News

We reported on “the battle for Pinkett’s Booth” back in June. You will recall that on the very last day of the public inquiry into the Coventry Local Plan, developers put forward a scheme to create employment land in the Green Belt west of Brickhill Lane in Allesley. After we raised out concerns, there has… Read more: The Battle of Pinkett’s Booth II

At our first general meeting for 2026/27, we focussed on transport in Coventry. We had two excellent presentations from Colin Knight, Director of Innovation at the Council who provided us with an update on the Very Light Railway (VLR) and Neil Benison, Transport Planning Manager at the Council, who covered the transport strategy. This briefing… Read more: Update on VLR

GreenPower Park: a change of direction for Coventry Airport! A new planning application for the former Coventry Airport site suggests that the long-promoted vision of a giant battery factory is giving way to a much broader employment development. Coventry City Council is proposing to spend a further £1 million on preparing a new planning application… Read more: Gigafactory Gets Downgrade

At our first general meeting for 2026/27, Coventry Society focussed on transport in Coventry. We had two excellent presentations from Colin Knight, Director of Innovation at the Council who provided us with an update on the Very Light Railway (VLR) and Neil Benison, Transport Planning Manager at the Council, who covered the transport strategy. This… Read more: Coventry’s Transport Strategy

Coventry historian and author, David McGrory, has published his 29th book about Coventry and its history. In ‘A Dark History of Coventry’, David delves into the dark and lesser known stories about Coventry’s past. Coventry has been a major city in England since the Middle Ages. As the city grew, deprivation, crime and its punishment… Read more: A Dark History of Coventry

A somewhat bleary-eyed group of Society members met at Viscoe’s Leamington headquarters on Friday 21 August 2026 for an early 9.00 am start. We were met by Matthew and Dan, who escorted us around the facility, with Dan providing informative and entertaining insights into the company’s background and the assembly processes we were observing. Vitsoe… Read more: Visit to Vitsoe’s Leamington HQ and Production Building

An exhibition of rare footage and photos brings the City’s past to life. The exhibition, at the Priory Visitor Centre Undercroft, shows visual records of a city’s past and present brings together three collections for the first time. Coventry Then & Now features archive photographs of the city, rare film footage of the construction of… Read more: Coventry Then and Now

The pioneering work on the jet engine by Sir Frank Whittle has been celebrated with a new set of stamps from Royal Mail. Alec Blackman writes on the BBC website…. Whittle, who was born in Coventry and founded Power Jets in Rugby to build the aircraft engines he designed, before going on to continue his… Read more: Jet pioneer celebrated with new Royal Mail stamps

Historian and CovSoc member, Peter James, tells us how the plague affected Coventry over centuries. Peter writes…. The first plague epidemic known as The Black Death initially appeared in Europe in 1346. Originating in South East Asia it spread along the Silk Road into the Middle-East, North Africa and then Europe. The bubonic plague secured… Read more: The Plague in Coventry

Historian and CovSoc committee member, David Fry, celebrates the 90th anniversary of the last Coventry Hippodrome. David writes….. This year marks the ninetieth anniversary of the beginning of the construction of the last of the Coventry Hippodromes. This fact was brought home to me as I read a short article by the son of the… Read more: 90th Anniversary of the Third Coventry Hippodrome