Publishers page
Peter Barton is the publisher of these pages
 Here I am in 2008 |
I first published these pages back in 1994 probably because I could. I was working as a designer then and the Internet was becoming part of what we did. I was working on sites for clients. I believed what I could do for them, I could do for myself. We had our own Internet leased line -a staggering 64k which by today's standards is a joke but it served the purpose and the site that subsequently became know as TheCoventryPages was born.
I had lived in Coventry since 1983 and had ridden around the back streets and byways of Coventry with my young daughter on the back of my bike. I saw many little gems then, most of which you would have passed by in a car or on a bus. It was then I started to dig into the surface of the history of Coventry to uncover information on the bits and pieces of walls and buildings I had found.
Gladys Steer lived opposite me in Middleborough Rd. She was a lady in her 80's who had seen much of the city pre, during and post war. She told me many things about where we lived. About the blitz, about her husband who was an ARP (air raid precautions) man, how her daughter Joan would cycle over to Berkswell out of harms way during the blitz and even how many times the roof had been blown off the house I lived in. This also kindled my interest.
I wanted to show Coventry for what I knew it to be; ancient and interesting as opposed to the much-maligned city the brutalist architecture and town planning of the post war years had created.
My wife's family came from Coventry, or at least so I thought. They were watchmakers, the Naylors. It transpired they had come to Coventry from the Liverpool area after a long spell in Clerkenwell London. All three areas were watch-making centres in the 18th and 19th centuries. Their history also pulled me in to the history of Coventry.
I hope you find the site interesting and useful. I enjoy working on it. Contact me if there is anything you feel needs adding or changing.
Peter Barton
Lincoln 2008