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Holbrooks is a residential area of
Coventry
Coventry ( or ) is a city in the West Midlands, England. It is on the River Sherbourne. Coventry has been a large settlement for centuries, although it was not founded and given its city status until the Middle Ages. The city is governed b ...
,
West Midlands
West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth.
Etymology
The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some ...
, England.
Most of the length of the four brooks which pass through the area are covered or culverted, one
culvert is adjacent to the recently built housing on Watery Lane. Another brook passes through and under the grounds of Parkgate School. The brooks then head off towards the river Sherbourne and the Sowe.
Holbooks is situated some 3 mi (5 km) north-west to the city centre and was largely developed for private and council housing during the 1950s and to replace the many homes destroyed by air raids during the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
.
History
The 'Stadium' housing estate at the rear of Lythalls Lane is so called because the housing was built on the site of a former dog racing stadium. In 1928 the Stadium speedway track opened. The track was closed in 1936 and the following year a greyhound track opened on the site This remained in use until 1964 when it was replaced by the housing.
Children in Holbrooks now have fewer places to play as various pockets of land, once open spaces between development, are being swallowed up to in-fill, although Holbrooks Park, on Holbrook Lane, remains the area's largest open space.
Coventry Building Society Arena
Holbrooks is close to the Coventry Building Society Arena (formally the Ricoh Arena), (which was designed to have limited parking to promote bus travel and walking) a parking permit scheme is in place. The stadium, and the adjacent Arena Park Shopping Centre are served by
Coventry Arena railway station
Coventry Arena railway station is a railway station on the Coventry-Nuneaton Line. Located in the north of Coventry, England, it serves the adjacent Coventry Building Society Arena, for which it is named. It was opened on 18 January 2016, along ...
, opened in 2016. The Arena is currently home to
Coventry City FC
Coventry City Football Club is a professional association football club based in Coventry, West Midlands, England. The team currently compete in the Championship, the second tier of the English football league system. The club is nicknamed th ...
and
Wasps Rugby Union Club. It has hosted other sporting events including preliminary round football during the
London 2012 Olympics
The 2012 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the XXX Olympiad and also known as London 2012) was an international multi-sport event held from 27 July to 12 August 2012 in London, England, United Kingdom. The first event, the ...
(during which it was renamed the City of Coventry Stadium), and several music concerts. Notable acts who have played here include
Bon Jovi 2008,
Take That
Take That are an English pop group formed in Manchester in 1990. The group currently consists of Gary Barlow, Howard Donald and Mark Owen. The original line-up also featured Jason Orange and Robbie Williams. Barlow is the group's lead singer ...
June 2009, and reformed Coventry bands
The Specials
The Specials, also known as The Special AKA, are an English 2 tone and ska revival band formed in 1977 in Coventry. After some early changes, the first stable lineup of the group consisted of Terry Hall and Neville Staple on vocals, Lynval ...
and also
The Enemy. Manchester band
Oasis played the Ricoh during July 2009 and American act
Pink
Pink is the color of a namesake flower that is a pale tint of red. It was first used as a color name in the late 17th century. According to surveys in Europe and the United States, pink is the color most often associated with charm, politeness, ...
, artist
Alecia Moore
Alecia Beth Moore Hart (born September 8, 1979), known professionally as Pink (stylized as P!nk), is an American singer, songwriter, actress and dancer. She was originally a member of the girl group Choice. In 1995, LaFace Records saw potential ...
played during 2010. The venue also includes a casino and large exhibition and conference centre.
Housing
Another notable social housing estate in Holbrooks is the area of Everdon Road. Built after the Second World War, and accessed from either Beake Avenue or Holbrook Lane, this is a more spacious well-designed housing estate with mostly three- and four-bedroom houses with large rooms and tall roofs. Also several one-bedroom bungalows with the same tall roof design.
Due to the spacious layout of the estate, more
bungalows
A bungalow is a small house or cottage that is either single-story or has a second story built into a sloping roof (usually with dormer windows), and may be surrounded by wide verandas.
The first house in England that was classified as a b ...
were recently built as 'infill' and in the future more development is likely.
There are a number of four storey residential flats on Everdon Road too, some have open views across parkland. The shape of the Everdon estate forms a complete loop and includes a small row of shops with
flats
Flat or flats may refer to:
Architecture
* Flat (housing), an apartment in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and other Commonwealth countries
Arts and entertainment
* Flat (music), a symbol () which denotes a lower pitch
* Flat (soldier), ...
above. Everdon is regularly used by learner drivers to practice, due to there being many corners, curves and reversing opportunity, plus the road is quiet during the school day. Most houses face onto grassed areas, and the estate is bordered by the large Holbrook Park which is maintained by
Coventry City Council.
Today
Today Holbrooks has a diverse and large cultural mix which includes a large number of
Polish
Polish may refer to:
* Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe
* Polish language
* Poles
Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...
people. There are two Polish food stores along Holbrook Lane, and several other food outlets and ethnic restaurants. The Arena Park Shopping Centre, on the Foleshill-Holbrooks border, features several national chain stores along with one of the largest Tesco stores in the country. A Morrisons store on Parkgate Road offers an alternative supermarket choice. The area's single surviving post office is located on Holbrook Lane.
