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

Priory Place viewed through the Water Window Image

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.

On this Bank Holiday (January 2nd), a selection of vintage buses were being driven around Coventry. Here is one fine example outside the bus station.

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.

Ska'd for Life is a mosaic mural by Carrie Reichardt placed on Pool Meadow bus station as part of the UK City of Culture events in Coventry in 2021. A collage of images derived from record covers, photos and other artwork associated with the 2 Tone ska music scene of Coventry in the late 1970s and early 1980s, this work evokes a creative but edgy period in Coventry's recent history. The children of the Windrush generation of Caribbean migrants to the UK were reaching adulthood at a time of economic crisis and mass unemployment, when the Coventry motor industry was closing factories, leading to the 'Ghost Town' of the Specials' song Image Young black and white people were mixing socially and sharing common tastes in music, including Jamaican reggae and ska, but there was also racism and violence; 1981, the year of 'Ghost Town', also saw two racist murders in the city and the formation of Coventry against Racism. The 2 Tone scene, which originated in Coventry with Jerry Dammers and the Specials, drew together elements of ska and punk and its name alludes not only to a clothing style but to young black and white people coming together in a shared subculture. See Paul Gallagher at Dangerous Minds on 'An experiment waiting to happen', Pauline Black's description of 2 Tone https://dangerousminds.net/comments/an_experiment_waiting_to_happen_a_brief_history_of_two_tone_britain , also Wikipedia on 2 Tone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-tone_(music_genre) . Carrie Reichardt's site is here https://carriereichardt.com/ .

Near Coventry Transport Museum

(Close up) Off Hales Street at the junction with Trinity Street near Coventry Transport Museum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_CWR

This window sticker can also be seen in a window of the Transport Museum. Various Coventry sites have been assembled into a montage, from left to right: Greyfriars steeple; the Lady Godiva statue in Broadgate (looking rather snub-nosed here); the steeple of St. Michael's (the old cathedral); the old Bluecoat School building; the Whittle Arch in Millennium Place (the two boomerang shapes); the elephant-shaped sports building that straddles Priory Street; the steeple of Holy Trinity Church.

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).