Meet the Masons

In September Ava and I managed to visit a few of the usually closed buildings that opened their doors to the public for the Heritage Open Days weekend. This was the first time I've done this and it was an enjoyable experience.

First off we went to the ruins of St. Michael's. The usually closed Capper's Chapel was open. In here one of the many pro-active Cathedral guides explained that some of the stained glass windows ( or 'painted glass' as he termed it ) were thought to be the work of John Thornton. This Coventry born master glazier is most famous for the Great East Window at York Minster. We were informed that bulbous noses are his signature piece:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Thornton_(glass_painter)

After signing a health and safety disclaimer I then climbed what remains of a spiral staircase to the upstairs part of the Chapel. It's hard to imagine an 'upstairs' in the ruins. The room itself is nothing special but the fact it survived the blitz is remarkable. It also makes you think about the power that guilds once wielded in Coventry.

Back in the ruins I rejoined Ava who was in conversation with another guide. We briefly discussed the destruction of the Cathedral and Britain's military involvement in Afghanistan before moving on to the Blitz museum a few yards away. The last time I was in this part of the Cathedral I'm pretty sure it was a coffee shop. It's small but houses a good collection of war time items which give visitors a good feel for what life was like back then.

We then went inside the 'new' Cathedral and headed downstairs to the archive area. I was interested to see the memorabilia associated with H.M.S. Coventry which was sunk in 1942 off the coast of North Africa. I acquired an interesting book last year about the war time service of the ship which was written by George Sims who served on her at the time. In the book there is a photograph of Petty Officer Alfred Sephton who was killed in action and posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross, Britain's highest award for gallantry. The same photograph is in the glass cabinet at the Cathedral along with his medal. Sephton grew up in Wolverhampton and met his demise directing the ships guns against Stuka dive bombers which were trying to sink the hospital ship Aba on 18^th May 1941. Early in the attack he was critically wounded by an air-cannon bullet.

The book also records the reaction onboard to the Coventry Blitz:

This news of success, [Operation Judgement - an attack on Taranto Harbour] and the safe arrival of our convoy in Alexandria, was somewhat spoiled by our hearing that the City of Coventry had been attacked by the Luftwaffe, and it's Cathedral destroyed. A pack of Brownies from Coventry had earlier sent gifts to cheer up "Coventry" ship's company. Now it was our turn to help the people of the town. A collection was made on board, and when the boxing team was competing at the Fleet Club, a further collection was made. Collection proceeds, with the addition of a grant from the ship's canteen fund, produced over a hundred pounds for helping Luftwaffe victims of Coventry.

On leaving the Cathedral we popped into The Herbert to view the local history fair. The Willenhall and Whitley history groups both had 'stalls' and some interesting photographs on display. As we were on our way out we passed the legendary John Russell, who I appeared with on BBC C&W earlier in the year. Much as I would have loved to have said 'hullo!' to John time was pressing so I gave it a miss. Anyone who has met John will know that he can talk for England when it comes to discussing the history of Coventry!

The Police Museum was next on the agenda. This was the venue I was most looking forward to visiting as I'd heard so much about it down the years. Also known as the Black Museum, it is home to some grizzly exhibits relating to the darker side of life in Coventry. After queuing for a while, we joined ten others and were the last visitors of the day. A somewhat tired female led us down some stairs into a small basement beneath Little Park Street police station. The room is split into two sections, one being for the over-15's only. It was not surprising to see why this was once we starting nosing around. Pictures of abused babies, murder victims, weapons that killed people are all on display. For me though, the main attraction was the remains of the bicycle used in the I.R.A. bombing of Broadgate in 1939. It was a very poignant and sad moment gazing at something that was instrumental in bringing such carnage and loss of innocent life in the heart of our city. It has no handlebars or front wheel but other than that looks brand new with the Halfords logo clearly visible on the frame. Of course it was new back then. I kind of imagined it would be scratched and dented. Only this week I was in touch with a relative of one of the victims who had read my article on the Historic Coventry website. He, like all decent people, is baffled by the lack of a public memorial to the dead. It really is shameful that the civic leaders haven't sorted this issue out.

The trip to the cop shop concluded our adventures for Saturday. On Sunday we made the short journey to the Masonic Hall on Warwick Road. Here we met the Freemasons and were given a tour of the building. A very nice Mason basically told us they are a group of people with higher 'values' than most. He added that anyone can join so long as they believe in a 'supreme being' and that Freemasons donate £millions to charity. The charity angle was reinforced with display boards and tables covered in press releases detailing the beneficiaries and amounts. It was also emphasised that they are not a secret society but do have secrecy regarding their rituals.

