IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Fisher Road, COVENTRY, CV6 5HU

The community centre sits on the Foleshill Road and is well used by the local population.

This place of worship is called Jagat Guru Valmik Ji Maharaj Temple and is dedicated to the sage and poet Valmiki, author of the Ramayana, the epic which tells of Prince Rama liberating Princess Sita from the demon-king Ravana. It occupies a former parcel sorting office which was bought by the Valmiki community in 1978; one of their members worked for Royal Mail. A community centre, which is used as a langar hall for serving food, was added ten years later. The Valmikis, like the Ravidassia community Image], have a long history of struggling against caste prejudice and oppression. Both communities combine elements of Sikh and Hindu tradition. The first members of the Valmiki community came to Coventry from northern India in the 1950s. More followed in the 1960s, many from Kenya, which they were forced to leave after the country became independent of Britain. The temple website gives a history of the community in Coventry http://mvscoventry.org.uk/?page_id=74633.

The sign outside advertises a social supermarket which opened in the centre in 2020, selling donated food at a very low price to members on low incomes. https://www.coventry.ac.uk/news/2020/social-supermarket/ 'Everybody needs beauty as well as bread' is a quotation from the Scottish-American naturalist John Muir https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2019-3-may-june/editor/everybody-needs-beauty (cf. 'bread for all, and roses too' from the US women's suffrage campaigner Helen Todd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_Roses )

This is a pair of semi-detached houses with protruding shop fronts at 799 & 801 Foleshill Road, seen from the rear. This area of Foleshill was known as Parting of the Heaths and possessed a number of three-storey weavers' houses with the tall 'top shops' that housed the high Jacquard looms. A postcard from 1906 shows groups of these houses facing onto Foleshill Road and is reproduced on p47 of David Fry & Albert Smith's The Coventry we have lost: Forgotten Foleshill (Simanda Press, 2018). These two much-altered houses are the only survivors.

View from Foleshill Road (B4113).

The Kurdistan Tandoori Naan takeaway on Foleshill Road has, on its side wall, a ghost sign for Spratt's Dog Food, the Spratt's name forming its distinctive terrier shape. Wikipedia tells us that Spratt's was founded in London around 1860 by the American James Spratt, and that the company pioneered hoarding or billboard advertisements in Britain and was one of the most heavily advertised brands in the early 20th century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spratt's .

This distinctive Coventry landmark dates from 1997 and forms the junction of the two main road routes north out of the city: the historic Foleshill Road and the 1990s dual carriageway of the A444, originally named Phoenix Way and since renamed Jimmy Hill Way, after the former Coventry City football club manager. This area of Foleshill was once known as Parting of the Heaths and was a centre of cottage industry weaving ribbons. The sculpture was the idea of Will Farrell, then a student at the local Foxford School, and alludes to the historic textile industry and to the blue of woad dye, which has become the colour associated with Coventry. See this article in the Coventry Telegraph, '25 years of Coventry's most famous roundabout' (5th March 2022) https://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/25-years-coventrys-most-famous-23290921 , also Image], which views the roundabout from the opposite direction, looking north.

The Blue Ribbon roundabout forms the junction between Foleshill Road, the historic main road north out of Coventry, and the A444 Jimmy Hill Way, the modern dual carriageway out of the city, which was built in the 1990s as Phoenix Way. It was renamed after the death of Jimmy Hill, the former Coventry City FC manager, in 2015. Though both are north-south roads, the S-curve of Jimmy Hill Way, which is in part built along the route of a railway, causes it to cross the straighter Foleshill Road almost at a right angle at this roundabout. The blue ribbon sculpture alludes to the silk ribbon weaving industry, the dominant trade in Coventry in the 18th and 19th centuries until around 1860. Blue dye made from woad, a plant related to indigo, was also strongly associated with Coventry, 'as true as Coventry blue'. The northern continuation of Foleshill Road can be seen to the right of the picture.