Longford (inc. The Red Hills)

I remember the dredger coming up from the Foleshill Bridge end, and putting its load of mud and silt down by the side of Tipton-Vincent's fence, and as kids we were looking for anything that might be interesting, and sure enough we pulled out a Bren-Gun, so we told the police and they thanked us and took it away. Also, there was a lot of colourful bottles, all shapes and sizes, that we we found, I guess they would be antiques today and very collectable.

Been reading back through this thread and I still smile at the thought of someone swimming in water that was full of dead dogs. But I remember going along the Cov Canal and at Leicester Causeway there were many dead chickens in the water, many with throats cut. That would have been in the 60s. No idea where they could have come from or why they were dumped in the water. Must add that sadly there was no one swimming in there and thrusting them aside with one arm.

johnwright, the dredger was left there because the workforce were retired, and Inland Waterways retired and handed over to the pleasureboat people. If you look on post 207 on 'Canals around Coventry' you can see the rubbish in the cut at Leicester Causeway, also the repair work being done on a break in the bank just past Ansty. Why do Coventry Canal Society not give any 'info' or stories on the canal, are they not allowed?

In my canal boating days Leicester Causeway and Cov Canal in general was a big no no for many boat owners

Greg. Hi, I believe you had a topic on here of the power station, but I typed in Longford power station, and got zero, so could not use your thread..

Hi Kaga. Longford power station???? I don't know where that was.

Norman Conquest. Really, I have just recently read there are ambitious plans to build a marina on the site of the old Longford Power Station. We also called it Hawkesbury Power Station but rarely, or the 'lekie' or even the 'coolers', didn't make much difference to us kids, we knew where we meant.

As you say Kaga, what's in a name? Never get out that way anymore but I would have thought it had been built on by now. Good location, could live there myself. Marina? I have no idea. If I can persuade wife may go to the Greyhound today for a pint and steak pie.

When I was a very small kid, the fields on the opposite side of the canal from the bend past Sutton Stop and the tip, there was an enormous amount of gorse, flowers and birds, truly a paradise to walk through, no traffic, no phones, just the song of nature, but Foleshill famous firm started dumping chemicals on that tip, and like the 'slough' everything was either killed or left the area. If only one could turn the clock back. Despite all the good advances we have made, I really believe we lost the golden ones.

Yes, Kaga, you are spot on then. You must also remember the skylarks that lived close by. Don't see them anymore. Went to the Greyhound today, good food, good company and good beer. Guess what, totally forgot to look at the site of the old "Lecky" works. Sue had to drive back, I'm not drunk and I don't care what thinkle peep.

There used to be a sewage works along the canal about halfway between Longford and Hawkesbury. I can remember the big circular structures. Are they still there or if not can anyone else remember them?

johnwright, I have no idea, never touched those fields, except once in the mid-thirties when a Tiger Moth landed somewhere behind the Engine pub, but I do remember the old night cart that travelled along Bedworth Road, I think right up to the fifties, but not sure.

Kaga, mon ami, you are quite wrong in asserting that night carts travelled along Bedworth Road right up to the 'fifties. All the houses on the west side enjoyed at least outside lavatories (often without night-time lights, of course) and the vicarage had inside plumbing. On the east side (the Engine side), after the small cottages that were knocked down to accommodate the southern car park of the Engine, all the houses on that side had outside lavatories until the north side of the Concrete works. Then the houses - built in the 20s/30s - had inside plumbing in all respects. These houses reached as far north as the Iron Bridge.

Longford Lad, good morning to you Maybe it was 1949 and I saw them twice in the dip just past Exhall, in fact I flagged one of them down about one in the morning before I realized my colossal mistake. I had walked a girl home to Coundon and missed the last bus. I was living in Pine Tree Ave, Beduth, at the time. Have no idea where they came from or where they were heading, made a lot of foolish mistakes when I was young. Answer me this please, when was the Red Hills called such, for I had never heard of it until this forum. Regards Kaga.

Kaga, for me the Red Hills ever were called such by locals, but I have no idea when it started or why. I was born in 1943, and became free to roam my rather circumscribed world at seven or eight (1950 or 1951). At that time, a gate beside where Morgana (albeit in a new house rather than the Victorian original) now lives in Lady Lane led to a narrow pathway to the Meeting Fields (where, I speculate, Baptists once gathered of a Sunday morning before Salem Baptist Church was built). Continuing my walk as a boy along the pathway adjacent to to the Salem cemetery, I eventually would face a dual prospect - to my left a great field (sloping to quite a height) of long grass - seldom cut - and to my right the Red Hills, essentially one magnificent (if not particularly prepossessing) hill that boasted many and various peaks that perhaps were man-made. Between these prospects was a footpath that led around to Rowley's Green Lane, passing the Bone Mill en route. The Red Hills certainly were not "red" as such, but I recall riding a mudguards-free bicycle around the wet from recent rain cycle-speedway track (atop the hills) and returning home to find that my formerly white shirt was now red and white (red at the back, white at the front). I believe I was censured (to say the least) by my mother. I recall that I was confined to a diet of bread and water for close to an hour. So I don't know why or when about the Red Hills, but I do have a distant memory that these hills comprised rubbish deposited (unofficially/without a permit). When first I mentioned the term on this site I noted that it was recognized immediately, but I now realize that who recognized the description were about my age or younger. Over to you now, Kaga, 'cos the hills must have had a name in your (somewhat earlier) time. Respecting the night carts on Bedworth Road that I recently stated did not figure in the Bedworth Road of my childhood, that road started at Longford Bridge and ended somewhere short of the Black Horse. What you may have seen to the north of this range falls outside my remit.