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Cromwell Street, COVENTRY, CV6 5EZ

This view shows Cobden Street looking south towards Red Lane; the block of flats in the distance is in Hillfields. Cobden Street was laid out in the 1850s as part of a development by the Coventry and Warwickshire Artizans Freehold Land Society. For more on this society see Image David Fry & Albert Smith suggest that a sense of the Society's members' political views can be gained from the street names they chose. Cobden refers to Richard Cobden, the radical and Liberal politician who formed the Anti-Corn Law League along with John Bright; the land society also laid out a Bright Street nearby. The League was a free trade movement that campaigned to end the protectionist corn laws, which taxed imported wheat to the benefit of landowners but at the cost of increased bread prices. Cobden & Bright succeeded in abolishing the corn laws in 1846, with belated support from the Tory prime minister Sir Robert Peel, after whom another of the streets is named. Cobden was later responsible for the 1860 Cobden-Chevalier free trade treaty with France, which led to the collapse of the Coventry ribbon weaving industry and the ruin of many local people, but the street name endured. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Cobden The development of the estate proceeded slowly, and many of the houses in this photo may date from later in the 19th century or even early 20th century, though the addition of insulating cladding in the 2010s has obscured many of the architectural clues; see the discussion in Fry, D & Smith, A, The Coventry we have lost: Forgotten Foleshill, Simanda Press, Berkswell, pp91-92. The area also suffered heavily from bombing in the second world war.

This factory shed was part of Coventry Ordnance Works, a large site between Stoney Stanton Road, Red Lane and the canal where armaments were made between 1900 and 1925. https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Coventry_Ordnance_Co https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Coventry_Ordnance_Works A plan of the site marks this building as containing the large machine shop, large erecting shop and large gun bay. https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/File:ImV103-p547.jpg The works closed in 1925, but, while the part of the factory on Ordnance Road, off Stoney Stanton Road, has long since been demolished, this unit has survived. It was in use as a warehouse for many years but now appears to be empty.

An enormous building. Amongst other things, First World War naval guns were made here.

From Stoney Stanton Road

Built in the late 19th century with single-skin external walls of red brick, these houses have in most cases been given a layer of external cladding for insulation, as part of a programme of energy conservation work undertaken by housing associations around 2013-15.

We are looking west along Peel Street towards Stoney Stanton Road, where a white shikhara or domed tower of the Hindu temple can be seen. This street was laid out in the 1850s as part of a development by the Coventry and Warwickshire Artizans Freehold Land Society. For more on this society see Image A sense of its members' political views can be gained from the street names; Peel refers to Sir Robert Peel, the Tory politician who served as prime minister from 1834–1835 and 1841–1846 and who played a central role in the formation of the modern Conservative Party. The development proceeded slowly, and the houses in this photo have a late 19th or early 20th century appearance; see the discussion in Fry, D & Smith, A, The Coventry we have lost: Forgotten Foleshill, Simanda Press, Berkswell, pp91-92. Many of the houses in this district now belong to housing associations, and in the 2010s they were given an external insulating cladding to improve their energy efficiency. This can be seen on some of the houses on the right hand side, particularly around the door visible at the right edge of the photo.

St Barnabas was built in 1933 by the Church of England, the fruit of a mission begun almost forty years earlier in what was then a rapidly expanding industrial district of the city; see the Victoria County History of Warwickshire Vol 8 pp361-7 https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/warks/vol8/pp361-367 . Today it belongs to a Christian community of Indian heritage. 'Masihi' means 'Christian' in Hindi (and also in Urdu and Persian).

The Growing Paradise community garden is looking very neglected. It is situated behind St. Barnabas Church of Masihi Sandesh at the crook of Oliver Street. This district of Coventry off Stoney Stanton Road is marked as Paradise on many maps.