Alpha House seen from across Barras Heath, Stoke, Coventry
Introduction
The photograph on this page of Alpha House seen from across Barras Heath, Stoke, Coventry by A J Paxton as part of the Geograph project.
The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
There are currently over 7.5m images from over 14,400 individuals and you can help contribute to the project by visiting https://www.geograph.org.uk
Alpha House seen from across Barras Heath, Stoke, Coventry
Image: © A J Paxton Taken: 14 Jun 2021
Barras Heath was a piece of common land in the parish of Stoke and survives as a public park. https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/warks/vol8/pp96-104 Alpha House is a 17-storey housing block built by Coventry city council in 1962-3. It was designed by Arthur Ling & H Stanley Smith and was built by Costain using the Dutch 'jackblock' method, the first building in the UK to be so constructed. https://www.towerblock.eca.ed.ac.uk/development/barras-heath Essentially the roof was constructed first and raised on jacks, followed by the top floor, the whole structure being built from the top downwards and jacked up steadily, with lower floors inserted one by one below. Once complete, it was anchored to the foundations (Mercia House in the Lower Precinct was also built by this method, which did not catch on). Alpha House was renovated in 2010 and clad with aluminium panels. https://news.coventrysociety.org.uk/2020/10/19/alpha-house-that-jacks-built/
Images are licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0
Image Location
Latitude
52.416147
Longitude
-1.483297