It was interesting. When I got home I looked up the Wikipedia entry for the Freemasons and it soon became apparent that our guide had memorised this almost verbatim. I don't have any axe to grind against them but clearly there has to be some kind of benefit to becoming one. Just having a higher set of 'values' and wanting to give money to charity are surely not reason enough for joining? Whatever the case it was nice that they opened their doors. I don't think I'll be joining up any time soon though!

The Death of the White Lady?

Does she still haunt the grounds of Whitley Abbey Community School I wonder? Or rather, are the tales of her haunting that part of southern Coventry still doing the rounds in 2009?

The original Comprehensive school was opened in 1955 on the site of Whitley Abbey, a once grandiose manor house which despite its name apparently had no monastic connections. By the 1950's the house was in ruins and finally torn down in 1953.

The mainly steel framed aluminium buildings of the original school have now been replaced themselves and much of the wonderful grounds that adjoined the school that I knew - and educationally speaking at least, loathed - have been lost forever. The buildings of the 'old' school may have been non-descript but the lake, playing fields and nearby attractions such as the Seven Steps and the pill-box, air raid shelters and old farmhouse in the grounds of Chrysler more than made up for this. The 'new' school occupies about a third of the former site. Much of the grounds, where 'Stoneleigh', 'Warwick', 'Kenilworth', 'Hood', 'Grove', the Boys Gym, N-Block and the tennis courts once stood, have been replaced by a "Business Park". Even Cheylesmore Gate is no more. Only a small part of the lake is accessible from the school and when you factor in the post-Dunblane fencing it makes a depressing sight for anyone who remembers the old school and the sense of space associated with it.

The "White Lady" ghost was part and parcel of the Whitley Abbey experience. I suspect now that she is nothing more than an urban legend but it was fun at the time. No concrete evidence of sightings seemed to exist save for a supposed appearance on 'Flagstaff Green' during a Christmas concert or something before my time at the school. Some stories suggested she was the ghost of a woman who committed suicide by jumping from an upper storey window of the manor house. Another suggested she was buried beneath the last of the equally famous 'Seven Steps' in the nearby woods and haunted that spot too, with one of my mates saying she did so "only on her birthday".

The Seven Steps are some half-buried sandstone steps that lie just inside the woods where it borders the school playing fields fence, not too far away from the running track. It looks like they were once part of a woodland path. Whitley Wood ('Whitley Grove' on maps), is known locally as "the woods". It was planted hundreds of years ago on the site of medieval quarries which apparently supplied the stone for St. Michael's Church and other ye olde Coventry buildings. A block of sandstone rocks can be found in more or less the same spot and a little further away, near the bridge over the River Sowe that leads to the playing fields at the back of Stonehouse Estate, is another block of sandstone rocks next to a small pond. But enough about sandstone, back to the Seven Steps...

Once again, I've no idea where the stories about them originated, but they certainly generated a degree of fear among some pupils of the school. I think it was in my 2nd year at "big school" when a kind of Seven Steps 'mass hysteria' took hold. A boy in the 3rd year was said to have attempted to strangle his dad after he and his mates had used a Ouija board at the Seven Steps. His name had been spelled out or something and he flipped his lid. This opened the floodgates and the Seven Steps became the "in place" to spend the lunch break. Tales of crucifixes being placed on the seventh step and turning blood red abounded and one friend claimed to have seen Satan ( in the form of a goat's head ) appearing from a nearby tree. For a while, metalwork lessons for most of the class consisted of making crude Christian crosses fashioned from brass [?] using tin snips. When challenged by Mr Jones as to what we were doing the reply was;

"We are making crosses to put on the seventh step in the woods sir. They turn red like blood and sometimes the devil appears!"

Mr Jones said "okay", sipped his tea and left us to it. He was a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party and had a very relaxed attitude to teaching. If he ever did ask why you weren't doing any work or not doing what you were supposed to be doing all you had to do was tell him Maggie Thatcher was an evil bitch who needed bumping off along with the rest of the Conservative Party and he would leave you alone! What a legend!

Not everyone was caught up in the hysteria though. I remember one Saturday making my way through the woods with a friend to the steps. When we arrived we found a number of local kids were already there. Their leader had a nudey mag and mockingly said to us; "Huh! There aint no devil here you morons! I w*nk on the Seven Steps! Eat my spunk White Lady!"

Later that year, after the hysteria had subsided, a boy was murdered by his best friend not far from the Seven Steps. The first inkling that something was wrong was the number of police walking around the school in the morning while lessons were taking place. During metalwork someone asked Mr Jones why there were so many cops about. He said he didn't know but added, "I'll tell you this much, there wouldn't be this many pigs if it was just a break in!"

The proximity of the murder to the Seven Steps just added to the intrigue. About the weirdest thing I ever saw connected to them was the start (or end) of a rainbow at the spot in the field which marked the entrance to the steps. No pot of gold or leprechauns were visible though. Nowadays, with the school playing fields being fenced off, it is technically not possible for the present day intake of Whitley Abbey to access the Seven Steps during school hours so I wonder if the legends associated with them live on?

