Smithford Street (inc. Ram Bridge)

Dreamtime, it was the corner of Hertford Street and was Piggott's Boot and Shoe Warehouse. The little chappie in the window with the odd hat is Peeping Tom.

Finally, the Sadler images have been added to the Coventry Archives site. Richard Sadler was a photographer who documented Cov's post-war recovery. With the ability to zoom in here it's the best detail of the era of the original City Arcade area I've seen.

Btw, spot the lad with his head popping over the wall!

Neil, have you noticed the building behind him is the one we were debating if it was the M&S on the corner of Vicar Lane? It turns out it was a Woolies.

Yes I did notice that Helen, but now, if to the side of it was where Vicar Lane ran, how was there room for the M&S building? So did the same one become Woolies?

Vicar Lane was further to the left than we initially thought. Map There was a building between M&S and the City Arcade. The Woolies was behind that. You can see them building the Arcade in this photo.

Helen, this one shows up that area well, including the building mentioned and the line of Vicar Lane, plus what was Market Street opposite (I think?!).

What a good view! I often forget to look fully at the post war photos for clues about the pre-war stuff. A very good pre-repair view of Ford's before they demolished part of the back. Good view of Union Street and the church. Thanks, Neil! What did I write about looking at the same pictures again and again?

It's also a great shot of the old City Arcade - I hadn't realised it was so long!

The city was changing very rapidly in the early 1900s. The war and the varied recovery rates present another difficulty placing images on an exact timeline. I think that the aerial shots must be considered robustly dated because they were official records with a dateable flight. Newspaper articles should be mostly taken as accurately dated too unless there's a good reason not to. So to get a continuous strip of buildings along any street, and Smithford Street in particular, would have to involve a specific date, preferably one with both an aerial view and a map. I'll be honest, I've only just noticed that the meeting house had been replaced by at least 1937 with those white Art Deco buildings in the last photo I posted. The 1935 aerial shot shows a gap where the meeting house had been. The Co-op buildings are dateable due to the book all about the organisation. We have good images of the buildings that came before. Sometimes it's possible to put images in order of date (eg the protective walls surrounding the destroyed buildings would have followed the removal of the rubble and the fences) but we don't necessarily know an exact year for when the events happened. I'm currently trying to date buildings roughly based on their window designs, to leave me with ones that were possibly renovated, pre-Civil War properties. There was a huge amount built in the early 1800s, including all of Hertford Street. To pinpoint an exact year is even harder as styles could extend over 50 years or more. From those shop images Anne posted, we know that John Perris was almost opposite Stroud's but the images are clearly from different dates. From the directories I know that Stroud's was there much earlier than John Perris but not if they overlapped at any point. It's a lifetime's job to produce a timeline of images for every building of just that street. Assuming that it was even possible.

Neil, this is a similar view to your earlier post but it is 1942, taken from a tatty booklet I have called "The City we loved"

I notice that there is still fence and no walls round the cleared buildings.

Yes, Helen, it is all very open. I was actually looking (still!) for a view of the Leopard Inn, 64 Smithford Street. I have found out it closed as a pub when the license was removed in 1938. A couple of years later the premises became Jackson the Tailor until it was destroyed in the blitz. There are no buildings in that location on the 1946 BFA. I have worked out that it was a couple of doors away from the junction of Market Street towards Broadgate.

The Leopard is visible on this image There's another but not as 'good'. I'll send you a copy of a rather ropey picture. Your sketch is the best image I've seen.

Thanks for that Helen, it was quite a narrow building. That would have been in that area that is completely flattened by 1946. Just lost the White Lion on that one though!