This week’s Then & Now comes courtesy of prolific local historian Robin Leach, whose recent research on Kenilworth’s involvement with animal skin processing, in particular on two major sites in the town centre and at Mill End, will soon be available in his forthcoming book Kenilworth People and Places, Volume 3 (2018). Henry Street established his fellmongers… Read More The Fellmongery – Then & Now
This quaint postcard of Kenilworth Common shows a pair of semi-detached Victorian houses, with smoke pouring from the chimney stack. A family gathering of the inhabitants poses for the camera. A side-by-side map comparison with the OS 25 Inch, 1892 – 1905 map shows that these houses were reachable only by a trackway which ran… Read More House in The Common – Then & Now
This Then & Now pairing shows the open land now occupied by Hyde Road. The ‘then’ photo shows what looks like an idyllic view across the fields, over the mill brook at the bottom end of School Lane and across to Lower Ladyes Hills and the Common in the distance. At the bottom of the… Read More Hyde Road – Then & Now
Harry Sunley tells us in A Kenilworth Chronology (Odiborne Press, 1989) that various of the common lands of Kenilworth were enclosed by act of Parliament in 1755, with the exception of “forty acres of Hilly Wast Ground [which] are to remain as unenclosed and common land so that the poor of the parish should from… Read More The Common – Then & Now