IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
School Road, BEDWORTH, CV12 9JB

Bulkington Congregational Church built 1811, restored 1883. Viewed from the manse.

I apologise for the quality of this photograph, but it was one of my first photos, and it was taken on a Polaroid camera. I just managed to capture the demolition of the old Bulkington library before it was reduced to a pile of bricks. The moulded lettering on the gable end informs us that it was built as council offices in 1908. The entrance to the building was through the blue door that you see in the centre of the building. This led to a small lobby, from which the library was in the room to the right, lit by the 3 large windows. I remember it being a very cold building, heated only by a large cast iron stove. This building was demolished, along with the cottage next door to the right, to make way for the present library on the same site.

At this date the farmhouse looked very much as it must have done 100 years previously. It stood on the opposite side of the driveway which also gave access to the library seen in ImageI remember the land in the foreground of the photo being used as an allotment plot. In approximately 1980 this land in the foreground was used as the site for a new office building, and the old farmhouse was demolished in 1981.

The Manse, circa 1840, lies adjacent to the Chapel building and has been the home to the Congregational Church pastor for the past two centuries.

The east side of the street showing the block of shops and flats which were built about 1965. From left the shops are : newsagents; hairdressers; Barclays bank; VG Foodstore; Joe Coral bookmakers; Launderette; R.B.Burnell chemist. At this point in time the plot of land to the right of the photograph was still vacant - the shops and flats there were built in the late 1970's.

On Leicester Street, the village's commercial centre.

The west side of the street showing the new shops and flats which were built about 1968. From left the businesses are: Ford & Locke Gents Outfitters; Sizza's hairdressers; the fruit & veg shop which seems to be missing a sign at this point; Ken's Fish Inn fish & chip shop; Draper & Sons butchers; the chinese takeaway; a shop I can't remember; Midland Bank and Spar supermarket. In the middle background can be seen a Midland Red bus - a Leyland National which must be one of the first examples of the type.

At the time this photo was taken, this terrace had just been refurbished in what I thought at the time, and still do, a most insensitive manner. Formerly pleasant brick faced Victorian properties with sash windows, they had been rendered and the windows had been replaced with mock-georgian ones which were totally different to those windows they replaced.