CovSoc founder member, Paul Maddocks, reminds us of the previous location of Volgograd Place and its failed vision. Paul writes….
A modern landscape that looks like moon craters or even volcanoes gushing fountains of water, this was a new modern way of doing a landscape scheme underneath the Ring Road near to Swanswell Pool in 1972.
The idea was for a small fountain of water coming out of each of the crater centres and trickling down the sides and slowly making its way into a central linked drain. The pumping station on site (the small building in the middle of the photograph) would circulate the water after being filtered. In the evening the area would be floodlit forming an attractive feature of the city’s night-time scene. All this was due to the fact that most plants and trees would not grow in the shade of the ring road.
Unfortunately, the pump could not cope with the amount of dust and rubbish in the water and constant repairs and replacement of the filters was starting to cost a lot of the maintenance fund. After a time it was discovered that the pipes leaked. Because the whole pipe work was buried in concrete, it couldn’t be fixed without tearing the whole lot up. So they were just turned off.
None of the fountains have worked for many years now and the area has become very run down.
The site was special planned to form an integral part of a new landscape area called Volgograd Place, a public square to mark the city’s bond of friendship with Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) in Russia. Coventry and Volgograd were the world’s first formal Twin Cities, sparking the international Twin City Movement.
Coventry and Volgograd have a special relationship, which grew out of their terrible war time experiences. Both cities suffered devastation during WWII. Coventry was blitzed from the air and Volgograd was the scene of the decisive battle of Stalingrad. During those dark years the people of Coventry and Volgograd supported each other with both practical and moral support.
The plaque for the area disappeared when a rainwater down pipe was installed on the ring road and down the column where the original plaque was mounted. In Coventry’s City of Culture year, the Russian Ambassador was going to visit. Due to the sorry state of the Volgograd Place memorial site, another plaque was made and put on a sand stone plinth on the grass area in front of Holy Trinity Church which is now called Volgograd Place.
His Excellency Andrei Kelin, the Russian Ambassador, began the commemoration visit to Coventry Cathedral with an address and prayers about forgiveness and reconciliation. This was followed by a visit to the ruins of the previous cathedral, which was burnt out by incendiary bombs during the bombing of Coventry. After that they went on to the newly installed plaque, where the Ambassador placed a wreath at the monument to Volgograd and Coventry friendship, forged in time of war.
One of the problems with this plaque is being so close to the recently moved Coventry Cross, some people think it is a label for the cross and find it difficult to understand they are two separate things and have nothing to do with each other.
The old Volgograd Place site could be made more attractive like the Naul’s Mill Underpass, please see attached photographs.
To be honest the complete stretch from Lady Herbert’s Garden to Swanswell Park all could do with a makeover. We wonder what you think should happen to this part of the city?