IT’S an age old argument. Which is better, the Coventry of today or yesteryear?
I heard it during my childhood, listening to my grandparents and great-grandparents talk of the city they grew up in compared to the city I knew.
And that city I knew changed almost constantly when I was a child, and then an adult. I documented some of the change for the Coventry Citizen and Coventry Evening Telegraph, heard all the spiel about why the demolition of much-loved shops was good for the city (in terms of Smithford Way for the ‘Debenham’s development) or the loss of green space (Broadgate, for the ‘Bedouin Tent’).
Those with a vested interest in the new championed it.
Those with memories in the past decried it. Mostly.
I hated the idea of Coventry as the Phoenix City. It was a phrase trotted out when the backers of any particular scheme wanted to curry favour with the CET, hoping it would help persuade its readership back then of the merits of change. It was like ticking off phrases on a city council bingo card.
Investment. Jobs. Enhancement of the cityscape. Confidence in the city. Phoenix City.
We could argue the realities. We could argue, thanks to hindsight, that we lost more than we gained. Of course, some people benefitted from the developments I witnessed during my time in my city, the stories of which have yet to be told, unearthed or made public.
Could Coventry have done without the Cathedral Lanes development? The grassy Broadgate island of my childhood had been taken over by drunks, with anti-social behaviour a growing issue in the 1980s. But moves were afoot to tackle those issues, driven by the public drinking ban.
Could we have kept the old lending library and that haven in the middle of the city, rather than succumb to the promised payout of developers?
As a reporter, listening to the positive spin of councillors, council officials and developers, I often wondered why Coventry had to become a city like any other in the country, rather than pursue its own identity.
As industry faltered, it was completely understandable that the great brick monoliths of a once-proud past could not be left to rot in dereliction. As businesses folded, something had to be made of the sites they occupied.
But I felt with each development, from the building of the ring road onwards, meant we saw less and less of the Three Spires, apart from glimpses here and there. A huge selling point of the historic Coventry hidden behind ‘award-winning multi-storey car parks’, the dreadful Ikea monstrosity and student developments transforming the city skyline.
That’s my personal opinion, born out of my own experience of my city, and my understanding of others’ experiences, either family, friends or the countless people I interviewed down the years about their time in Coventry.
If the city fathers had not had their way of the redesigns of the 1920s and 1930s, Coventry’s main selling point to tourists could have been as a medieval city, akin to York. But could it, really, have stood still?
When I was at the CET, I remember being asked by a tourist in the grounds of the Cathedral Ruins, what it must have been like in medieval Coventry. I suggested they walk along to the ruins of St Mary’s Cathedral and then step inside Holy Trinity for a moment where modern day and medieval city merge. Then to St Mary’s Guildhall.
I was told that the tour operator had an hour in Coventry on their way to Stratford-upon-Avon, with just enough time to experience the ‘old and new Cathedrals’. Years later, when I’d moved onto pastures new in the world of journalism and left Coventry behind, I was somewhat appalled to see top of the attractions Coventry possessed on a ‘tourism website’ the Anne Summers store. Amazing what impact money can have on a city, eh?
And that’s probably the problem for many of a certain age. The law of diminishing returns on who benefits.
When Triumph and Lea Francis built factories in the city, it meant jobs for thousands, passing trade for dozens of shops, theatres, pubs, and cinemas. The world has changed. No more factories offering work for the masses, one main theatre, fewer pubs than I used to frequent in the 1980s and 1990s and one cinema complex. And shopping? People do it online. Coventry is not alone in being reduced to charity shops, betting shops and empty shops. The retail experience of my childhood, from Barnby’s to the old WH Smith in Hertford Street, Davies Sports, and many more fuel a nostalgic dream. The smell of the old library next to Holy Trinity, the amazing selection of all things camping and work-wise in Lynes. The old model planes with cut-outs in the travel shops in Corporation Street and Upper Well Street, opposite the Telegraph buildings.
The aroma of Fishy Moores. Hamilton News when it was in Fairfax Street, up from Paynes Music Shop and E G O’Rourkes Chemists. So much has gone. What’s replaced it hasn’t had the same magic for me.
But the world is different.
And it’s not just Coventry.
I live near Truro in Cornwall. It has suffered the same retail decline as places like Coventry, but it’s cathedral, a Victorian behemoth built on the site of and incorporating the former parish church, is visible everywhere. It towers over the city, from the hills, the valley, the water…east, west, north and south.
It has a rich history, but its centrepiece, not yet 150 years old, stands proud above the city skyline. If you’re heading there, you can’t miss it.
Maybe Coventry missed a trick after all.
mark a forster 