CovSoc member John Marshall tells the story of a grand house in Bray’s Lane, built for the Inspector of Factories, Otto Striedinger
Bray’s Lane in Stoke in the 19th century, a remote country lane with no houses on either side. A rural idyll, surrounded by fields, with an old public house, the Half Moon, near the junction with Binley Road. Nearby are farm buildings and a blacksmith’s shop.
It was not until the mid-1860s that things began to change, with the laying out of roads for a new and exclusive housing development, to be known as Stoke Park. But progress was slow and the new site, enclosed within stone walls, did little to disturb the peace of Bray’s Lane.
It was within this quiet country lane that a new house was built in 1879 for Her Majesty’s Inspector of Factories, a man called Otto Striedinger. It was a grand house, with its own spacious grounds, and it carried a wonderfully evocative name, ‘Hope’s Harbour’.
Otto Striedinger was a native of Bavaria, Germany, and had been an officer in the Bavarian army. He arrived in England during the Crimean War as a member of the German Legion but stayed on when the Legion was disbanded. According to records held at the National Archives, he became a naturalised British citizen in February 1861.
Striedinger took a variety of educational posts before moving to Coventry as the regional Inspector of Factories. He employed an architect from Birmingham to build his house, which was widely recognised as being ahead of its time, so advanced that it merited an article in a national magazine, The Builder, in 1883, just four years after its completion.
When it came to be sold, several years later, Hope’s Harbour was described as “a very attractive and superior country house”, standing in its own grounds of three acres, including large tennis lawns and well planted kitchen gardens, with glasshouses, stabling, and a coach house.
It contained four reception rooms, seven bedrooms, a dressing room, tower room and “excellent servants’ offices”, with timber panelled walls throughout. The article in The Builder also highlighted its home comforts and labour-saving devices, such as the latest gas heating:
“Gas has been largely applied for heating the hall, many of the rooms, the two baths, and for the cooking stoves; and a small gas-engine pumps the water, brushes the boots, cleans the knives, and assists in other domestic work. The bells throughout are on the Zimdars’s pneumatic system, and the entrance can be opened from the servants’ department and the front vestibule by a ‘Sesame’ pneumatic appliance. The house is efficiently ventilated, and we learn that these labour-saving devices have satisfactorily borne the test of actual experience.”
A map of Bray’s Lane in 1906, still a quiet country lane, with Hope’s Harbour marked in red and Stoke Park below.
The name ‘Hope’s Harbour’ was not Striedinger’s invention. An earlier house of that name, on the same site but apparently not on the same plot, is known to have existed in the 17thcentury. In 1646 it was the birthplace of Joseph Harwar, a member of an old Stoke family, who would later become president of Magdalen College, Oxford. He died in 1722 and was buried at Stoke Church.
A brief reference in Canon Blyth’s History of Stoke says that by 1766 Hope’s Harbour had been demolished, with the land now let to Thomas Robinson, a farmer.
According to a report in the Coventry Standard in 1917, an ancient map of the parish showed that the original Hope’s Harbour encompassed a large section of land consisting of three adjoining closes, one with a considerable frontage onto Walsgrave Road, one bordering Bray’s Lane and the third was backland.
Bray’s Lane in those days was known as Stoke Hill Lane, or sometimes Cross Lane, meaning the lane that crossed from Lower Stoke to Stoke Hill, or what we now call Ball Hill.
During his tenure at the new Hope’s Harbour, Otto Striedinger turned the house into a lively centre of social and political activity. He was one of the leading Liberals in the city and gave garden parties in the grounds and held Liberal political meetings.
An article in the Coventry Herald described Striedinger as an “ardent Liberal” who devoted his spare time to public work, serving for a number of years on the Stoke School Board. He was also President of the Stoke Liberal Association, a member of the executive of the Coventry Liberal Association, a member of the executive of the Nuneaton Division Liberal Association, and other bodies.
“He took great interest in horticulture and was an exhibitor at some of the local shows. For many years he led an extremely active and busy life, riding great distances on his tricycle, making long railway journeys, and generally going through an immense amount of physical exertion.”
His working life as Inspector of Factories meant that he was keen to enforce the provisions of the Factory and Workshops Act, updated in 1878 and designed, in part, to regulate the amount of time that women and children could work, not just in factories but also at home in domestic top shops and weaving households.
Striedinger’s work, however, was abruptly halted in 1885-86 when he was seized with “a severe affliction of a rheumatic character” and he took leave of absence to visit Buxton and also Germany. But after resuming his public duties he became unwell again and was confined to his bed for five months.
In 1887 he was taken to Berchtesgaden in Bavaria where his condition deteriorated and he died suddenly, leaving a widow, a son and a daughter. Hope’s Harbour was put up for auction and in 1891 it briefly became the home of Colonel Thomas James Aylmer Studdy.
This article was originally published in the October 2025 edition of Jabet’s Ash, the newsletter of Stoke Local History Group. A future article will tell how Hope’s Harbour eventually became the first home of Stoke Park School.