Holbooks Primary School is in the adjacent suburb of
Foleshill
Foleshill is a suburb in the north of Coventry in the West Midlands of England.
Longford, Courthouse Green and Rowley Green are to its north and Keresley is to its west. The population of the Ward at the 2011 census was 19,943.
History
Fole ...
. Schools for primary age (4–11) children in Holbrooks include Parkgate (one of the largest primary schools in Coventry), John Shelton Primary School, and Holy Family RC Primary School. Secondary education is provided at President Kennedy School in Rookery Lane.
Holbrooks is also a short distance from the former
British Coal Keresley
Keresley is a suburban village and civil parish in the City of Coventry, West Midlands, England, about north of Coventry city centre and southwest of Bedworth. According to the 2001 census, the parish had a population of 791 falling to 713 a ...
Colliery
Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...
site which is now a large industrial estate of warehousing called
Prologis
Prologis, Inc. is a real estate investment trust headquartered in San Francisco, California that invests in logistics facilities. The company was formed through the merger of AMB Property Corporation and Prologis in June 2011, which made Prologi ...
Park. The large wheel from the
winding tower
A headframe (also known as a gallows frame, winding tower, hoist frame,Ernst, Dr.-Ing. Richard (1989). ''Wörterbuch der Industriellen Technik'' (5th ed.). Wiesbaden: Oscar Brandstetter, 1989. pit frame, shafthead frame, headgear, headstock o ...
was cut into two, and placed on Prologis Park as a monument to the site's former activity.
Current and former occupiers of ProLogis Park include GEFCO and Terex Benford, Tesco (warehousing), Co-op, Exel Bridgestone, Mastercare, DHL Exel Supply Chain, Richard Austin Alloys, Inkfish and Domestic & General. Prologis park covers some of land and includes a 'nature park' and
arboreal
Arboreal locomotion is the locomotion of animals in trees. In habitats in which trees are present, animals have evolved to move in them. Some animals may scale trees only occasionally, but others are exclusively arboreal. The habitats pose nu ...
area with two man-made lakes and some additional marshland where wildlife monitoring takes place. No fishing is allowed, and many species of bird use the habitat.
Under the terrain of Holbrooks (and surrounding areas) are several
mine
Mine, mines, miners or mining may refer to:
Extraction or digging
* Miner, a person engaged in mining or digging
*Mining, extraction of mineral resources from the ground through a mine
Grammar
*Mine, a first-person English possessive pronoun
...
d coal seams at a
depth ranging of 600–1,500 metres, these coal seams are known as the Warwickshire Thick, locally extracted to the
pit head
A headframe (also known as a gallows frame, winding tower, hoist frame,Ernst, Dr.-Ing. Richard (1989). ''Wörterbuch der Industriellen Technik'' (5th ed.). Wiesbaden: Oscar Brandstetter, 1989. pit frame, shafthead frame, headgear, headstock o ...
at Keresley from 1917 and until its eventual closure in 1991. The site was then used as a homefire plant until its complete closure in the year 2000. In 1939, at its peak, a million
ton
Ton is the name of any one of several units of measure. It has a long history and has acquired several meanings and uses.
Mainly it describes units of weight. Confusion can arise because ''ton'' can mean
* the long ton, which is 2,240 pounds
...
s of coal was being extracted per year.
Keresley coal was distributed via the railway line which still runs through Holbrooks and crosses Wheelwright Lane, the line was completed in 1919. Today, the line carries freight from Prologis Park, along the same route the coal had taken, crossing Wheelright Lane then running parallel with Winding House Lane, leaving Holbrooks over a
cast iron
Cast iron is a class of iron– carbon alloys with a carbon content more than 2%. Its usefulness derives from its relatively low melting temperature. The alloy constituents affect its color when fractured: white cast iron has carbide impur ...
bridge situated at Hen Lane, onwards toward Foleshill and towards Coventry.
The coal
mining
Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic ...
and
town gas
Coal gas is a flammable gaseous fuel made from coal and supplied to the user via a piped distribution system. It is produced when coal is heated strongly in the absence of air. Town gas is a more general term referring to manufactured gaseous ...
industry was a major source of
employment for Holbrooks and
Binley areas of Coventry. Mining in the Midlands was undertaken on a neighbouring coal seam, extracted from
Daw Mill
Daw Mill was a coal mine located near the village of Arley, near Nuneaton, in the English county of Warwickshire. The mine was Britain's biggest coal producer. It closed in 2013 following a major fire. It was the last remaining colliery in the W ...
. The mine was Britain's biggest coal producer.
It closed in 2013 following a major fire. It was the last remaining colliery in the
West Midlands
West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth.
Etymology
The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some ...
.
Today,
Daw Mill
Daw Mill was a coal mine located near the village of Arley, near Nuneaton, in the English county of Warwickshire. The mine was Britain's biggest coal producer. It closed in 2013 following a major fire. It was the last remaining colliery in the W ...
along with the pit head at Keresley is just a memory.
References
{{coord, 52.443, -1.509, type:city_region:GB-COV, display=title
Suburbs of Coventry