Walking Tour - Send Yourself to Coventry!

Organised by Philip Boyle and Jean Fernandes Greyn Thomas and led by local guide Aaron Law.

10.00-16:00 on 18th October 2025

meeting at at Coventry Railway Station

Numbers are limited to 25 participants. Please note members will also need to purchase a ticket.

TRAVEL INFO

Train from London Euston to Coventry: 08.16 (arrv 09.25), or 08.40 (arrv 09.34).

OUTLINE ITINERARY

AM
MEET 10.00 at Coventry Railway Station
Lower Precinct
West Orchard Shopping Centre
Godiva Bar City Market
Belgrade Theatre
Telegraph Hotel

LUNCH
PM
Sports and Recreation Centre (“The Elephant”)
Central Swimming Baths
Cathedral Church of St Michael. Includes onsite discussion of Competition
Scheme by Basil Spence and unplaced A & P Smithson Scheme
Herbert Art Gallery and Museum Mural

FINISH: 16.00 hrs (Approx)

Since 1945 much has happened and changed in central Coventry. Regeneration of the city occurred, which led to Coventry being designated UK City of Culture in 2021. Following on from talks, Coventry: the making of a modern city 1939-1973 by Jeremy Gould and Basil Spence: Radical or Reactionary? by Keith Williams, this walking tour will concentrate on many of the often-fragmented parts, and sometimes neglected works, as well as key buildings, that aspired to a spirit of modernity.

In 1958, Kenneth Tynan, the theatre critic of the time, saw the construction of the Belgrade as the dawn of a new era in theatre building. He wrote, “Enter most theatres and you enter the gilded, cupidaceous past”. “Enter this one, and you enter the future”. And this is true of other civic buildings that were designed and realised in Coventry’s city centre as part of a broad programme of municipal-led, post war reconstruction.

With respect to the rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral, though a success at the time, the competition assessors in 1951 failed to address the functional / liturgical concerns of the Cathedral clergy, who stated in 1963, “If we have known at the beginning as much about the ‘liturgy’ as we have learnt during the building, we wouldn’t have started the building!“. A subsequent re-examination of the scheme by A & P Smithson shows a better understanding of the design brief, which perhaps merits a further discussion.

Aaron Law is a Coventry-based photographer, local historian (committee member of Coventry Society and C20 Society West Midlands), with interests in postwar architecture and public art and current planning of the city centre. His website is https://aaronlaw.photography

Phillip Boyle was an architect, is a lecturer on the modern movement, and was Coordinator of Docomomo UK for many years.

Jean Fernandes Greyn Thomas has a fine artist background, is a published writer and was a planning researcher.

Detail of installation, ‘Endless Ribbon Connecting Us’ (2021), Morag Myerscough,
Photography, Jean Fernandes Greyn Thomas