KWN 1968
New shops and flats were being built on the Abbey End bombsite, 28 years after the devastation.
The view from the flats as work continues. The library is complete and opened in July, and other new shops have been built behind the clock tower, although only one of the four appears to be taken.
The new car park at the rear takes shape.
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The new library, Police Station and clinic were opened in July 1968. The three buildings were named Smalley Place after Dr Leonard Smalley who was the longest serving member of the Council, since 1934. At some later time, the name Smalley Place was adopted for the short length of road outside the buildings. Dr Smalley is seen attending to WCC Chairman J H Steele whilst the Chief Constable of Warwickshire R Mathews looks on.
Full story here: Smalley Place
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Clearance of sites continued into 1968 including in Dalehouse Lane where the last of about 40 temporary homes set up during the war mostly by Coventrians made homeless in the Blitz were cleared; the homes were themselves made from rubble and discarded materials from bombed sites. The last occupant was re-housed in a new house at the recently extended Watling Road, built across wartime allotments.
More details can be found in World War 2 Comes to Kenilworth
Also soon to go was this remarkable house built during the war using 2 tram bodies.
The full story and more pictures: Tram house
These cottages in Clinton Lane, 81, 83 and 85, were unfit for habitation and were empty. Their fate depended upon whether the owner wished to carry out repairs. Town Councillors were split; ‘A relic of old Kenilworth that should be preserved’, or ‘Dickensian and not the sort of house we would like the people of Kenilworth to live in’. They were demolished. The address of number 81, centre, was previously 1 Cripplegate Lane.
More can be seen here: Clinton Lane, Then and Now
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The new Vicarage being built alongside St Johns Church, on land originally intended for a parsonage, and later for a church extension. See also KWN 1967 |
Stan Kelsey started his own coal business in June 1959 in School Lane but took out a lease on the former gas works site alongside the railway bridge in Dalehouse Lane in early 1962. The KWN caption to this photograph is ‘Coal overflow’.
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Just three years after the shops were completed, Talisman Square was beginning to show signs of severe deterioration. It was being re-named ‘Tattysman Square’. Full story and more photos here: Tattysman Square
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The town’s tip at the former Whitemoor Brickworks was nearing capacity and so attention turned to Kenilworth’s other big hole in the ground at the still operating Cherry Orchard works. A new road, 400 yards long with a slope of 1 in 10, was being built to take the refuse lorries to the bottom of the 120ft deep hole, that had a perimeter of half a mile.
The article added some interesting facts; it was estimated that 1 1/2 million tons of material had been removed for brickmaking, and that since 1950, 120 million bricks had been made from ‘the contents of the hole’.