to play with, a discarded cream telephone off the refurbished Queen Elizabeth ship, when most phones were custom black, me an only child until I was six, learning to occupy myself or play with Sandra and Pauline, the girls next door, collecting leaflets later in the fifties when my dad was in the electrical trade, I pick them up in the shop while he was discussing business, leaflets and brochures of electrical goods, cars and all-sorts. I’d quite a collection, I’d sort them and dream of owning what later would be called a superstore, that sold everything - the lateral thinking involved led to me later developing cross arts forms on the Coventry music scene or the Teesside writing scene.
Going around to see John Alderson, later guitarist with Wandering John, our mums were friends, he had this great collection of Corgi cars and his pride was a Studebaker or Chevrolet - I only had Dinky or Matchbox, very English cars. There was something much more meticulous about his collection, something that would carry over into his brilliant guitar playing and guitar making much later in the 60's and 70’s. His dad worked at the Rover plant - when most people worked in the car factories in Coventry. My dad had a new car every year, at first a motorbike and side car, an old black Ford Popular, the smell of the leather seats, petrol, later swapping it for a Ford Prefect - much like an upturned pram towards more sixties styled cars - cars were changing too - his pride and joy was a second hand Daimler, and I remember the owner test-driving it for us, I think he was trying to break the world speed records, I'd never gone that fast before, speeding down the lane in Brandon, but my dad was always a responsible driver having been trained on Coventry buses. We had a new or second-hand car each year
Writing a novel at 6 / 7, my dad getting me to read Treasure Island, which I enjoyed, and then Kidnapped. Kidnapped just didn't get my attention and so I decided I could probably do better, my first attempt at creative writing, I gathered sheets of paper and each night before going to sleep worked on the first chapter which I was quite pleased with but I just didn't have the experience to follow through with it at that age and eventually admitted defeat but something hung back although I didn't remember this early writing experience until something triggered in recent years, but writing became my thing. I mostly think of it as having started at 15 writing my first songs but obviously it began much earlier! but that was the key point in my life - I knew that if things weren't there that you liked you could create them your self - or at least try, it was the same with songs, I wanted to hear songs that said what I wanted them to say, on the music scene people used to moan that "they" weren't providing facilities for musicians - my perspective was always, 'then we'll create them', albeit with a lack of resources, our creativity is the resource and hopefully if successful, 'they' might see the need and help us out - maybe!!
On Sunday afternoons we'd go for a Sunday afternoon drive to places like Drayton Manor Park, Alton Towers, Banbury Cross, the model village at Moreton on the Marsh with the people next door in the Morris Minor shooting break, - my dad building me a Crystal Radio and it worked and introducing me to National Geographic magazine, I collected them and looked through them, reading some of the articles wondering what kind of world I had entered where there is plenty on one part and starvation in another, my dad asking for the issue back with a picture of Burma on to give to a Burmese family that had moved in a couple of doors away, it was late 50's and I came across none of the racism that reared its head later in the 60's, they sometimes looked after me and vice-versa, so nice that families from different cultures could co-exist so amicably, they had a daughter and year or two older than me, I had a soft-spot for her, doing my best to deny what the adults had sussed because of embarrassment, she was nice, fun and intelligent but it was explained about arranged marriages and any way we were moving soon to The new estate Willenhall Wood, then brand new, peaceful and based on the American style with the trades men's entrance at the back and a traffic free green out front with trees where we would spend the 60's.
We were post war kids, with no direct experience of the war but picking up on the vibes, the sadness of the air raid shelters and the new emergent optimism, wondering what kind of world we had entered, tripping over the double values and wondering if we could change things for the better, if we could dare to dream of a better society without war and starvation, exploitation, and seeing a window of opportunity through the sixties began painting rainbows on the sky towards the summer of love - could we change things, we had to try, with no maps or certainty, things could be better but for now it was the end of the fifties and I personally was still only 9 in 1960.
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Photos that illustrate the article below.
Photos of Coventry's Reconstruction 1950's
Coventry Precinct still in construction. You can one of the old pre war streets at the back, right.
Some of the pre-war streets still visible as the new Coventry centre was taking shape. Early memories of the City in this state of re-development.
