How the streets in Cheylesmore were named

Daily Telegraph, 1935

The names fall into various classes. In the first place, there are directional names such as Daventry Road, as applied to the wide thoroughfare running through the heart of the estate and linking up with the London Road at Whitley.

In some cases there are continuations of existing roads, but in the main selections consist of persons or fraternities who have had some connection with the district.

Perhaps the most obvious choice is “Black Prince Avenue” applied to one of the main roads, for the Black Prince was once owner of Cheylesmore Manor.

Surrounding this avenue are a number of minor streets, bearing such names as “Poitiers Road”, “Crecy Road” and Castille Road“ which commemorate the Black Prince's successful campaigns in the middle of the 14th Century.

Another group of streets surrounds “The Martyrs Close” and all of then bear some reference to the Coventry Martyrs who died in the Park Hollow nearby in the middle of the 16th century. “Glover Street”, “Silksby Street” and “Hocket Street” are among these, while “Joad Ward Street” commemorate Joan Ward, the first of the martyrs who suffered in 1510.

“The Chesils” is a name of unusual interest, for though it is not recorded on any map, it seems to have lived in Coventry for hundreds of years and has been handed down verbally from generation to generation. The avenue to be then described is on the area of land that has always borne that name, and it will be then perpetuated.

The road called “The Park Paling” adjoining Whitley Common, is of great interest. The Cheylesmore Estate (more generally known as “The Park”) was surrounded in the Middle Ages by a continuous wooden paling, and the new road named after it is actually adjacent to the line of the old paling.

“Locksmiths Close”, in the centre of the most exclusive residential part of the estate, bears the medieval name of a piece of land not far from the Cheylesmore Manor House, while Humphrey Burton, Town Clerk of Coventry about 1610-1650, and a man who devoted much research to the early history of Cheylesmore is associated with “Humphrey Burton's Road”.

One of the finest central roads will be “Queen Isabel's Avenue”, in memory of the grandmother of the Royal owner of Cheylesmore”.