THE PARK THAT NEVER WAS

 

Allesley Park could easily have ended up very different from the beautiful park we see today. The City Archives contain a folder of documents covering Lord Iliffe’s gift of 52 acres (21 hectares) of land to the city in 1937. The gift comprised Allesley Hall, its grounds and a stretch of farmland to the east and north, enclosed within the ancient boundaries of the medieval deer park. In January Lord Iliffe offered to present this estate to the city and, in a private letter, he hoped that most of this land would become a park.

 

But we know that the Council had something very different in mind, judging from a pre-war map showing their plans for the whole of what is now the Allesley Park estate. There was to be a narrower Allesley Bypass, but this and the new part of Allesley Old Road were to be fronted by ‘houses of a good class’, some of them built over the pond on the golf course. Look at the houses in Holyhead Road to see what was intended. The map shows the remainder of the land, including the present park, covered with concentric circles of wide roads. This road network was apparently designed by someone who loved geometrical shapes but had not bothered to visit the site - some of the roads attempt to go straight up the steepest slopes on the estate, including precipitate junctions with the A45! History, beauty and nature were obviously of no concern, with one road planned to cut through the castle mound and demolish the walled garden. If this Council plan had gone ahead, Allesley Park estate would now look like the pre-war parts of Radford or Wyken, with very few trees and only a small park in the middle of what is now the golf course.

 

Luckily, this destructive scheme was stopped by the outbreak of war, and more civilised thinking prevailed afterwards. Can anyone explain the poverty of ideas in pre-war Coventry? In the early 1930s, Arthur Mee’s The King’s England praised Coventry for becoming a great industrial city without blotting out the sun or destroying its beauty - ‘a high example to cities everywhere’. At that time, central Coventry was as historic and beautiful as York. Then the city fathers evolved their scheme to sweep away all the medieval buildings in favour of the 1930s idea of modernity - dreary lines of boxy buildings and wide roads. This scheme had already begun when it was given a helping hand by Hitler’s bombing in 1940 and 1941.

 

Lord Iliffe’s generous gift was accepted on October 26th 1937, after a bad-tempered Council debate produced a 32-23 vote in favour. Talk about looking a gift-horse in the mouth! Councillor Bayley, representing the Parks Committee, was the only speaker with a vision of a natural park ‘like Wickstead Park - something other than football and cricket pitches’. Some spoke in favour of Allesley Hall becoming a convalescent home (as it did) or a children’s home, which was supported by the authoress Angela Brazil. Others councillors were only interested in squabbling with Councillor Bayley, who was attacked for his ‘audacious impudence’ in asking Lord Iliffe’s opinion of the alternative uses!      

 

The transfer of Allesley Hall proceeded smoothly at the practical level. Major Orton, the last tenant, left on 28th September 1937. The gardener, Mr Manners, was transferred to the council payroll at the princely wage of £2-17s-6d (£2.87p) a week, with free accommodation. Mr King, the tenant farmer at Hall Farm opposite the dovecote, had to be sent a stiff letter telling him not to lock the gate to Allesley Old Road, as he had always done on Sunday to keep ramblers off land that he considered to be his own. In March 1939, the cottages of Mr Manners and Mr King had to be connected to the mains water supply. They had previously relied on water from the well on the castle mound, but its wooden cover had rotted and fallen in, and the water was declared unfit for human consumption.

 

It is of interest that some of the correspondence came from Sydney Larkin, the City Treasurer. He was the father of the poet, Philip Larkin, and also an open admirer of the Nazi party. He displayed a Swastika flag and a statue of Hitler in his office at the start of the war, until the Town Clerk ordered him to take them down, and he cleverly invested in cardboard coffins, which must have yielded a good profit when Coventry was bombed. Knowing that Larkin was on friendly terms with senior Nazis, one wonders how much else Coventry owes to him. You can read about this other, obnoxious, Larkin family in Writing Home by Alan Bennett.