Welcome to this new web site covering local and family history in the North Warwickshire and West Leicestershire Area. 
More info from: [email protected], or complete our message form on the contact page. I am always happy to help with your local and family history queries. Peter Lee / Nuneaton Local History Group

Your web site editor - Peter Lee

LOCAL HISTORY TALKS and EVENTS
 MIDLAND RED BUS DAYS
By Steve Bennett
Friday October 26th
At the Chilvers Coton Heritage Centre
Avenue Road, Nuneaton
7.30pm-9pm
Admission £3

 More Local and Family History Talks and Walks:
Friday, 22nd November 2013 - Nuneaton in My Blood by Michael Roberts
Friday, 13th December 2013 -  A Night of Old Nuneaton Nostalgia, Pictures from the Archives.
Both: 7.30pm - 9.00pm at the Chilvers Coton Heritage Centre. Admission £3 
Sunday, 29th December 2013 - Walk off Your Christmas Dinner with our Mystery New Year Guided Walk.              Meet Nuneaton Library, 11am.  No charge.
NEW YEAR EVENT - The Mallabone Family Re-Union at the Chilvers Coton Heritage Centre, Saturday, April 19th 2014 10-4pm (please email me for details)

Every Town and village has its story, but that story is more often acted than told, and as the actors die out their tale of life and labour is all forgotten
Alfred Lester Scrivener (1845-1886)
First Editor of the Nuneaton Observer Newspaper

Forgotten Townscapes

Nuneaton Market Place in the 1930's.

Bedworth before it was vandalised by the council and this entire collection of lovely old buildings demolished to build a "Soviet" style town centre of brick boxes.

Long Street, Atherstone (Alan Cook Collection)

Forgotten Villages and Communities

(The Wright Family North Warwickshire Collection)

Pit cottages at Ansley Common (Alan Cook Collection)

Churches 

Chilvers Coton Church and the old vicarage which was demolished in the 1930's. This is how George Eliot would have remembered it. (Margaret Beamish Collection)

St. Paul's Parish Church, Stockingford (Margaret Beamish Collection)

St. Mary's Abbey Church in Manor Court Road constructed from the ruins of the old Nuneaton Abbey whose broken walls can be seen here The church was rebuilt at the bequest of Mr. Thomas Botterill, a wealthy silk merchant. It is said to be haunted and it has plenty of "atmosphere" in this picture. (Peter Lee Collection)

Bedworth Parish Church in 50's. (Geoff Edmands)

The Meadow, Over Whitacre looking towards Over Whitacre church. The Nuneaton-Birmingham railway line cuts across the centre of the picture and a signal cabin is on the right. (The Wright Family North Warwickshire Collection)

Old Country Estates and the Seats of the Gentry

Camp Hill Hall was one of several commissions carried out by the architect Thomas Larkins Walker in our area in the late 1830's and early 1840's. This was built at the cost of John Craddock and may have replaced an earlier house on this site. Mr. Craddock was one of the owners of Craddock & Bull's Bank in Nuneaton and had been left a considerable fortune by his father - William Craddock. Mr. Walker also designed Bedworth Almshouses, Attleborough and Hartshill churches all within the space of ten years. (The Wright Family North Warwickshire Collection)

Merevale Hall near Atherstone. A brooding Gothic mansion standing on the escarpment just north of Atherstone is happily still with us today and is the home of the Dugdale family. Merevale was purchased by the Stratford family and passed to the Dugdale family on the death of Francis Stratford (1705-1762) through his daughter Penelope Bate Stratford who married Richard Geast, who then took the name Dugdale. (Alan Cook Collection)

Arbury Hall 1975. Although there has been a mansion on this site from the 16th century at least and before that a Priory, the original Elizabethan house has been encapsulated in the 18th century by Sir Roger Newdigate who produced this wonderful example of Georgian country architecture. (Fred Phillips from the Dr. Alan White Collection)

Arbury Hall (Margaret Beamish Collection)

The summer house of Attleborough Hall. 1890 From the Townsend family album (Jan Brock)

Wounded soldiers recuperating during the First World War after Weddington Hall was converted into a Red Cross Hospital in 1916. On this occasion the Atherstone Hunt are entertaining the troops. Weddington Hall was turned into apartments after the war then was demolished in 1928.

A visit to Merevale Hall by members of the Nuneaton Civic Society and the Nuneaton Local History Group in September 2013

The Kids

Children from the Mallabone family album, but do you know who they are? (Lynn Wilkes)

Youngsters at Vicarage Street School, Nuneaton, sometime in the 1920's.

Gun Hill Arley Mixed Infant School 3rd August 1939. (Geoff Edmands)

Nuneaton High School Coventry House Cricket Team, 1927. (Dorothy & Muriel Edmands Collection)

Nuneaton Grammar School staff and pupils 1890.

Youngsters Growing Up

Mary Whittaker. A lovel girl with a fabulous hair style from the 1930's (Anne Lawson)

The Edmands Family, Muriel, Geoff, Ronald, Dorothy and their Mum on 2nd. August 1931. Ronald is on the saddle of his BSA bike he bought in Bedford in March 1931. (Geoff Edmands Collection)

Dancing at the Co-Op Hall in the 1950's. Many people met their partners here from the day it opened in 1939 until the 1960's. It was the place to be on a Saturday night.

