Flower and Sons used to have a brewery in the heart of Stratford-upon-Avon.
I started working for them in 1968. The company was then owned by Whitbread who decided to close ...
Here are some pictures of the track in the 1970s. I took these during the holiday fortnight, when me and a friend went into the building when it was empty ...
For 33 years the extensive coalfield of Warwickshire had been free from serious disaster. Tragically this impressive record was marred by a calamity that took place at the Exhall Colliery ...
(An account of the disaster can be found in this article)
The circumstances of the disaster were investigated by the Coroner and jury at Coventry County Hall.
The first witness was Dr. ...
Travel to Baddesley Ensor and Baxterley nowadays, and the area is the epitome of rural Warwickshire. Its mining heritage is not forgotten, however, even though the mine closed in 1989. ...
Today (2015) most of the original British Thomson-Houston (BTH) factory buildings have been demolished but a few remnants have been incorporated into GE (interestingly a descendant of GEC who used to ...
This fascinating picture gives us an important record of the industrial revolution in Warwickshire. The textile mill was built for Sir Roger Newdigate of Arbury Hall (1719-1806) on his land to ...
Young boys were employed in Warwickshire coalfields in the 18th and 19th centuries.
6d a day in 1729
A coal account book in the Newdigate archives refers to the use of boys ...
Recently in Coventry I happened to pass the old Banner Lane factory. It has now been demolished. It was built at the outbreak of the Second World War, as a ...
My earliest memory of Rootes was the annual visit to the pantomime at the Coventry Hippodrome with the other kids of Rootes workers. We all got a Christmas stocking of ...
When I first went there I went from GEC, and I arrived there in my Volkswagen Beetle, and the security man wouldn’t let me take it in there! He said ...
Warwickshire has a long and proud heritage of coal mining, with the Warwickshire coalfield extending across the county from Warwick to Tamworth. Towns such as Bedworth owe much of their ...
The Warwickshire County Record Office holds quite a lot of photographs and records of the coal mining industry which went on in and around Polesworth. This industry was spurred by ...
Before 1947 there were some gruesome stories of how pit ponies were treated. Warning: these stories contain graphic accounts of animal cruelty.
A water mill used to stand on a mill-stream off the river Avon between Brandon and Ryton on Dunsmore; it was situated on what is now the eleventh green of Brandon ...
In 1847 a coal mine was sunk on the Pooley Hall Estate, not far from the main house. It was completed in 1849, and coal began to be extracted in ...
The sinking of the Binley shafts began in 1904 by a company known as Merry and Cuninghame on land leased from the Earl of Craven. Sinking was completed in 1908 ...
Newdigate Colliery took its name from its first owner, Sir Francis Alexander Newdigate of Arbury Hall, Nuneaton. The family had been linked with coal mining in Warwickshire for centuries. Work ...
The first Warwickshire Coal Company was registered in 1901 by the proprietors of the Wyken Collieries, who commenced trial excavations at Keresley during 1902 and soon discovered a viable seam. ...
Ansley Hall Colliery was sunk in 1874 by William Garside Philips of Oldbury Grange, the great grandfather of Captain Mark Philips, the first husband of Princess Anne. It had three ...
Kingsbury Colliery was founded by the owners of the Hockley Hall and Whateley Colliery and Brickworks in the 1890s when workings were nearing exhaustion. Two shafts were sunk to the ...
The Arley Colliery Company was formed in 1901 after coal was discovered in the valley to the west of the village. Two shafts were sunk down to the Two Yard ...