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Coventry

Did You Know?

Sir Henry Parkes, five times Premier of New South Wales and the father of modern Australia, was born at Canley, then just outside the old city, in 1815. Parkes in New South Wales is one of Coventry’s twin towns.

Lady Godiva was a real person but never rode naked through the streets to free the people from taxation. The story emerged 250 years after her death, probably invented by Benedictine monks.

Legend has it that the city was the birthplace of St George, dragon-slayer and patron saint of England. St George was a central figure in Coventry’s medieval processions, long before Godiva featured.

Coventry pioneered town twinning in Europe and now has 26 towns and cities, including Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad), Dresden and Jinan in China. Its first German twin city was Kiel in 1947.

The first smokeless zone in Britain was introduced in Coventry in 1948 and the city is also the birthplace of the Green Party in this country, originally called the People Party and founded by two solicitors.

The 1969 hit film ‘The Italian Job’ features a legendary car chase that took place, partly, in Coventry. The iconic scene involves three patriotically coloured Minis driving through huge sewer pipes in an attempt to escape. These same pipes can be found at Stoke Aldermoor

All modern bicycles are descended from JK Starley’s Rover safety cycle, invented in Coventry in 1885. A decade later the city became the birthplace of the British motor industry, producing the first cars under licence from Gottlieb Daimler in Germany.

Coventry once boasted the only unfortified royal palace outside London. The palace’s surviving gatehouse, parts of which date back to the 13th century, is the oldest building in Britain to be used as a Register Office.

Film star Clive Owen and pop impresario Pete Waterman were born in Coventry, while Labour politician Mo Mowlam, architect of the historic Northern Ireland peace accord, spent her childhood in the city.

You might have seen a big grey metal building near The Hub, but did you know this building is called The Elephant Building? The building, part of the former Coventry leisure centre, was built to look like an elephant, with a glass covered walkway representing its trunk. Can you see the resemblance?

The 500-year-old Coventry Tapestry, on the north wall of the city’s medieval guildhall of St Mary, is the oldest in the country still hanging on the wall for which it was made. It features King Henry VI and his wife Margaret of Anjou, surrounded by many of the people they knew in life.

The phrase ‘Sent To Coventry’ had its origins during the Civil War, when captured Royalist soldiers from the King’s defeated Scottish army were imprisoned in the heavily fortified and strongly pro-Parliament city and given a hard time by locals.