Rumours of a tunnel connecting Whitley to Baginton also did the rounds while I was at school. My dad always said Whitley has numerous tunnels underneath it but I have no idea if this is true or not.

Other ghost stories included that of a monk haunting the area and also an air raid warden haunting the shelters in the Chrysler grounds. As stated before, despite its name, there is not believed to have been any monastic establishments on the site. I used to think the sandstone foundations in "the shrubs" ( a bushy wooded area near T-Block and the lake ) were the remains of a monastic building but they were either where a quarry was or more likely the foundations of the Roman Catholic Chapel that was added to Whitley Abbey by one of its owners in the 1800's.

As for the ghostly air raid warden I never ever believed that one! Ghosts are usually associated with tragic deaths and during World War II the Armstrong-Whitworth factory at Whitley was not damaged by any bombs let alone the air raid shelters! Some of the shelters could be scary when you first entered them but that was only until your eyes adjusted to the darkness. The shelters were next to a pill box that was accessed by climbing over a white concrete fence topped with barbed wire. The fence marked the boundary between the school and the grounds of the Chrysler (later Talbot and currently the Jaguar Engineering Centre). Holes had been made in it and the barbed wire removed so it was easy enough to get over. For a child who had a fixation with WWII and the military in general the pill box was brilliant! It had an upper section which had narrow slits for windows. I liked to imagine a machine gun was mounted here. The remains of antennae protruded from the roof which was jumped off many times during my junior school days.

Next to the pill box were four or five air raid shelters. They were around 25 yards in length and ran in straight lines. Access was usually via a circular concrete hole which I suspect was originally the emergency exit. Some were easier to get into than others and I think one may have been completely inaccessible. The real 'walk in' entrances at the other end had all been blocked. One shelter was known as "The Rainbow Shelter" on account of the bright pink and yellow graffiti that had been daubed on it. I'm not 100% certain but think this is the one that was supposed to be haunted. One year, when we had a 'bonus' school holiday due to the cleaners being on strike, a load of us "unblocked" one of the proper entrances to a shelter. For the first time since it had been sealed up light flooded into the normally dark refuge and instantly this shelter became the least scary and easiest to get in to.

Another attraction in this part of the world was the car junkyard and the remains of the "old farmhouse" (Whitley Farm) next to it. You followed a path from the air raid shelter, went through a hole in a fence and then clambered over a gap in a high wall to get there. The pill box and air raid shelters were in a bit of land covered in trees and bushes well away from the car factory. The scrap cars and farmhouse were a lot closer though so you had to be on your toes for the dreaded "security guards" who would allegedly take your name and address and threaten to inform your parents or get the police if they caught you again. I used to think the security guards were a scare story as in all the times I was there I'd never seen any until a sunny Saturday afternoon in1980 when one of them made an appearance in the junkyard. A number of us managed to hide behind a large shed and held our breath. An age seemed to pass before one of us checked that the coast was clear and we made good our escape.

Some kids plundered the cars for spark plugs which apparently could be sold on for money; I just enjoyed clambering through or helping overturn them. The farmhouse was a creepy place. Just the outside shell remained but inside was an old stove and cast iron bath. Rickety stairs clung to one of the walls leading to nowhere as the upstairs was long gone. It was very easy to imagine this place being haunted but I don't remember any associated ghost stories. When I was about 9 or 10 I do remember watching some older kids going into the pitch black cellar under the farmhouse and thinking they must be mad!

The pill box, air raid shelters and what remained of the farmhouse are now lost forever. The land where they once stood seems to form part of the "Lakeside" phase of the business park development. In fact, much of the Whitley that I associate with my childhood is no more. The cycle speedway track on Folly Lane fields, the shops in Ashington Grove (especially the small sweet shop at the bottom of Abbey Road!), the famous "Chinky" corner shop outside the main gates of the big school, "The Abbey" pub ( later to become "The Mysterious Monk"), the social club on The Avenue where my dad pulled pints for a while during the late 1970's, the hospital, the zoo with its famous Zulu warrior guardian and the changes to "Riverside" which is overgrown and fenced off. It's hard to imagine now that this steep muddy riverbank once provided hours of amusement with a swing over the River Sherbourne and stepping stones at its base that allowed you to cross the water when it was shallow. Bricks would be thrown at any rats spotted in the water and games of "knifey" played using the swing and a pen knife. The biggest change, as touched on at the beginning of this blog, has been the demolition of the old school. Soon Alice Stevens School will be added to the 'lost list'. Apparently it is to be demolished with housing to be built in its place.

It seems Coventry Council has earmarked all of the green land in this part of the world for 'development'. In 50 years time will any of the green fields of Whitley and the surrounding area be left I wonder? And will the White Lady have been forgotten about completely?