IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Lakeside, BEDWORTH, CV12 8SP

A sign of the resumption of air travel as the Covid-19 pandemic recedes. A band of cirrus-like cloud forms a travel corridor across an otherwise clear sky. Photo taken at sunset from the waste ground at Hawkesbury; the Bedworth water tower can be seen on the horizon.

Bedworth's water tower, built in 1898 and now converted into luxury apartments, overlooks an otherwise bland suburban scene.

Built in 1898, the 45 metre tower is a prominent and very distinctive Bedworth landmark. After some years of disuse it was sold in 2015 for conversion into flats and now appears to be part of a gated luxury housing enclave. https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1116416 https://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/local-news/look-go-inside-bedworth-water-9528106

Bedworth's 45m (148ft) tall water tower, built in a simplified Romanesque style, is a prominent local landmark. It is dated 1898 but was not actually completed until 1900 and is now grade II listed. The tower supplied the town with water fed by gravity from a tank at the top; the water was extracted from an 84m (275ft) deep bore hole. That alone, however, was not sufficient to supply all the town's needs and additional water was pumped out of the Newdigate Colliery workings at a depth of about 460m (1500ft) - the colliery water was actually considered to be better quality. Today Bedworth's water is supplied from Welsh reservoirs and the tower was sold in 2015 for conversion to luxury apartments.

This plain commercial building is home to a rare survivor of the Coventry and Bedworth ribbon weaving industry, which largely collapsed in the 1860s. Whereas Cash's in Coventry survived by specialising in woven name tapes, Toye, Kenning & Spencer make coloured ribbons, braids and laces, for products such as military medals and uniforms and masonic regalia; the company holds a royal warrant for "Supply of Gold and Silver Laces, Insignia and Embroidery", hence the royal coat of arms displayed on the building. Metalwork is made in the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham, while the company has a shop in the west end of London. In its present form, the company dates from 1962, but it has its origins in 1685, when the Toyé family, French Protestant refugees ('Huguenots'), arrived in London, where they set up in the textile business they had practised in France. The Toye family continues to play a part in the business, which is privately-owned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toye,_Kenning_%26_Spencer

On Newtown Road.

The Old Black Bank Inn is on the B4113 at the boundary between Bedworth and Exhall. From the date in the gable the current pub dates from 1899, but the earliest large scale Ordnance Survey mapping currently available on line, dating from 1887, also shows a "Black Bank Inn", so evidently there was some form of beer house here serving the local mining community before the current pub was built. The pub has got a very good, informative, and well laid out website here http://www.theoldblackbank.co.uk/

On Black Bank.

At first glance this could be taken for a pub, albeit one housed in a particularly unattractive box of a building. It is, in fact, a private club whose full name is the Saunders Hall Working Men's Club. It is situated on Saunders Avenue close to the town centre.