ATTLEBOROUGH CHURCH & VICARAGE in 1864 You would hardly recognise this aspect today although both buildings are still there, the shrubbery in the foreground has turned into mature trees and changed so completely as to mask out the view. Both structures now can only be seen by peering through the boscage. Here it is all new and fresh and beautifully laid out. The buildings were erected on a portion of the former grounds of Attleborough Hall. After the death of George Greenway (1761-1835) who owned and completed the Hall in 1809, the estate was managed by his son in law John Craddock. John Craddock lived at Attleborough Hall for a few years before he had a house built on Camp Hill – Camp Hill Hall in 1838. Paid for by a legacy from his father William Craddock, Banker and Merchant who died in 1833 – the richest man in Nuneaton and left £120,000 in his will which was a considerable fortune in those days. The Attleborough Hall estate sold a piece of land for a new chapel of ease at Attleborough in 1842;this became its parish church in due course.The new church was erected at a cost of £3000. The structure was mostly of brick with the tower and spire in Attleborough freestone. The living of AttleboroughChurch was a perpetual curacy in the patronage of the Vicar of Nuneaton. The new church was to provide some modicum of Godliness to the labouring classes of the hamlet of Attleborough which was then somewhat remote from the town of Nuneaton. Most Attleboroughians did not bother to attend church which comprised a mile long walk into town.

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Editorial

By Peter Lee

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In order to prepare the next selection of articles for your entertainment I decided to look at the ancient core of the town and parish of Nuneaton and its layout of ancient streets for which the pattern had been set for centuries. By our modern standards Nuneaton was little more than a village. One main street – Abbey Street which was about a mile long terminating at Abbey End. Other ancient town streets were Church Street as far as Church End, Bond Street which terminated at Bond End, Coventry Street which led to Chilvers Coton Parish (Coton Road), and two perimeter lanes, Back Lane, Derby Lane which led into Brick Kiln Lane (now Regent Street) and a few roads leading off but terminating in the middle of fields or stopped up by railway lines – Wheat Street, Oaston Road, Meadow Street, as well as the main roads out of town but still within the ancient curtelage of the parish – Attleborough Road, Wash Lane (now Queens Road) Arbury Lane, Coton Road, Swan Lane, Haunchwood Road, Hinckley Road, Derby Lane leading into Weddington Lane. Then to look in a bit more detail at the streets and buildings of the outlying communities close by. Not to forget the Market Place of course this played a pivotal role in town life.

By the end of the 19th century the town was starting to fill up with new streets but I am trying to set the scene at 1850 in the old town and review some of those streets and how they evolved in the 50 years following that date. One thing is for sure if you were a time traveller you would not recognise the old town as it was then. So decrepit, down at heel and crude it looked. The local population knew no better of course. For them it was home despite its many privations. They eked out a modest living amongst a plethora of kids in insanitary homes. You can get a flavour of the conditions prevailing in the area at the time by reading Judy Kennedy’s transcription of the Handloom Weavers Report published in 1835 on the Moral Conditions of the Ribbon Weavers. It helps you to understand what many of our ancestors were like.

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NUNEATON’s ANCIENT TOWN STREETS

ABBEY STREET

Until the 19th century the principle street in Nuneaton was Abbey Street. With a local population of the town around 8000 two thirds of that total lived in Abbey Street. It was overcrowded and congested with former long back gardens built over and turned into courts and tenements. These courts were squalid, insanitary and damp. Daylight was limited by the closeness of the buildings which were often fully enclosed with windows on one side only looking out onto a scruffy yard. In other towns Courts were known as Yards. We are one up in Nuneaton we called them Courts, it gave them a kind of dignity, but they were just as grim as yards elsewhere. To add to the general filth and disease these courts housed vegetable patches, pig pens, and deep cess pools. When Abbey Street was first laid out it was built for the best people in Nuneaton. Abbey retainers, tradesmen, and town officials. There were good timber framed front houses fringing the street and long narrow gardens. With the reformation, and the general decline in the status of the town these houses were converted into shops and later a large number became pubs and beer houses. The owners built tenements to obtain more rent. Some were rebuilt with top shops with their large windows to let in plenty of daylight to illuminate the work of the silk weavers. In the early 19th century the principle trade of the town was silk weaving. Two thirds of the local population were either wholly engaged in making silk ribbons or to some extent dependent upon it. Most of these lived in Abbey Street.

BACK LANE / BACK STREET

We often get confused today by just where Back Lane is or was. A little bit of the inner ring road known as Back Street exists between the corner of Bond Street and Leicester Road. This was formerly called Back Lane, but the lane continued some distance along Vicarage Street until it joined Attleborough Road. This was all Back Lane. Vicarage Street did not exist at the beginning of the 19th century. Back Street used to run at the back of the Market Place in a short stretch from Abbey Gate at the bottom of Abbey Street to Newdigate Square. It was called Back street because it was at the back of the Market Place.

