IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Churchill Avenue, COVENTRY, CV6 5JJ

View from Foleshill Road (B4113).

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

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 .

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 )

Foleshill Road is a significant arterial route north from Coventry city centre.

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.