Peter James follows up the story of cycle racing in Coventry and what was thought to be a photograph of the Butts Stadium. Peter writes …..
At a recent meeting of the Earlsdon Research Group it was decided to add to the cycle racing article featured in the Coventry Society News Blog and then place it on the ERG website. However Pete Walters and David Porter both had serious doubts of the authenticity of the photograph used of the Coventry Volunteers working at the Butts. (shown below):
After enlisting the help of David Fry, an expert in early photography and photographs, our search for the truth began.
David Fry suggested we consider the Radford Butts where the Royal Warwickshire Regiment Territorials rifle range was based before the First World War. A search of newspapers for military rifle ranges built or in use around 1859 would be a sensible next step.
Pete Waters reminded us of Butt Lane in Allesley which runs at right angles from Windmill Hill down to the rear of All Saints Church. When the Territorial Army was formed the Volunteers became the 7th Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment with many Coventry men involved. Could this have been the site we were looking for?
I also wondered about the butts at Stoneleigh. There were rifle butts shown on an Ordnance Survey map of 1886 at Chantry Wood Heath so I contacted Sheila Woolf – Chair of the Stoneleigh History Society to ask whether she recognised the photograph. She confirmed that it had no connection with the Stoneleigh area.
Following David Fry’s advice David Porter investigated newspaper websites and found an article in The Coventry Graphic from 1915.
It stated that the Volunteers used butts off the Allesley Old Road that they had prepared themselves in 1859. This was now the most likely place where the photograph was taken.
When I was growing up in the 1950s we lived on Allesley Old Road and my friends and I played in the area. One of our play areas lay to the West of Allesley Old Road, South of Allesley Hall Drive and North of what is now Torbay Road. The area was known as “The Rifle Fields” though we never knew why!
The abandoned quarry was an ideal place for us to race our home-made go-karts built from boxes, pram wheels, rope and pieces of wood.
We are now convinced that the photograph was taken near the Allesley Old Road and not in Earlsdon.