Local Families

David Sidwell meets his grandparents again. George Leonard Clarke (1885-1960) and his wife Gertie (1888-1955) to launch George's new book, "The Old Rebel - A life in Nuneaton 1885-1960". This is an excellent personal memoir of George's life. His family and friends. The book is available from local booksellers in Nuneaton. (David Sidwell)

Ebenezer Brown of Attleborough (1828-1905) was one of Nuneaton's richest men. He made his fortune from pubs and sold his pub empire in 1879 to the Leamington Brewery Company. He is seen here with his family.

Working People and their Lives

An old miner ready for work somewhere in the North Warwickshire coalfield. Note the privies at the end of the garden, his cabbage patch, a rough shed built from old railway sleepers and he is carrying a Davy Lamp. The strings around his knees to prevent coal dust reaching his nether regions. (Jean Lapworth Collection)

Ifra Lovett pedals her ice creams for the people of Bedworth on 17th May 1937. (Geoff Edmands)

What better than a nice cup of tea? Three old timers employed at Fielding Johnson's mill in Nuneaton. (Tom Burgoyne)

The Staff at Nuneaton Telephone Exchange in the 1950's. Does anyone recognise themselves or their grandmothers?

From the Warwickshire Graphic in 1925. People at leisure in old Bed'urth! (Peter Lee Collection)

Tradesmen

Frederick Charles Pearce (1871-1946) had a little lean to barber's shop in Abbey Street, Nuneaton next to the Liberal Club. He had two seats. Mr. Pearce took up chain smoking to hide the smell of the hair he was working on. If his customer's were too filthy he sent them to the slipper baths in Mill Walk to clean themselves up. At the end of the day his sweepings of hair were bagged up and given to the lime plasterers who were plastering the terraced houses being built in Stockingford and Attleborough. (Charles Pearce)

 These enterprises gave work to many thousands of local people - but they have all closed down and been erased from the landscape. The jobs have gone too never to be replaced.

At the Mill

Courtaulds Mill in the early 1990's before demolition.

Courtaulds Mill at its Zenith at night. Sometime in the 1950's. The mill shook with a million clicks per second from its shuffling looms. Day and night they turned out the raw material Courtaulds were famous for - Rayon. (collection: Colin A Yorke)

Inside Courtaulds Mill.

Fielding Johnsons Mill in Attleborough Road, Nuneaton

Remembering the Silk Trade

At one time two thirds of the population of Nuneaton and many people along the highway through Bedworth to Coventry depended on the silk trade, but after 1830 the trade went into a long decline. In 1860 a catastrophic removal of tariffs on Continental silks caused enormous distress to local weavers. By 1900 there were very few of these looms still in use, and this one was paraded around the town in 1907. Most had already been broken up for firewood. (F.R.Jones Charter Series)

Down the Pit

Haunchwood Old or Nowells Colliery dated back to the 1730's, although coal mining in the Haunchwood area is known to have been carried out in the 1300's. In the 19th century this old fashioned colliery had a checkered history. It closed in the 1920's. (Ian Hickman)

Baddesley Colliery in the early 1900's (Peter Lee Collection)

Newdigate Colliery, Bedworth. c. 1982 (Peter Lee)

Amington Colliery. (R. Armson)

Exhall Colliery in the early 1900's.

Local Brickyards

One of the last circular kilns at Stanley Brothers brickyard, Stockingford 1987. The chap with the cap on is the late Michael J. Lee, one of Nuneaton's greatest historians. (Peter Lee)

Haunchwood Brick and Tile Works 1960. (Geoff Edmands)

Loading the kilns at Haunchwood Brick & Tile. 1960 (Geoff Edmands)

Some of the last chimney pots produced at Stanley Brothers, 1988. (Peter Lee)

At the Quarry

Despatching stone at Judkins Wharf on the Coventry Canal at the bottom of Tuttle Hill, Nuneaton.

In the Foundry

Sterling Metals, Marston Lane, Attleborough, Nuneaton. This foundry which produced large quantities of iron, aluminium and magnesium alloy castings for the aerospace and automotive, engineering and ship building industries once employed 3000 men, but all these jobs have gone. This site is now all housing. (Peter Lee)

Sterling Metals Ltd. Marston Lane Attleborough from the air. (c. 1955)

No "Elf & Safety" in those days at the Sterling!

Floor moulding at Sterling Metals. (Joy Perry)

Inside Sterling Metals. Production lines for castings.

Making Hats

Hall & Phillips hat factory bounded by Meadow Street and Botterill Street, Nuneaton.

Hall & Phillips Ltd. of Meadow Street, Nuneaton made the finest hats. It was a business that dated back to the 1700's founded in Atherstone but moved to Nuneaton in the 1880's.

The belt driven machinery at Hall & Phillips.

Cardboard Boxes

The Nuneaton firm of Alfred Connor made cardboard boxes for all purposes. During World War 2 they made millions of ammunition boxes. They also produced jigsaws and most other products made from cardboard.

Boots and Shoes

Industrial Needles

L. Tansey & Sons Ltd. made industrial needles for the knitting and weaving industries. Newtown Road, Nuneaton.

The Motorcycle Trade

Alf England's Scooter and Moped emporium, Bedworth. (Fred Phillips)

Old Cars

A Clyno car (built in Coventry) takes to the streets of Bedworth in the 1950's. Carnival day. (Geoff Edmands)

A lovely selection of 1960's cars line the pavement in Nuneaton town centre.

Court's of Chapel End new Austin Taxis. (Geoff Edmands)