On Monday 8th August the Friends of the War Memorial Park hosted a visit by CovSoc members. About 20 Coventry Society members attended the tour. Peter Walters told us the history of the park, which was officially opened on 9 July1921. Surprisingly, the park was outside Coventry, in Stoneleigh parish, until 1928. In 2013 English Heritage designated the Park Grade II and the war memorial II*. The Park also has Green Flag status, the national standard for well-managed recreational spaces and parks.
Trevor Cornfoot, the Chair of the Friends of the War Memorial Park then told us about the history of the Friends Group before taking us on a guided tour of the Park.
In the 1980 and 90s the Park was getting into a rather poor state due to lack of investment. The Friends of the War Memorial Park was set up in 2006 to assist the Council apply for National Lottery money. The bid, for £2.8M, was successful and the Park was regenerated in 2010/11 and the Friends have gone from strength to strength, assisting with or funding a number of projects that have further enhanced the Park.
Some 678 trees have been planted in remembrance of Coventry men and women who have died in armed conflicts. The Friends have been researching the history of some of them, These have been written up and sixty or so of these ‘soldiers stories’ have been laminated and hang from trees around the park. Similarly, the Friends have launched a ‘memorial benches’ tour where, through a mobile phone app, you can listen to the personal memories of families and friends of about 20 people who have benches dedicated to them.
Over the decades the needs of Coventry residents have changed. A long decline in tennis has seen all the grass courts replaced by a popular hard-court area. More recently, there has been a decline in playing football and the pitches at the south of the Park have been abandoned in favour of a more informal country park. Next to this area the former golf pitch and putt has been converted to footgolf. It’s like golf but with footballs and without the clubs!
Over the years the park has become the home for a number of artifacts that have been re-homed from the city centre. There are two water troughs that formerly provided drinking water for all the horses that provided the city’s transport. A medieval arbour was moved from the Old Palace Yard to remove the risk of it being damaged in the last War. Ironically it suffered a direct hit and the remains now form a sort of rockery. Of course, it wouldn’t have been any better if it had stayed in situ.
We stopped and talked about the memorial itself. The eternal flame has been replaced by an eternal LED, but otherwise it remains largely unchanged since it was constructed in 1927 by John Gray on the design of T.F. Tickner. The Chamber of Silence inside is opened by the Friends for Heritage Open Days and Remembrance Sundays.
We were unable to enter the new Sensory Garden, created by the Friends and opened on the Parks centenary on 9 July 202, and we had to look from the outside. The garden was created to meet the needs of people in the city who are less abled or socially isolated. It has been very well-received and is well-used. The adjoining Japanese Garden, funded by the Japanese Government was opened at the same time. It provides a very attractive contrast to the sensory garden. Both gardens abut the refurbished aviary.
