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Thanks to Coventry’s long and varied history, there are some very interesting structures built along the banks of the River Sherbourne. The Sherbourne Valley Project has selected a few of these to celebrate and give a little more love to. Read on to find out more about these amazing links to our ancestors.
For as long as there have been people living along the river, there has been a need to cross it, so our first structures are bridges. Spon Bridge and Vignoles Bridge are very different from each other, but are both in Spon End, and extremely interesting. Whitley Abbey Bridge sits in the Whitley area of Coventry, on the opposite side of the ring road to Spon End, and is different again.
Religion played a huge role in Coventry’s medieval life, so the medieval Chapel of St James and St Christopher, also in Spon End, is next on the list.
Another medieval marker is St Catherine’s Well; an intriguing old well, a little bit off the beaten track. London Road, is not the only important transport link in this part of the city. The railway line taking trains from London to Birmingham passes this way and an early viaduct crosses the Sherbourne in the grounds of Charterhouse. Finally, we come right forward to the 20th Century, a relic of World War II. The sluice gate at Charterhouse, completes the set.
This is one of the oldest parts of Coventry. When the city was surrounded by a stone wall from the late 1300s onwards, Spon End was on the outside. It was a busy area, full of crafts people and traders all working along the river banks. Here you would have found the tanners, although you would have probably smelled them before you saw them, as it was a very stinky process! Tanners took raw animal skins and turned them into leather hides, before selling them on to other people to make shoes, belts, horse tack, straps and anything else. It was an independent community fairly early on, with its own mill, common land, fields and woods and was referred to as a “village” (where we get the word village from), in the 1200s. It even had a ducking stool for punishment, that ducked offenders into the river. Its thought this was somewhere near the chapel and Spon Bridge.
Visitors to Coventry might have been merchants wanting to buy or sell goods in the market, or perhaps pilgrims, who were coming to gain spiritual guidance or be healed by relics of the saints that were kept at the churches and cathedral. Whoever they were, they would have passed through Spon End and would have had to cross the river. Originally, there would have been a small, narrow bridge, Spon Bridge, big enough for a packhorse, or people on foot, but not much more than that. Spon Bridge, was the bridge you crossed just before passing through Spon Gate in the city walls. Spon Gate was said to be the most beautiful of the twelve gates, showing just how important this entrance to the city was.
As the city grew in importance and wealth, more people arrived through this area, meaning abetter bridge was needed. In 1765, the bridge we see now was built to replace the old packhorse bridge. It is much wider and grander. Made of the local red sandstone, the carved blocks have weathered gently, giving this version of Spon Bridge and rather romantic feel. It is said that the stone used to build this bridge came from Spon Gate itself, which was taken down around the same time. There are odd looking decorative columns sticking up on the end of the walls. Clearly the tops have been broken off, but a very long time ago. Perhaps these were decorations from Spon Gate, too?
The same red sandstone can be seen in the ruins of a small building standing next to Spon Bridge. These ruins are what’s left of the old Chapel of St James and St Christopher. It is older than the current bridge, dating from around 1395. Inits early days, it was referred to as the Chapel of St Christopher and St Julian, a saint associated with ferrymen and travellers. It wasn’t until 1454, that St James gets mentioned, from which point it gets called St James Chapel. There was another chapel nearby, which was also a leper hospital, which sometimes gets confused with this one, but they are two separate buildings. St James Chapel was probably funded by the Weavers’ Guild and certainly the chapel and the land around it were owned by the weavers at least until the late 1500s.
The layout and arrangement of the chapel is also slightly unclear. It was an L shaped building, which we know from 20th century paintings and photographs, before it fell into ruins. One arm of the L is stone, which seems to date from the 1400s, and the other arm had stone foundations but was a timber framed structure and may have been added slightly later. Some suggest that the stone part was the chapel, while others think this was the priest’s dwelling and the timber part was the chapel. The stone section is now all that remains of this chapel.
It isn’t known exactly when it stopped being used as a place of worship, but it did seem to avoid the destruction of Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539. However, by 1761, it was being lived in as a home, but was described as a “ruinous stone house or building”. It continued to provide housing for people on low incomes up until 1936, when it was sold off and stood empty. Eventually, in the 1950s, the timber framed section and some of the stone part, were pulled down. By 1964, all that remained was a shell, much as you see it today.
A little further downstream, heading towards the ring road, is Vignoles Bridge. Named after its designer, Charles Blacker Vignoles. This is a modern bridge, by comparison to Spon Bridge, but still has some age. Built in the 1830s, its story begins, not in Spon End, but somewhere else, because it has been moved.
Vignoles was predominantly a railway engineer, rather than a canal engineer, but he worked closely with Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s father on various projects. It was Brunel’s father who invited Vignoles to assist in straightening out the Oxford Canal, which meets Coventry north of the ring road, at which point he designed the bridge now in Spon. It would appear that this is a potentially rare bridge, given Vignoles usual association with railways. There is very little mention of other canal bridges by him. Having said that, the Horseley Iron Works, who built the bridge, did build more than one to his design, for the canal. Two of these are still in situ today.
Vignoles Bridge, however, got its new home in the 1950s, thanks to the construction of a new road, which meant it had to be removed. Fortunately, someone saw sense enough to save it. Now, the pretty trellis-like cast ironwork, gleams black as it curves elegantly over the Sherbourne. Look closely at the handrails, though, and you’ll see the scars of its working past. Deep grooves are worn into the iron, caused by 150 years of wet, grit-loaded rope being thrown up over the top to drag barges full of coal or other goods along the canal. The towpath, where horses would usually walk along to pull the boats, disappeared at this point, so the ropes had to go over the top of the bridge while the horses walked around and were hooked up on the other side before hauling. Running your hands through these indentations, you can almost feel the wet ropes and hear the men calling. Echoes of Coventry’s canal workers.
The bridge is Grade 2 listed, so now has protection from being scrapped and its story can go on.
In 1838, a significant moment occurred, when the London to Birmingham railway line opened. Railways were still fairly new and this was the first line out of London, connecting the Capital to the industrial Midlands. The track had to pass over all sorts of terrain and waterways. As it made its way through Coventry, it met the Sherbourne. A clever bit of engineering saw the construction of a viaduct to safely navigate this challenge. It was so well built that modern trains still run over it today.
It is a Grade 2 listed structure for a number of reasons. It was designed by a renowned 19th Century engineer, Robert Stephenson, son of George Stephenson, often referred to as the “Father of the Railways” as he was a pioneer in this new technology. Robert was also a talented engineer. Secondly, the viaduct itself is an example of the early years of railways and finally, the way in which Robert designed the viaduct is particularly skilful.
The bridge was built between 1755 and 1765 and looks very much like it does in the image taken here in the early 20th Century. Sadly, the watermill, shown in the picture, is no longer there.
