Val Morton of Knowle LHS
20 Feb 2017
Kenilworth Road was more important than Warwick Road, leading as it did to Kenilworth Castle and Coventry. It became very wide over the centuries as people and horses avoided its mud, so that when it was resurfaced land became available on its south side which accounts for the long front gardens of the 16th/17th century cottages.
Along the north side of the road, the old school next to the church was founded in the 1840s by the Lord of the Manor, and rebuilt on site in 1871. It was enlarged soon afterwards to have the capacity to take 300 pupils. Girls and boys had separate entrances and playgrounds. The speaker started at the School in 1937 and showed two group photographs with 26 pupils in 1900 and 28 in 1953. Children left at 14, when state education finished, to start work. The School was replaced by a new Primary in 1966, and the building fell into decay before being sensitively altered in the 1970s with an arch to new sheltered housing behind. Next to the east were a row of houses built on land from Boars Head Farm in 1875 for £281-6-6d. No 3 became the schoolmaster’s house when it was sold for £780 in 1892. No 15 was a shop run by Miss Maisie Scragg and much patronised by the schoolchildren. It later became an off-licence, then a restaurant and was now a private house. No 17, Jubilee House, with an 1897 commemorative plaque was the Police Serjeant’s house, No 19 was the Police Station and No 21 was the Constable’s house. The latter three houses were built when the Boars Head was demolished. Yew Tree Cottage dated frim the 17th century and was originally a single property. It was converted into three dwellings, Nos 29-33, and each had its separate wash-house at the rear; there was a communal built-in water heater with a fire underneath, and a communal pump. The barn of Golden End Farm was in Kixley Lane and was now a private house. Far End Cottage in the Lane dated from the 18th century and was lived in by the Wilcox family after they moved out of Grimshaw Hall. Now painted yellow, it has a ghost and a fine garden. Golden End Cottage was 17th century, and by 1853 was used as a forge. It was well restored just before WWII.
On the south side of Kenilworth Road opposite the church was originally the village green on a triangle formed by Wilson’s Road leading to the High Street. Now occupied by Berrow Cottage Homes built in 1885 and a number of frontages directly on to the Road. No 16 Warwick House (built 1890) became a haberdasher’s shop, whose owner also ran a well patronised servants’ register. Her two daughters were known as Miss In and Miss Out, the former running the shop which had an open fire at its centre. The Nook next door was a tiny cottage whose door went straight into the kitchen; there were two bedrooms upstairs. It was occupied in WWII by the Allen family who had eight children. In Belor House lived the father of the brilliant Henry Belor, who served as church organist for over 25 years. Clutton’s Cottage (1891 when it sold for £385) was the home of the man who had the market garden alongside. This was turned into allotments in 1951 and then had 22 Berrow Charity Cottages built on it in 1977. At the junction with Wilson’s Road was the village pound, opposite the Boars Head Farm/Pub.
Milverton Farm was demolished in the 1960s. It had been run by the Glover family in the 1800s, then the Chinns until 1920, before the Tayntons came and developed the dairy. At the rear were the stables which survived into the 1970s and was where Woodfields, the blacksmith and wheelwrights, had their business. Eva Wootton, who wrote the History of Knowle, painted Milverton Farm in 1945. The Knowle Service Station was built next to the farm in the 1950s and now sold Jet petrol; behind it the Fletchers ran a coach business. The site of Milverton Farm was now occupied by Cook’s Close, named after the founder of the Guild of St Anne, with its Guild House next to the church, in 1412/13.
No 50 was occupied by Ernest Harwood, the village barber. Nos 72--78 dated from Tudor times and were the oldest in the community. Nos 88-90 were built in the 1690s by Richard Grimshaw, and were now owned by the Knowle United Charities, as were Nos 96-98. The Manor House never served as such. It was the original village school up to the 1840s. The schoolmasters from 1721 were Thomas Treherne who was followed by his son, also Thomas who died in 1800. They have a fine mural tablet with a lifelike skull in the church. One of their pupils from 1779-1783 was the Warwick born Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864), the famous writer. The house served as a lodge to Knowle Hall. In its rear garden was a pair of gatepiers to the Hall – wide enough for a sedan chair but not for a coach and horses. Much altered c1900, it became a private school run by Miss Tangye, and later a school named Sunnymount. A picture of it dating from 1952 showed it had been further altered in the 1930s.
The Grand Union Canal opened in 1799 and Knowle had a coal wharf on its west bank immediately below the Kenilworth Road Bridge. A lime kiln was shown alongside the wharf. The five locks alter the water level by 42 ft. The tall chimney of the pumping station was demolished in 1933. Beyond the canal was Knowle Hall, originally Tudor built on the remains of a moated manor house dated to c1194. The Grevilles acquired it and the Lordship of the Manor when they were ennobled as Lords Brooke in 1623 by James I. They became Earls of Warwick in 1759. The house was enlarged in the 1660s by 5th Lord Brooke. Leased out from the 1720s, it and the Lordship of the Manor was sold by the family in 1743, and gradually decayed. William Wilson commissioned a new house in 1834, but it was never built owing to his many extravagances; he sold the estate but retained the Lordship. The present house dated from 1849. Home Farm to its south was held by the Daly family from 1863 to 1966; they became auctioneers. The Everitt family bought the Lordship in 1870 and held it until Horace Everitt’s death in 1982. It was sold to the Thompsons for £5,000, and later to the Philips – who have now offered it for sale at £7,750.
Springfield House further along the Kenilworth Road was built for Richard Morland by Joseph Bonomi in 1790. To its north the elegant bridge over the River Blythe was designed by Sir John Soane. The Boultbees bought the estate in 1798 and broke it up in 1904, when Springfield Farm dating from the 1560s was sold to its occupants. George Jackson bought the House for £20,000: it was he who restored the Guild House. The Jacksons moved to Somerset in 1939 and the House was requisitioned in 1941. In 1946 it was sold with 90 acres to the City of Birmingham. It almost became a teachers’ training college in 1950 (Marymount was chosen instead), but it has since served as a school for pupils with special needs.