Then & Now

Building the De Montfort – Then & Now

Building the De Montfort
Building the De Montfort

The ‘then’ picture above shows the tower crane in place used for building the De Montfort Hotel, as heralded by an advertising board, which was to open in 1967.

The vacant plot shown right of centre here was once occupied by a house known as ‘The Firs’ which was in itself formerly the site of the Green Dragon inn. This was amongst the cluster of properties destroyed by the November 1940 landmine.

In the foreground of the ‘then’ picture we can see that the bombed out site of properties 1-11 (odd) in Abbey End, including the Globe Inn, which had by the time the photo was taken been cleared for use as a temporary car park. Nowadays, it is used as a lay-by for busses, with the modern rank of Abbey End shops set back from the road behind the camera.

The house just visible behind the trees in the ‘then’ image is called Redwood House on Mulberry Court, and it still stands today. There is a suggestion that the present day structure now contains some timbers salvaged from blitzed buildings in Coventry. Robin Leach points out that its structure does not appear on map from 1925 but is shown on the 1936 map, so its original construction pre-dates the war. 

Thanks: to Norman Stevens and Robin Leach for additional information provided in this text.

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