The Black Path was so called because it was originally surfaced with cinders. It was a footbridge built in the early 20th century across the railway to help workers living in Rugby reach the British Thomson Houston factory site. It was clearly where photographer Victor Long stood to take his photograph of the BTH factory.
The Black Path today
The bridge still survives today (though rather truncated at the northern end) and I made use of it to take my ‘after’ picture of the BTH site. The path is still black(ish), but surfaced with tarmac now and metal mesh has been added to prevent things falling onto the railway. The Black Path links to the Viaduct Cycle path that makes use of an old railway line that used to lead off (skirting the BTH factory site) to a viaduct across the Leicester Road.
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I recall the redesigning of the black path: the wooden steps on the GEC/Newbold side has slowly worn away so in wet weather it felt very slippery. In order to save money one side of the path was to be done by the council, the other by GEC. The council side was done with a slow ramp – it had wheelchair access. The GEC/Newbold side was done with steps only as they were trying to make the best use of the steps. So the entire thing had ‘half’ wheelchair access.
Alun – thanks for this fascinating memory – a splendid example of the right hand not knowing what the left was doing! What sort of date would this have been? (I think both sides have ramp access now as I saw people on bicycles using it.)
We lived in Avenue RD and in he 1940s and 50s we went over the humpback bridge at the end of avenue rd to newbold rd and then to the blackpath. we camped as kids in the lido field which then you could go thru the small woods to tom browns island or also called the silver steam. many happy memories I emigrated to USA in 1962. On a visit home with my grandson some 25 years later I took him on that walk. Got a real creepy feeling on the blackpath, brother told me later there was a murder there. When we got to tom browns island it was so disappointing., The whole area was overgrown with stinging nettles where we used to play in water and sunbathe.
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