BOND END

The origin of the name Bond End (Or Bond Street as it we now call it) has never been satisfactorily established beyond the thought that it was here that people in the town who were bound to their lord and master as Serfs were accommodated. Their Lord being various principle land owners and Lords of the Manor who owned the town at various times over the centuries. Serfdom died out in the Middle Ages and somehow the Bond(ed) end of town remained. Whether that attribution of the name is true or not I have no idea, but seem to be the one banded about by local historians in previous eras. It was the ancient way out of town towards Weddington Road, but not the original way to Hinckley. The ancient roadway to Hinckley was on a different alignment to the one we use now along Hinckley Road and the Long Shoot. The old Hinckley roadway left the town via Wheat Street, Horestone Grange and across the fields to DodwellsBridge. Its close alignment in Wheat Street/Oaston Road is still there, but when you get to the Horestone Grange housing estate and beyond the trackway is lost. I assume the removal of the old road took place when Francis Stratford, (1705-1762) then Lord of the Manor, enclosed the Horestone Grange fields about 1730 and pushed the road out to the perimeter of the fields to what we now know as The Long Shoot (a long narrow field) and Hinckley Road. Returning to Bond End, this was the old entrance/exit to the town and was built up and widened in the 16th century to reduce flooding. If you look at it carefully you can still see it is wider than our normal town thoroughfares due to this ancient civil engineering work. In 1847 the Trent Valley Railway was opened which crossed Bond End with a level crossing used to regulate traffic. Unfortunately there were quite a few deaths at this spot as local people often circumvented the barriers to spring across in front of trains. The parish council clamoured for the railway company to bridge the line making it safer to cross. They did eventually agree to this and Leicester Road bridge was erected in the early 1870’s. The Bond end crossing was removed and the former exit to Hinckley Road blocked. In the early 1870’s a siding from the railway trailed down Bond End and entered John Knowles flour mill premises in Bridge Street (where Debenhams is now). Known locally as the Flour Mill Tramway it caused no end of trouble in its brief life. In tramway fashion it was first laid with rail track flush with the road surface, and then later on Mr. Knowles re-laid part of it with new rail which was proud of the surface. At least one horse had to be put down because it tripped over it and broke its leg, others had less serious injuries. The local population found it hazardous too. After a flurry of complaints Mr. Knowles was forced to abandon the tramway and remove the track. Why he did not simply relay it with track flush with the surface seems lost to history.

BRICK KILN LANE

At one time part of Regent Street, that section between Leicester Road bridge and Wheat Street was called Brick Kiln Lane. There was a brickyard about half way along it. Roughly where Cooper Street is today but extending back over the Trent Valley Railway line. The construction of the TVR obliterated the old brickyard, and the roadway was altered by the railway. At one time there was a clay hole on the corner of what is now Regent Street but was then Brick Kiln Lane which went by the name “Lord Hop’s Pit”. It received its unusual name from an association with Francis Stratford of nearby Horestone Grange. Stratford was given the name “Lord Hop” by the local population who knew him when he frequented the bar of the Bull Inn (now the George Eliot hotel), but the full story is so far fetched it lies outside the scope of this book.

BRIDGE STREET

The principle bridge over the River Anker was at one time in Bridge Street. In fact in the 19th century it was the only bridge over the river. The bridge erected in what is now Newdigate Street was not erected until the early 19th century because up until then the river was forded at this point. To confuse matters part of Bridge Street (which was longer then than it is now) was called Silver Street. At least it was so known up until the 1830’s. The part with this name was from the Bridge to the Market Place. The extremity of the Silver Street was later marked by the old Post Office, the one demolished in 1912. Later the buildings were demolished and the Market Place extended backwards to get more space. The Market Place then entered Bridge Street adjacent to what is now the George Eliot Hotel, formerly the Bull Hotel. At one time a small charge was extracted from market traders bringing their produce to Market over the Bridge which went into the coffers of the Abbey. This toll was known as “Pontage”, and was said to be towards the maintenance of the bridge to keep it under repair. The toll ceased when the Abbey was closed down by Henry VIII.

CHURCH STREET

This was the poshest and oldest street in the town at one time. Where the local gentry lived. As its name implied it ended at the parish church. Church Street was laid out when Nuneaton, then known as Ea-ton (WaterTown) was first occupied as a settlement, probably before the Norman Conquest. It occupied a piece of higher ground above the river and was on a track way which passed through the great Forest of Arden to the Roman Watling Street. In those days Eaton was secluded and unknown to most inhabitants of the country. One street, a small church, a watermill, a few open fields giving a modest living to a few farmers and their families. When the Abbey was established Church Street was superseded as the principle street of the town by Abbey Street. Eaton became Nun-Eaton (denoting its new Abbey status predominated with female devoted clergy at the time of its founding) and the growth in the area of the town took place the opposite side of the River Anker to Church Street.

COVENTRY STREET

This was (and is) a very short street which led off the Market Place towards Chilvers Coton. Its length was determined by the bridge over the Wash Brook where Coventry Street abruptly stopped and the road became Coton Lane (now Coton Road). The border of the parishes of Nuneaton and Chilvers Coton ran through the brook at this point. From a Chilvers Coton perspective this point was one of the four “ends” of the village – Town End. (The other Chilvers Coton ends being Church End, Heath End and Virgins End).

