IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Benedict Square, COVENTRY, CV2 1QZ

Looking north west.

Framed by a willow tree, three four-storey housing blocks can be seen, part of a row of nine that stretch the length of Purcell Road in a sinuous double curve. The River Sowe flows among the trees to the left behind the garages. The photo was taken from Henley Road.

Looking south west.

The German discount supermarket chains Aldi and Lidl are well known in Britain and Ireland. Aldi built a store in Bell Green, Coventry, on Roseberry Avenue at the junction with Henley Road. It closed in 2019. Step in Ari Mustafa, a local businessman who runs a chain of Euro Supermarket stores in the city. He turned the empty building into a 'Lido' store, clearly a 'knock-off' homage to Lidl. "The food we will sell will be English, Polish, Romanian, Turkish, Bulgarian," he told Coventry Live in 2021; "Bell Green is an area where there is a good mix of people, and this will be a supermarket that reflects that..." (see the Coventry Telegraph site https://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/plans-unveiled-empty-aldi-supermarket-20766081 ) . Polish food predominates, with a large range of charcuterie (cooked meat, especially smoked sausage) at the deli counter. Lido is an Italian term for a beach, associated especially with the Lido di Venezia beach which surrounds the lagoon in which Venice stands. In Britain 'lido' became the name of a type of outdoor public swimming pool; see Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lido .

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 quite a large urban park set amidst typical suburban housing.

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

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

Council flats, part of the Riley Square development.