IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Oxford Street, COVENTRY, CV1 5EH

The main entrance to & exit from the Fargo Village business centre. On the left can be seen the entrance to The Box, a performance and event space. In the distance is the end of a row of ribbon weavers' houses on Far Gosford Street, with their distinctive large 'top shop' windows.

Regeneration on one of Coventry's oldest streets. Note the Topshop.

Sky Blue Way is a stretch of dual carriageway connecting the Coventry Ring Road to the A444 Jimmy Hill Way. It was built in the 1980s to bypass the historic Far Gosford Street (and clearly the European Community chipped in). It was named after the colour of Coventry City Football Club, winners of the FA Cup in 1987, who at that time still played at the Highfield Road stadium nearby (Jimmy Hill had been the manager who had brought them to first division prominence some years earlier).

An accordion displayed in the window of the Slovianka Polish & Ukrainian restaurant (more correctly spelled Slowianka perhaps, but Slovianka appears on the sign outside). It has since been joined by on the windowsill by a Polish weighing scale of perhaps 1950s vintage.

Shops and restaurants near the junction with Binley Road. The shops seem to be single storey add ons in front of what were originally houses.

Far Gosford Street is an early suburb of Coventry that developed in the middle ages along the road east out of the city towards Leicester and London. It survived the air raids of the second world war and the redevelopment of the postwar years largely intact. It was declared a conservation area in the 1990s and in recent years has undergone a 'regeneration' programmed that has succeeded in reversing its decline without destroying its character, which rests both in its buildings and its independent businesses. https://www.coventrysociety.org.uk/news/article/new-heritage-group-for-far-gosford-street.html This section has a row of 19th century houses and commercial buildings with stucco facades, once known as Ashville Terrace. The gardens were covered over with extended shop fronts in the early 20th century. Anedo is a Nigerian chop house and bar; beyond it are a pizza house, a guitar shop, a Polish-Ukrainian restaurant ('Slovianka'), then two of the street's many barber shops, one of them East African. The larger three storey building beyond them was home to the Coronet Cycle Works at the end of the 19th century and later the Humber Motor Works; it was rebuilt after a fire in 1906. https://www.historiccoventry.co.uk/nowandthen/content.php?pg=humber-wks It lost its rear section to the construction of Sky Blue Way in the 1980s; the rest housed a branch of Lloyds Bank for many years. More information can be found in 'The Far Gosford Street Conservation Area: Brief History and Character Statement' at http://www.coventry.gov.uk