IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Scimitar Way, COVENTRY, CV3 4GA

Beyond the fence an area of the business park is still being developed. Mature trees were once in the grounds of Whitley Abbey. A "Can I help you?" situation developed here. There was anxiety about car number plates being photographed by the agents of competitors of Jaguar Land Rover, in order to identify visitors to JLR's engineering R&D centre nearby.

Trees from the Whitley Abbey estate now stand by a 21st century road that serves business parks on the southern edge of Coventry. There is a fine mature oak in the centre; the tree in the distance at the far right, perhaps a common lime, has balls of mistletoe growing on its branches. Pond and school lie beyond. On the school, the long-vanished big house and the abbey that never was, see Image

The blue sign left of centre advertises industrial and office accommodation. Interesting mature trees in the distance around Whitley Abbey Comprehensive School, built on the site of Whitley Abbey.

This pond is marked as a Fish Pond on the Whitley Abbey estate on the OS Six Inch Map, 1885-1915 series. It is roughly reverse-S-shaped. The big house at Whitley was a manor house that was renamed 'Whitley Abbey' in the 19th century, though there was never a monastery here. It housed Belgian refugees during the First World War, then fell into decay. Coventry City Council built a school on the site in the 1950s; the school can be seen beyond the pond. See the Coventry Society site on Whitley https://www.coventrysociety.org.uk/coventry-neighbourhoods/whitley/ .

The Jaguar Landrover Centre is out of shot right. Leaf Lane goes left through woodland to Racquet Centre and Hotel. The new bridge will improve access to all this.

The fence is to the Whitley Abbey Comprehensive School site. The road, now a cycle route to Whitley and Willenhall, may once have connected a housing estate to a works (Armstrong-Whitworth?) on the site of the present Jaguar Land Rover Engineering Centre. The woodland could have been part of the Whitley Abbey estate.

In ignorance I'm assuming that this predominantly oak woodland was once part of the Whitley Abbey estate, cut up by roads and nibbled into by a business park and a school. It appears unmanaged as woodland and unstructured as public open space but is no less interesting for that. The scene shows the colours of late winter: grey bark, fading brown leaves, rich dark green of holly, growing like a weed.

Here Leaf Lane seems to be a car park, perhaps for contractor's staff working on the new bridge over the A444. The woodland setting could be a remnant of the Whitley Abbey estate. Leaf Lane (Howes Lane on old maps) is jolly odd. It sweeps along to the west of the A444, crosses it at Whitley Bridge, then takes a short haphazard course to a hotel and a sports centre. Was the council economising on road names?