Down comes the old pub to make way for the most modern city centre in the world,at the time.
There were in fact plans to redevelop Coventry City Centre before the war. Although the blitz was a tragedy, it seems like Hitler did the planners a favour and demolishing a huge part of the City centre area! Above is a 1945 drawing of the proposed Precinct looking towards the cathedral. More about the plans here - https://www.coventrytelegraph.net/lifestyle/nostalgia/amazing-old-plans-show-what-13721053
A 1941 drawing for the proposed redevelopment of Broadgate.
"Seeing the opening of the Woolworth building, the other end was True Form, buying a mega silk-screened tie there, for Sunday best.." Woolworth,Coventry in construction early 1950's above and the Woolworth Counters below..
Not quite the same design of Silk Screened tie mention in the text - a bit wider,a bit more visual!
"Timothy Whites, the half-timbered hardware store in Trinity street"
"Walking around the back by the old market, fish smells, meat market, haberdashery, 2nd hand books, slow crowds hovering around stalls, tall folks, adults, long 50's overcoats and hats, grey and sober, the sound of market mongers flogging their wares"
In the 60's I could name every car on the road and many of them were made in Coventry. They had their own character then.Now they all look the same to me!
"Coventry Evening Telegraph sellers standing like Socrates outside the Acropolis of the National Provincial Bank, one of the biggest city centre buildings that the bombs were too scared to hit; their megaphone voices defining our world for history, in half-audible headlines" This view of the bank is pre-war. The Kings Head Hotel didn't survive the war. The Hotel was where my maternal grandparents stayed when they were moved from Manchester in the 1930's to take up new posts and housing on the new GEC estate in Copswood, Coventry.
John And Yoko planting acorns for peace in the grounds of Coventry Cathedral 1968.
Broadgate Gnome was a Coventry underground magazine in 1970, taking it's name from the Gnomes on Broadgate Island. The magazine treated alternative politics and the Coventry music scene. They took their inspiration from the San Franciscan Digger movement, creating innovative and 'underground' music and art collectives in the city. (Ref.in the article "for little Broadgate Gnomes (Coventry's first underground mag), planting creative seeds in the bomb hole art gallery outside the Golden Cross Pub"
Hobo Coventry Music and Arts Magazine 1973 - 75 was created by Trev Teasdel and John Bargent to follow on the work of the Broadgate Gnome but more in the area of promoting Coventry music and arts scene.The magazine worked with Coventry Voluntary service Council to create the Hobo Workshop gigs at the Holyhead Youth Centre which was also the base of the early Two Tone bands The Selecter and the Specials in their early days. (Ref.in the article - "and wandering musical hobos (our magazine in the 1970's), the arena of the forthcoming Coventry music scene"
Above - "Being 3 or 4, moving from a flat in Allesley village" Earliest memories living the other side of Coventry in a flat above one of the shops. My father worked on the Coventry buses at this stage c 1953.His bus,the No 11 Glendower Avenue to Binley Hotel went from this end of Coventry to the other end near where we moved to.
My Dad in his bus uniform and me pick peas from the pod at my grans's - the GEC estate at Copswood. Actress Billie Whitelaw, a contemporary of my mother, lived in the house behind as a child.her father produced the GEC Christmas Pantomimes for the GEC and Billie got her early experience in them before the family moved to Leeds.
Meadfoot Road Willenhall, a modern photo via Google Streetview but these were post war houses on the outskirts of Coventry and where most of the memories took place for this article.Of course the frontage of some of the houses has changed! The white door was ours and the car was parked on the lawn.
The back of Meadfoot road with the Coventry to Euston railway line at the back. There have since been a lot of developments the other side of the rails and at the side of the photo. "the Coventry to Euston line ran aback of the houses. Waving, flag in hand, to the Queen as she passed on the Royal Train, from the sandy embankment at the back of the house, while other boys threw stones and were caught by the coppers. The age of steam was giving way to the age of diesel as the 50's shunted on. You could witness technology fast-track from the back of your house."
