IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Foleshill Road, COVENTRY, CV6 6GS

A row of shops on Foleshill Road, Coventry. First, a Romanian food shop, 'Danielo, ce avem noi aici? Un minimarket costele'. Then more food shops interspersed with barbers, then a bright mural on a gable end announcing an antique and salvage business. The cars badly parked on the pavement are characteristic of Foleshill Road, too.

The underwater-themed mural and model dragons announce the 888 Emporium antique and salvage business, situated in a yard behind the Triple Ate Batch Bar, both at 888 Foleshill Road. The mural is signed by Off Key. The blue is Coventry sky blue; on the chimney is painted, Sky Blue Heaven, Eighty-Seven, referring to the year, 1987, when Coventry City won the FA Cup.

The Ramgarhia Gurdwara is a Sikh temple (gurdwara) on a prominent site at 1103 Foleshill Road, further out of town than most other Coventry gurdwaras. Its website is here http://ramgarhiagurdwara.com/ , but has nothing to say about its history. It was founded in 1965, according to the Victoria County History of Warwickshire, Vol 8, pp396-397 https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/warks/vol8/pp396-397 . A brief TV news clip of the opening of the new building in 1969 can be seen here https://www.macearchive.org/films/midlands-news-07111969-opening-sikh-temple-coventry . The new structure shown in the news report is attached to a row of terraced houses, which have since been replaced as the gurdwara has been extended.

This is a row of nine houses which look of late 19th century date. Very unusually for this area, they are built of hard brown sandstone, which suggests Bradford and the surrounding area of Yorkshire, rather than Coventry. The Ramgarhia gurdwara, built from the 1960s onwards, can be seen beyond them.

New housing close to the canal on both sides.

In his novel Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino tells of a city made of two halves, one of everyday working life, the other a fairground. After six months, the temporary half-city is taken down and moved to a new location. Workmen dismantle banks, factories and schools, load them onto lorries and leave the half-city of fairground rides behind. So it is with Coventry: factories and industrial installations close, leaving their sports and social clubs behind as memorials: Alvis, Standard Triumph and, on Foleshill Road, the gasworks. The history of the gasworks can be read about here: https://www.geograph.org.uk/snippet/8825

Housing alongside the Coventry Canal dating from 2018 and 2019 respectively, built on the site of the former Courtaulds Acetate works.

Crossing the Coventry Canal in the Little Heath area of Coventry.