IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Cloverdale Close, COVENTRY, CV6 4PZ

The photo shows the crossing where the Blackberry Lane footpath passes over the mineral line, as it appeared on a snowy day in January 2021. The line was built to connect Coventry Colliery (see here Image]) to the railway line from Coventry to Nuneaton. This photo shows the view eastwards towards the main line. The track has been preserved and incorporated into the Prologis Park business estate which occupies the site of the colliery, but it has not been used for rail traffic and a fence now crosses the line by this crossing, to discourage trespassers.

The path runs alongside overgrown allotments to the right and a stream overhung with trees to the left. The railings to the left fence off a steep drop to where the stream emerges from a culvert.

Rookery Lane ran from Rookery Farm in Keresley to the crossroads in Ash Green, where it crossed Wheelwright Lane and joined what is now St. Giles Road, but was then Dead Lane (perhaps because the dead were carried that way to their final resting place in St. Giles churchyard). A track continued south from Rookery Farm to Nunts Lane. This, at least, is the picture given by the OS Six Inch maps of the 1888-1913 series. https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/side-by-side/#zoom=17&lat=52.45525&lon=-1.51101&layers=6&right=OSAPI The landscape was subsequently rearranged by the building of Coventry colliery, now the site of Prologis Park, and by the advance of suburban Coventry. The northern section of the lane, from Ash Green to the edge of Prologis Park has become Blackberry Lane. Rookery Farm has disappeared under the grounds of President Kennedy school, while the track to Nunts Lane has become a built-up, suburban Rookery Lane. In between these two roads, paths run among trees around the edge of Prologis Park. The building with the 'broken pediment' roof is Ashbrook Court, a Prologis Park office block built around 2004.

The NCB was the National Coal Board, the statutory corporation which ran the state-owned coal mining industry of the UK from 1947 to 1987, prior to the selling-off of the remaining assets. The Prologis business park occupies the site of the Coventry Colliery, which closed in 1991, and the Homefire smokeless fuel plant, which closed in 2000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coventry_Colliery

Though allotments sites in Coventry are generally well-used, these seem increasingly overgrown and derelict. To become another housing site, perhaps. A path runs round the side to more housing and then to Prologis Park.

The gate to the allotments is to the left, the gate to the path straight ahead. The path turns to the left almost immediately and runs along the side of the allotments, which are bordered by a row of Lombardy poplars. To the right of the path is a small stream that emerges from a culvert among trees. The path continues to Blenheim Walk, a suburban street, then joins the Rookery Lane-Blackberry Lane path that crosses the disused mineral line and the approach road to Prologis Park and continues to Ash Green.

A bright and frosty morning on Blackberry Lane in January 2021.

The sunrise gilds the autumnal trees on the shore of this pond in the Prologis Country Park by Ash Green, on the northern outskirts of Coventry. The pond has suffered severely from the effects of the fire that destroyed a cosmetics warehouse behind the trees on the 19th August 2021. The fire service drew water from the pond to extinguish the blaze; pollution leaching from the destroyed warehouse killed fish, and foam could be seen covering the pond surface as the Environment Agency pumped air into the water to aerate it. The sweetish smell of the warehouse contents was still noticeable in the air over two months later. See this report in the Coventry Telegraph https://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/local-news/more-dead-fish-found-behind-21400316 .

On a roadside fence in Coventry a sign in Hungarian warns that the land behind it is private and to keep out. Similar signs in many languages once adorned this stretch of fence. Many have disappeared, removed perhaps by souvenir hunters, but signs remain in English, Italian, Lithuanian and Polish as well as Hungarian. The road forms the approach to an industrial park. Long distance lorry drivers parked up here frequently, and perhaps some relieved themselves behind the fence.

This is the larger of the two large artificial ponds in the country park. It is situated at the eastern end of the site, near to Blackberry Lane. The park adjoins, and belongs to, the Prologis Park industrial and warehouse development. The ponds are well-used by water birds. At the time that the photo was taken, it was possible to approach the water, but in 2020 the pond and its smaller neighbour to the west were fenced off.