Nostalgic tour around Coventry

To me, it is the memories and stories of forum members that makes the site so interesting. It is the detail that is always missing from history books. Most histories concentrate on 'the great and the good' and forget the experiences of other people's lives.

Hi Prof, Oh those ugly boomerangs (I know I know) well thankfully I don't have to look at them but, if you throw them away I hope you know you will get them back. I don't think they fit in at all.

The tales of recovering precious metal from aprons and floorboards reminds me of a tale from Courtaulds. In the 1970's they had a department called the 'Spinnerette' or something similar. It was explained to me that nylon threads were made by drawing the raw materiel through a metal plate which had lots of little holes drilled in it. These plates were made at the Spinnerette from platinum. I was told that the cleaning rags, overalls, and floor sweepings went to a specialist company who recovered the platinum dust and swarf. Perhaps someone who worked at Courtaulds could give a fuller explanation?

Hello all One of the specialist companies used by Courtaulds Spinnerette was Johnson Matthey, who had specialist equipment for recovering the most minute particles of metallic dust. What wasn't so cleaver was the ground that the Spinnerette building stood on. Having been reclaimed & filled in clay quarries belonging to Webster's, the whole building was sinking. It would not have been quite so bad if it had all sunk at the same rate, but in one room a door had become a window. Thank you both for your posts on this. I recently bumped into the general manager & his wife, shopping at the Ricoh. Sid ran the unit very well.

Forgive me, What were (are) the " Boomerangs"? I must have done my tour with my eyes closed. Sinking founds, and there`s me been saying Courtaulds Architects Dept. were brilliant or didn`t they speak to the Engineering Dept? I thought the only complaint about Courtaulds, was what came out of their chimneys, it was really "death" to wash day. (or was it somebody else?) and they got the blame Sorry I`m really off thread now, but I cannot let Courtaulds pass without mentioning the cricket ground and watching Warwickshire play there, particularly one game where Eric Hollies (our Eric) was knocking sixes of Roly Thompson the Worcestershire spin bowler and also the first appearance of Ray Hitchcock in Warwickshire colours after apparently working his passage from New Zealand - it was some sort of charity match and he got over 50 and look what a great player he became for them.He joined a good set of New Zealanders, Martin Donnelly, Tom Pritchard, Keith Dollery

Can't pm you as the system doesn't allow I think you mean Roly Jenkins There was a Roly Thompson, a Coventry kid who was a fast-medium bowler for Warwickshire

I think it is the 'vanes' on the footbridge they are calling boomerangs

Or is it these?

Midland Red 19 of 19 Sat 13th Sep 2014 8:24am Or is it these? Oh_my Ugg!!!!!!!

Of Course you are correct, Never (I don`t think) saw Roly Thompson play, didn`t he follow the Tom Pritchard and Charlie Grove era? Have we a thread on Warwickshire Cricket memories?

Roly Thompson on Wikipedia

There' the ones I thought looked like boomerangs MR - don't you think ?