John Marshall presents the third and final part of the story of Hope’s Harbour – the old house in Bray’s Lane that became the first home of Stoke Park School. What happened to the house after Stoke Park School moved out?
‘Burning like a Roman candle’ – Hope’s Harbour severely hit by fire
ON the evening of January 18th, 1972, a dramatic fire broke out at Hope’s Harbour, the old house in Bray’s Lane, causing severe damage to the roof and tower. According to a local newspaper report, three fire appliances fought the blaze, with three more on stand-by.
The building’s caretaker, Henry Harrison, told the Coventry Evening Telegraph that he was alerted to the fire by a passer-by who called the fire brigade.
“By the time I saw it the roof was well alight, “he told the paper. And another witness said the burning tower, at the front of the house, “looked like a Roman Candle”.
The fire had been noticed at 9.45 at night and firefighters immediately closed Bray’s Lane, between Ethelfield Road and Walsgrave Road, as they fought the spreading flames.
It was not until morning that the true scale of damage could be assessed but there was an instant determination to repair the ravaged building.
By this time, Hope’s Harbour had enjoyed a long and eventful history since it was first built for Otto Striedinger, the Inspector of Factories, in 1879. It was renamed Harefield House at the end of the 19th century and became the first home of Stoke Park School in 1919.
When Stoke Park School moved out in 1947, the old house was taken over by students from another educational establishment, the Junior Commercial School. This had originally been created at Coventry Technical College in 1936 and initially provided a two-year course, with a vocational emphasis, for boys and girls between the ages of 13 and 15.
It moved to Bray’s Lane in 1948 where it was known at first as the Commercial High School, changing its name in 1949 to Churchfield High School. By this time, the school provided a five- year course for pupils, who entered at the age of 11-12. It was a selective school and was described at the time as Coventry’s first co-educational grammar school.
But just like Stoke Park School earlier, the new Churchfield High School was severely restricted by overcrowding and lack of space. It was for this reason that Coventry Education Committee decided in 1952 to purchase the house next door, Elm Bank in Stoke Park, once the home of the late Siegfried Bettmann, the founder of Triumph, who had died in 1951.
The purchase of Elm Bank, and its surrounding grounds, for an estimated cost of about £8,500, provided a convenient extension to Churchfield High School and relieved the pressure of space in the main school buildings. But this was not done without difficulty, since it was discovered that a restrictive covenant existed on the Elm Bank property which limited its use to residential purposes only. This legal difficulty appears to have been overcome with a compulsory purchase order.
The headmaster of Churchfield High School was Mr FW Lewis, who had moved with the school when it first transferred from the Technical College in 1948. Under his leadership the school instituted a system of separate school houses, namely Kenilworth, Stoneleigh, Warwick and Whitley. The school also had a sixth form which no doubt aimed to send some of its pupils into higher education.
At the school’s first Speech Day in 1952, the headmaster said the school now had 450 pupils and had “excellent examination results.” It participated in inter-school sports leagues, such as football and hockey, and had won the Coventry Schools’ Cricket Cup for the second time in two years.
The school magazine (‘Field Fare’) mentioned outings to the Shakespeare theatre in Stratford, and visits to Cadbury’s at Bournville and to Wembley for a women’s international hockey match.
But despite its apparent success, Churchfield High School was not to remain long at Bray’s Lane. Within a whirlwind of educational reform in Coventry, a large new purpose-built school was taking shape in the grounds of the old Whitley Abbey, and in 1955 many of the pupils at Churchfield, together with pupils from Cheylesmore School in Mile Lane, were transferred to the new Whitley Abbey School.
Some pupils remained at Churchfield, which for a while became an annexe of Whitley Abbey, but by 1958 all students had moved to the new comprehensive school, where the first headmaster was Mr Lewis, who had moved with his pupils from Bray’s Lane. When construction of the new school was complete, it was aiming to have space for 1,500 pupils, divided into separate houses.
The departure of pupils from Churchfield High School meant that, once again, the old house in Bray’s Lane, together with adjoining buildings, became vacant. But the vacancy was soon filled, this time by pupils from Three Spires School, under the tutorship of headmaster Mr John Price.
Three Spires was known as a ‘special school’ and was intended for pupils with learning difficulties. It was one of a number of Coventry schools at that time for children with special needs, some of which still exist. As a result of this change of use, it became clear that Elm Bank was no longer needed as part of the main school, so in 1959 it was decided that Bettmann’s old house should become Coventry Teachers’ Centre – a place for meetings, courses and social events for teachers.
It was during the tenure of Three Spires School, some 15 years later, that fire broke out at Bray’s Lane.
Despite the drama of the blaze, only one day’s schooling was lost and tributes were paid to the “magnificent staff” who carried on teaching. But urgent repairs were required, with one wing of the building severely damaged, nine rooms lost, and parts of the roof missing.
When work was finally completed, the old Hope’s Harbour was still there but barely recognisable. The distinctive tower at the front of the house was dismantled, the south wing was demolished and the roofline was remodelled.
Not long afterwards, in 1976, Three Spires moved out of the building to take up residence at another site – Kingsbury Road in Coundon – and once again the much-altered building in Bray’s Lane was looking for a new tenant. But it would not have to wait too long because another local school, Sacred Heart Junior Catholic School, was already waiting in the wings.
In 1977 the Birmingham Diocesan Commission arranged to spend a total of £96,000 on further conversion work to make the property suitable for the new occupant, including the provision of a new infants’ block. Later that year Sacred Heart School gleefully moved to the building in Bray’s Lane, leaving behind the cramped conditions of its old school in Harefield Road.
In July 1978 the Coventry Evening Telegraph reported that hundreds of children, parents and teachers packed the hall and corridors at the school to celebrate the official opening of Sacred Heart School at Bray’s Lane. And head teacher Mr Terrence Carmody expressed his delight that the school had finally been able to vacate its tiny former home, where the school had begun in 1924.
Sacred Heart School celebrated its centenary in 2024 and still proudly occupies its ‘new’ site in Bray’s Lane, as it has done for almost 50 years.
This article was originally published in Jabet’s Ash, the newsletter of Stoke Local History Group, in February 2026. Parts one and two were published by the Coventry Society in November 2025 and February 2026.