IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Arabella Walk, COVENTRY, CV3 1JX

Manufacturer of telecom equipment, formerly the GEC Telephone Works. Sadly a shadow of its former self after years of cutbacks, the result of technology change, the 1990s telecom boom and bust and more recently, foreign competition. Update September 2010: All but one of the buildings on this site were demolished in 2010 to make way for a residential development.

A residential development by Morris Homes on the site of the Marconi works. The derelict Copsewood Grange is behind the camera: Image

The Spires, a residential development by Morris Homes, is taking shape around it. It was built in 1872, on the site of the plain, two-storey Copsewood House. It was home to the Moon family, perhaps from 1814. The 4th Baronet Moon died in 1979. An old OS map of 1925 shows the new Peel-Conner telephone works, later GEC, later Marconi, to the west of the house, and a golf course to the east running down to the River Sowe below Binley Bridge. Allard Way, first shown on a map of 1992, severed the golf course, which has transferred to land east of the river. My understanding is that Copsewood Grange became the social centre for Marconi's workers. It sits among some very fine mature specimen trees. At the time of writing, 2016, Kevin Croucher's 2005 photo and description Image is our only record of this major industrial site. Sources: old-maps.co.uk and David McGrory: The Illustrated History of Coventry's Suburbs: Breedon Books, 2003, ISBN 1 85983 343 8

Weir Way or Brindle Avenue? Maps disagree. The Spires is a housing development by Morris Homes on the Marconi site.

Looking south east.

The bizarrely-named Momus Boulevard runs alongside a stretch of Binley Road as it heads eastwards out of Coventry through the extensive suburb of Stoke. Here we find ourselves a short way along, at the junction with Anthony Way. At the corner stands a unexpectedly handsome building with a chamfered corner which is topped by a Dutch gable above an arched window, with the front porch below. It is now the office of a construction firm. Beyond it extends a long terrace of tudorbethan suburbia, very Motor City between-the-wars. Momus was the Greek god of satire and mockery and 'the troll of ancient Greece', in the words of Sonia Pertsinidis. According to Aesop he was thrown out of Olympus by Zeus for his carping criticism of the gods' creations, complaining that a house built by Athena should have been made with wheels so that the occupant could escape bad neighbours. https://aesopsfox.blog/2017/06/05/the-troll-of-ancient-greece-momus/ Perhaps this is the Coventry connection: Momus thought she should have made a car, or perhaps a motor home.