IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Roseberry Avenue, COVENTRY, CV2 1NB

Dewis House, the centrepiece of Riley Square, is in the background. The view is from Roseberry Avenue.

Council flats, part of the Riley Square development.

Flats on Roseberry Avenue are just behind the camera. The tower block, Dewis House, is on the left.

Blue fabric is a sign of refurbishment; much more elsewhere on this city council-built development. Through the gap, trees fringe the River Sowe.

Samuel Hayward House is on the left. The view is from the turning for the Riley Square car parks Image

A 40 to Coventry city centre via Foleshill loads on Roseberry Avenue outside Bell Green shopping precinct. A large proportion of the shops in the precinct have housing perched atop them.

This is a view of three-storey blocks of flats on Roseberry Avenue, on the Bell Green estate in Coventry, seen from underneath Samuel Hayward House in Riley Square Image The flats face towards Riley Square and the road and back onto the open green spaces of the Sowe Valley floodplain. Modern Bell Green was built by Coventry Corporation in the 1950s and 60s to the designs of the city architect Donald Gibson and his successor Arthur Ling.

This is a view underneath Samuel Hayward House Image], where it straddles the south-eastern entrance to Riley Square on pilotis or pillars. In the far distance, across the shopping precinct, can be seen a similar block of council flats over shops, Alice Arnold House. It is named after the first woman to become mayor of Coventry, in 1937. Born into poverty in the city workhouse, Arnold worked in factories from the age of 11, became a trade union organiser, then an independent Labour councillor on the city council; see Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Arnold_(mayor) . To the left, behind the parked cars, is the base of the 17-storey housing block Dewis House. To the right is a supermarket building, now occupied by Farmfoods, with a Polish food shop beyond. It was built by Sainsburys in 1969 and occupied by them for twenty years; see the Sainsburys Archive site, which includes historic photos of Riley Square https://sainsburyarchive.org.uk/catalogue/search/branch/ref/p1127-coventry-bell-green-riley-square-1969-1989-sainsburys-branch/view_as/list . For more on Riley Square see Image

Behind the long block of flats is Riley Square – a shopping precinct with a multistorey block of flats at its centre. The River Sowe runs through open spaces to the east and north. Nearby area names – Alderman's Green, Hall Green, Wood End, Little Heath – are characteristic of Arden, and very similar to names in northwest Warwickshire and northeast Worcestershire.