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Book Launch: David Fry ‘The Coventry We Have Lost: Forgotten Foleshill’

10.30am -3.30pm 
Coventry Archives & Research Centre

Come into the Archives for this book launch with author David Fry who will be signing copies of his new book ‘The Coventry We Have Lost: Forgotten Foleshill’.

Foleshill is the largest and most diverse of Coventry’s suburbs with a complicated but fascinating history. For many centuries it has had no clear centre, just a series of scattered hamlets that have spread out over the twentieth century to join up into one large suburban area. 

 



Foleshill is not just the Foleshill Road but also Longford, Bell Green, Alderman’s Green, Hawkesbury, Courthouse Green, the Stoney Stanton Road and even part of Holbrooks.

Although Foleshill looks a bit of a muddle today, old photographs and estate plans help to show the pattern of its growth from a late nineteenth century semi-rural parish. 



In the nineteenth century when large landowners restricted development in other directions, Foleshill offered the city the main opportunity for expansion for housing and industry. This has continued during the twentieth century, but war and redevelopment have meant that only old photographs reveal the change from old fields to a built-up area.



David Fry has been interested in Coventry’s industrial history since working as a teacher in the city from the 1970s. Albert Smith has worked in many aspects of the city’s post-war engineering industry and has experienced at first hand the boom and bust periods, as well as a spell working in Detroit. 


Their mutual interest in old Coventry photographs and photographers led to the publication of their first books in the 1990s. But now both are retired they have more time to write books to promote an appreciation of the unique character of the different areas of Coventry.
The book is available to buy from the History Centre at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum and the author’s website.

 

 

Images:
Cash’s Ribbon Factory on the canalside at Foleshill (1870)
Lockhurst Lane, Old bridges over the railway (1923)
Foleshill, Narrow Lane (1913)