"Out the front it was the 10.am break from hoovering the hall, dusting the sideboards, sitting on the red polished doorstep. My mum and Pat next door, the mothers’, morning gossiping, Players and Woodbines, jiving in the street to Rock Around the Clock on the radio; chugging down the line to full blown youth culture, See you Later Alligator, in a while Crocodile was the catch phrase, a wake-up call to dormant youth"
Late 50's (c1958) we moved to a new three bedroom house in Willenhall Wood.The pebble-dashed estate was based on the American Radburn scheme with the tradesman entrance at the back and out the front,as you can see grass and trees.It was a beautiful, scenic estate with French Windows, light and airy. 50 years later it's not quite what it was. There was no trouble then.
Binley Hotel where my Dad's bus - the No 11, turned around. Later the bus all the way to Willenhall as the estates developed and the bus came the No13.
"My dad, learning to drive on Coventry buses, early 50’s. Walking with my mother, each morning to the Binley Hotel bus Terminus with a white metal flask of tea and sandwiches, along the very wooded St. James Lane, before the trees were felled for the Willenhall Wood estate. Sitting on the bus behind the driver’s cabin, my dad in the cabin, while he three-point-turned the bus around, him handing me a new Dinky car out the sliding window panel. Sitting with the conductor we called Whiskers, the life and soul of the bus with his patter. You got your money's worth on that bus; he'd make you laugh, he'd even sing. The No11, Binley Hotel to Glendower Avenue, bus, passing Binley colliery, the GEC Stoke works, the Humber car plant, Gosford Green to the city center and on to Glendower Avenue up in Chapelfields."
"My dad driving for Frances Barnett - the motor bike firm in Pool Meadow, me going on some of the trips with him in the wagon, as nipper, as he delivered 50’s motor bikes to Nottingham, Derby, the midlands."
Me left with with John Alderson in childhood - John would become lead blues guitar in one of the top Coventry bands of the 70's Wandering John.
Me introducing Wandering John for their sellout reunion concert in Coventry 2010. Part one of 5 videos of the concert which features Neol Davies (of The Selecter) playing blues in one of the videos.John Alderson is on guitar on the right of the video.
With my mother and paternal grandparents at Drayton Manor Park one Sunday in the 50's.
Me at Willenhall Wood Junior School end of the 50's
My parents in the early 60's
Brilliant
Posted by: BroadgateGnome | 03/21/2007 at 11:08 PM
[this is good] Beautiful. I must have been born in the same year as you Trev, but we didn't arrive in Coventry until I was about 4/5. We lived on one such estate, Manor House, which was near Bell Green/ Wood End. Our next door neighbour used to work in the fish-market and I remember very well her frying sprats and never really losing the smell of fish. I think that perhaps - like me - the reason you don't remember Elvis Presley and rock n roll is because we didn't have the pop-culture then that we got a little later. Radio 1, the UK's pop-only station didn't happen until 1967 and so even acts like the Beatles weren't played non-stop. Our mass-media wasn't tuned into youth-culture until the 60s. I'm slowly getting the hang of this and can see that you are more prolific at posting than I. This was a beautiful read and in view of the nostalgia for Cov that characterises some of my posts, it certainly hit the spot. Thanks.
Posted by: mick | 03/25/2007 at 09:05 PM
Yes you are right about the radio although they definately played Bill Haley but I didn't have a radio until the sixties (apart from the crystal radio) but that didn't last. Rock stuff was intersperesed with large helpings of brass bands and middle of the road singers as I recall until the pirates blasted that away and radio 1 came along.
As for prolific - I've got the advantage of a preserved archive to upload Mick!
Posted by: Trev Teasdel - Songwriter | 03/25/2007 at 11:14 PM
Those of us that lived in Tile Hill had a bit of an advantage..Gauntlett's grocery on Jardine Crescent, had a back room cafe with a juke box and was the nightime rendezvous of bikers and rockers. In the daytime it was a more general clientele . The exposure to the Likes of Elvis, del shannon etc , even Johhny Halllday, plus homegrowns like Tommy Steel and Lonnie Donegan certainly helped with the conditioning. . Kids were "parked" in there with a Pepsi while mums shopped. just imagine a room full of 9- 12 year olds practising their jive. By the time we were old enough to go to youth clubs and even junior night at the Locarno (tuesdays ) mots were already quite adept.
Posted by: BroadgateGnome | 03/26/2007 at 12:33 PM