IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Priory Place, COVENTRY, CV1 5SA

A view of Priory Place with the new BBC Coventry & Warwickshire Open Centre not yet ready for business. During the building of Priory Place the builders discovered remains of a....priory! including a stained glass image of Lady G herself. Before they could carry on building Baldrick turned up with his wacky jumpered mates and Time Team ran two programmes from here.

Priory Place viewed through the Water Window Image

This view from Priory Row is a juxtaposition of old and new typical of Coventry city centre. In the centre of the picture can be seen the stained, off-white exposed concrete of the 1960s brutalist Britannia Hotel and, behind it, the brighter white of the CODE student flats on Fairfax Street built around 2019. To the right, in the middle distance, is part of a more celebrated 1960s structure, the new cathedral. In the left foreground is part of the mid-19th century addition to the 15th century timber-framed houses on Priory Row known as 'Lychgate Cottages'. Just above the ivy-covered sandstone wall in the centre of the photo are the horizontal lines of the Priory Visitor Centre, part of the early 21st century Priory Place redevelopment; the centre has been closed for some years.

Unlovely modernism: the brutalist, bare-concrete Britannia Hotel, seen from the back, poised over Fairfax Street like a giant sewing machine. It was built in 1972 as the De Vere Hotel; the architects were G R Stone and J Ward. https://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/1962/3/Coventry%20Guide%202%20Corrected.pdf The contrast between this building and the historic houses and church architecture above it, around Hill Top, is one of the most striking, or jarring, of many such juxtapositions in central Coventry. Beyond the hotel can be seen Pool Meadow bus station.

Seen from a narrow ginnel with steps that leads from Priory Place down to Faifax Street, which is crossed by the Britannia Hotel (formerly the De Vere Hotel).

The spires of the old cathedral and Holy Trinity dominate the skyline.

A bendybus on route 4 loads on Fairfax Street in Coventry city centre. For some routes, Fairfax Street, just outside Pool Meadow bus station, is now the main city centre boarding point. The bus station is just out of frame to the left.

The view along Fairfax Street to the Britannia Hotel.

On Fairfax Street https://uk.hotels.com/ho144260/britannia-hotel-coventry-coventry-united-kingdom/