Woodway Lane and Potters Green

Those were the days when you came across things that you needed! When we were kids we lived in Ambleside, Potters Green, and we got all of our push bikes when we were young by using a grappling hook and rope and fishing in the old canal arm that went across the top of our street, anything that looked like a bike frame became a bike, we had converted Raleigh mopeds and an old Triumph Tina scooter converted at one stage. With a little imagination and a drop of Dulux paint from my dad's garage they did the job. For some reason we also pulled out a lot of the old folding cycles that the soldiers were issued with during the war and made them good by going to the cycle shop in the new shopping arcade in Bell Green but I can't remember the name of them now. I recently took my son on a trip to the Coventry Motor Museum and guess what? Amongst the displays were a Raleigh moped, a Triumph Tina scooter and a b****y WW2 folding bicycle, it just makes you feel old when the things you dragged out of canals as a kid are now in a museum!

Potters Green Lad. The parabike, held them in your hands when you made a descent, many got dropped too soon from the ground and were made useless, Two wing nuts for the frame one wing nut for the handlebars, made obsolete in 1945 along with the backpack flamethrower, the piat gun, and the 9mm pistol. I remember being told of a boatman drinking too much in the Jolly Colliers in the thirties and waking up in a freshly dug grave in the old cemetery, many guys stumbled out of the 'Boat' and fell in the arm of the canal. Remember at Tusses Bridge, early part of the war, a sailor stumbled out of the Elephant & Castle, got close to the canal, a young boy shouted 'a sailor if your going to fall in the cut, give me your loose change, you'll float better.'

Thinking way back to when I was a boy, I remember my dad saying the clod banks were once called the 'fosse' banks, I'm not sure if I have this right, but he worked at Craven pit sometime, there was quite a lot of miners returned from the war and they called the banks the fosse banks. Anyone have any ideas? Kaga.

I must say that every time I read this site the memories come flooding back. Both of my parents are buried up the cemetery, the gates were always locked at dusk by one of the Liggins family who lived on the corner, when we were kids we used to climb the trees in the graveyard for the birds eggs but I wouldn't admit that to my kids today, not very PC. I remember playing with my mates, Ray Frost and Andrew Alalumbo, a Greek/Dutch lad whose father had a chip shop up Wyken Croft, up the old canal basin at the back of Yewdale Cresent on our home made tracker bikes as we called them, those were the days of snake belts, sheath knives, Dutch arrows and catapults cut from trees with elastic cord brought from Davies's sports shop in town. We went to the Gaumont for the tanner rush on a Saturday to watch the yo-yo guy perform, rush out in the intermission for a hot sausage roll in the bakers shop next door, then when it finished go in the Herbert Gallery and make a nuisance of ourselves before getting the bus home again, happy days!

Potters Green Lad. Liggins family, my aunt, think they lived in the house next to the bridge that stood end on to the road, most of my older relatives are in that graveyard. Do you remember Lesters woodyard, another relative of mine? Dutchman, fired one of those damn things, scared the daylights out of me. A mate of mine had one go up on his back about two days before they got the order to make them obsolete.

Once again, would anyone know if there was more than one church in Potters Green in the 1920's, if so, their denominations please? Thanks, Kaga.

Didn't Lesters woodyard used to be between Sextons shop and Eburne school, if it is then I used to work there when I was a kid chopping kindling wood from old offcuts for a bit of pocket money, talk about health and safety eh! I went drinking in my youth with Bill Liggins who lived in the corner house as you went up the little drive to the cemetery. I remember being on the last bus home one Friday night and he jumped on when it stopped outside Riddys shop on the Walsgrave Road just as a pack of lads rounded the corner in hot pursuit who he had obviously upset somewhere. He waved them farewell from the rear platform but a few yards further up the road the bus ground to a halt so Bill jumped off again and the pursuit continued, I never did find out if he got home alive but he had an amazing turn of speed considering he had a blue serge raincoat on and a belly full of beer!

Gosh PGL - you are bringing up memories. My grandparents May and Les Bicknell lived in "Townsend Cottage", next door to Mrs Sexton's shop on the south side; May used to work part-time in the shop, and could always find a nice lollypop or bottle of Dandelion & Burdock; my mother, Margery Bond, lived there until she married in 1946; her half-brother, Tony Bicknell, might have been another of your drinking partners (?); my great-uncle (May's brother) George Dyson, and his wife Annie and daughter Maureen, lived the other side of the shop. Remember any of them? As a very small kid, I used to go and play with my Dinky toy cars in the bramble bushes across the road. As a teenager, I used to go running around the clod banks. It's changed a bit since then - as have I, I suppose!

Hi. Last time I visited Woodway Lane was in the thirties. I always thought Potters Green and Woodway Lane was one and the same, I also thought the bus ran from the top of Lentons Lane down Woodway Lane to Walsgrave then into town. In those days Lesters woodyard was about three doors away from the canal, part of the old canal was between the yard and the main canal from what I remember.

I always remember the wood yard being after Sextons shop and before Eburne infants school, just over the hump back bridge that crossed the old canal arm, I maybe wrong but I'm 61 now and the old brain cells are not to be trusted. Regarding the bus I used to catch it down by the Acorn pub (which I worked in for a few years) which went down into Walsgrave then into town on the Ansty Road.

Hello mickw, Reg Plumb was my grandad, he was born at number 30 Woodway Lane and lived there until he died in 1986. My nan, mum and probably a few of my aunties all worked at the club at some point.

The Plumbs, the Bicknells, all ring a bell with me, as a kid I was always hearing their names, but that's as far as my memory will go. My parents married in the Potters Green church way back in 1922, the cemetery is full of my relatives - Lesters, Liggins, Simpsons, Phipkins, etc. For a time in the late fifties my brother lived somewhere near the 'Boat' pub and in the sixties my father went back to live on the corner of Shilton Lane and Lentons Lane, just couldn't budge him away from the cut. And between Woodway Lane and Aldermans Green I knew every inch of the land in the thirties, but not names.

From Aldermans Green Road to almost Deedmore Road ran the disused railway track, alongside ran a four-bar wooden railing fence, that we kids walked along the top rail. From the basin to Deedmore the fence ran along the bottom of the track, but from the 'main' the fence ran along the top of the embankment. We kids walked the top rail as far as possible before we fell off, but old James Bond (Jimmy) that lived in the cottage at the main used to throw things to make us fall off. Below Bond's house, alongside the path that crossed over the 'Slough', was the Long Meadow. Often I fell from the rail, slithered down the grey muddy bank and I was back in the sink, with half a bar of green bar of lifebouy soap and hot water.

I went to Eburne Infants before attending Potters Green Primary then on to Foxford Secondary, The Eton of Exhall! One of the lads that I used to walk to school with every day over The Black Pad and past the boating lake and on to Jackers Road with was called Steve Sawkins who lived in Shilton Lane in the cottages opposite the Boat Inn. He had a younger sister called Debbie who I remember being very attractive. After we left school we split up, as you do, and I never saw either of them again until ten years later when Freddie Laker just started the first cut-price airfares to America, £99 to New York and £135 to Los Angeles, along with 3 mates I decided to give it a whirl. At forty thousand feet the seat belt light came off and I got up to go to the toilet only to bump into the air hostess pushing the drinks trolley, it was only Debbie Sawkins! The lads and I ended up having first class service all the way, so much so I still don't know or remember how we got into America. Needless to say, we said goodbye to Debbie at the carousel and I have never seen either of them since. If anybody knows their whereabouts please let me know.