Smithford Street (inc. Ram Bridge)

Smithford St from High St

Once again Kaga, you beautifully paint a picture to help us youngsters (!) understand how things were during those unique times. Thank you.

Rob, This great photo is what I meant

Ah yes Kaga, 1946 - perhaps the last anyone saw of Broadgate in that state before it was all swept away ready for the laying out of the new Garden Island? By that time the council had already given their exhibition the previous year, with all those artists' impressions of how it would look the following decade. I wonder if the people back then were as cynical as we are nowadays? Whenever we see those blue-skied, idealistic impressions now, our first thoughts tend to be something like "it'll never end up looking that nice"!

Rob, You can see all those little walls, no new building of any type, and it was the end of the tram era. You can also see Martin's Bank in the High Street where they cut back to. Burton's tidied up the ground floor, kept open, but I don't think there was any transport down Smithford Street. I have no idea of those exhibitions and what people thought, I was missing for three years. That photo was the city for over five years.

By 1955 Coventry was beginning to look quite ugly. Broadgate was now surrounded on three sides by ugly square buildings with four small openings, the fourth side still temp buildings. The Precinct opened into a bowl of two square buildings, the Leofric and Broadgate House, no different to the factories of Victorian times. The south side, a bowl shape of shops that stopped two shops below Woolies, on the opposite side was a row of boards that still hid rubble, down as far as West Orchard. Below that, still broken buildings patched up, none of the designs came up to Victorian times. Inside they may have had toilets and lifts, but the outside was dismal. Certainly not what Coventry people of those times were expecting. That area had been pleasant and easy to the eye to shop in, but not anymore, and what it led to, no longer to buy one of anything, now it was a pack of things, when you only need one. The rest that you forget where you put them. Fings ain't what they used ter be.

Kaga's post 380. This is Broadgate just as I remember it. With the boy next door (seven year olds) we went to town on our own to climb the Cathedral tower. Also remember Smithford St (387) like that.

The demise of Smithford Street buildings clearly seen on this photo, recently added on FB

Very interesting picture MR. The modern town centre has me thoroughly confused. So by my calculation, ruins of the bridge is the Ram Bridge? So the hard surface coming in from the left in the foreground heading all the way to the right with the black car and also the road with the 2 cars on the right is West Orchard? The road left to right is Smithford Street? and this would be the Lower Precinct? It's hard to tell if those are the remains of the Co-op building or foundations for the next stage of the Precinct.

Yes Helen, I believe that white block, middle right of the picture with the lorry in front of it is sitting right on top of the old ram bridge. To me the photo is taken from West Orchard that sweeps round down the right side of the photo and across to Fleet Street, level with the new Woolies.

Kaga I have the advantage in that I copied the picture and made it bigger. You can then see the arch of the bridge to the left of the lorry - almost the centre of the picture, hiding behind a massive beam. There was talk of opening up views of the river. Well we now know where this bit is. Just next to what is now Boots. The river looks like it runs just to the right of this walkway.

Not totally sure if they were supposed to be doing this but there are some great underground photos of a walk underneath the city here - including possibly where Ram was.

Helen Going back to post 391 - to me I believe the street with True Form shop is Smithford Street and the building above the tunnel with the workman on top is the White Lion. But there had been two smaller bridges. Greyfriars Green was once Cheylesmore Green and the old manor house of Cheylesmore was before its enclosure within the city wall surrounded by a moat fed by springs, the water of which was carried off by a stone-culverted overflow under LPS and MPS and extended to the Sherbourne in Gosford Street (traces of excavating). There was also another moated enclosure, outside the city wall, known as Crow Moat (belonged to the manor). It was at the junction of Most Street and York Street in the Butts. The water flowed from it down a ditch into the Sherbourne - on a plan in 1807 it was showed as an enclosed field and known as Crow Lane and over a bridge across the Sherbourne and so up Crow Lane, a second and smaller bridge over a small brook to Spon Street. Crow Lane did not extend in a straight line beyond the bridge, Albion Street not yet built. Around 1700 some very large elms surrounded it, hence the name. Adjoining the river was Rotherhams dye works who washed their silks in the river.

Yes Kaga, the street running left (east) to right (west) is Smithford Street. The photo view is looking roughly to the south. My guestimate would be that the White Lion was either demolished at this point or off to the left. The building on the line of the river is part of the new construction. The section of the Sherbourne exposed in the photo had been built over in the second phase of Co-op development between West Orchard and Smithford Street. Underneath the Precinct buildings the river kicks to the right (west) towards Crow Lane bridge. Most of that was visible before the Precinct, market and car park was built.