DERBY LANE

As the name implies this roadway once extended to Derby. In the 19th century it was a complete stretch of the imagination that this dusty lane might end up in the industrial town of Derby. It must have seemed a very long way away. Derby Lane entered Nuneaton along what is now Weddington Lane, which came into a tee junction with Hinckley Road where the former Graziers pub used to stand. Derby Lane did not end there. Before the Trent Valley Railway was built the road did a dog leg and Derby Lane continued along what is now Regent Street to where LeicesterRoadBridge intersects. Derby Lane is now Weddington Road.

HINCKLEY ROAD

As the name implies Hinckley Road led out of town towards Hinckley but I believe the alignment we know today is only 300 years old. I mentioned earlier and will explain in some detail dealing with Wheat Street that this road alignment was not used until Francis Stratford (1705-1762) who owned the manor of Nuneaton enclosed his fields in 1730 and pushed out the old roadway to the periphery of his Horestone fields.

MANOR COURT ROAD

Manor Court Road as we know it today is a product of the 1890’s although there has always been a roadway from the top of Queens Road (by the Cock & Bear Pub) to the top of Abbey Street at Abbey End since time immemorial. Effectively for centuries this was little more than a cart track used as a short cut and for carrying coal from the Stockingford collieries to the Abbey End of town. This was disrupted for several months in the 19th century when a small bridge which took the Manor Court Road over the Wash Brook was swept away in a flood. There was a clamour to have it reinstated because of the long diversion people had to take to get into Abbey Street via Wash Lane and the town centre. If you look at the map today you can see it was a long way round and the Manor Court Road was an ideal shorter route. As the 19th century progressed and the town’s population increased Manor Court Road was laid out as wide boulevard with extensive houses and villas erected along it. It became Nuneaton’s poshest address. A feature of the street was also the remains of the old Abbey. After the dissolution the Abbey was left to decay and it was not long before the gaunt stonework was taken away by local’s intent on using the abandoned buildings as a convenient source of building materials for their properties elsewhere in the town. As late as 1913 chunks of carved stone identifiable from the Abbey were discovered in old properties in Abbey Street then being demolished.

MARKET PLACE

Whereas Church Street was the principle street up until the Norman conquest the owners of the manor of Nuneaton established a daughter house of the great Abbey of Fontevrault in the fields across from the town and where the edge of the Abbey grounds reached towards the River Anker they stamped their financial authority on the community by establishing a Market Place which served to provide a source of steady income from market tolls and charges on Market traders. There was at one time a Market Cross which stood in the centre of the Market Place which acted as an office to collect these taxes, and a set of wooden stocks were erected so that miscreants could be publicly humiliated by having the heads and arms tethered to be spat at, urinated on, beaten and smeared with anything the local unwashed population felt was appropriate. All this amidst the clamour of a busy market area with wooden stalls, butchers shambles and some semi-permanent sheds which regular traders used for selling their wares. Cattle, sheep and pigs were herded into the Market Place to be butchered on the spot. Frightened animals would often make a break for it overturning stalls, baskets of vegetables, trampling people and running amok before they could be captured and killed. They were cut up there and then before the eyes of the local market goers. The Market Place was a crude and frightening place in our 21st century eyes over 300 years ago. Close in to the Market Place, certainly between there and Stratford Street there stood a substantial house which is believed to have been the Abbot’s house or Habit. By the 17th century this boasted 10 hearths which equalled the size of Horestone Grange over the fields towards Hinckley also with 10 hearths. It is not surprising that the Abbot would want to live close to the Market Place when this was the point where a large part of the income for the Abbey was being generated. After the reformation this house passed to the Lords of the Manor and in the 1660’s it was used by the Stratford family as a Dower House. This is how Stratford Street got its name. It was built on the garden of the Hall, on a piece of ground known as HallGardens when the new street was laid out in the 1850’s. The Hall or Habit fell into disrepair in the 18th century and was a complete ruin by approximately 1800 when it was demolished. Probably by the 17th century a number of stall holders in the Market used permanent wooden sheds which clustered in the range of buildings that now stretch back from the Market Place to Newdigate Street. Threaded by the former Boffins Arcade. Over the years these wooden sheds and stalls were superseded by brick structures so that by the early 19th century the block was a rabbit warren of jitties and passageways interspersed with permanent shops and some public houses. At one end of this block on the corner of Newdigate Square butchers gathered and established a shambles. It was amongst the Shambles there was also an old pub known as the Plough. The Shambles had lean to sheds fronting the streets where animals were slaughtered on Market Day. Imagine sitting in the dust and gloom of the old Plough Inn enclosed by the Shambles, with its array of clay pipes strung along the fireplace for use by anyone who fancied a pipe of tobacco washed down with a gallon of ale amidst the blood curdling screams of pigs, sheep and cattle being put to death just next door. Their warm blood pooling on to the cobble stones in the entrance way for you to slip on as you wobbled unsteadily out of the door on to the street. That is how it was in the Old Market Place in the good old days.