Art Gallery and Museum

March 1939

SITE OF THE MUSEUM AND ART GALLERY

My readers may be interested in the site of the Museum and Art Gallery, which munificent gift by Sir Alfred Herbert will be welcomed by the citizens of our no mean City.

On this site stood some very ancient dwellings, up to the time of demolition. Two old overhanging timbered cottages with trefoil doorway standing in Bayley Lane, must be of the 14th cent., some of its timbers being in good preservation. In the long ago, as a print of Bayley Lane shows, many houses of this kind stood in this street, and in our library are numerous drawings of "Barge Boards" from these dwellings. In the two cottages mentioned, two barge boards were found which had been taken down possibly 400 years ago, and fast-ened to the walls inside the houses, where they had been plastered over with clay, which had helped to keep them in sound condition. They are about 10ft. long, and have carvings of the four petal rose, trefoils, etc, and also on one end of each board a wyvern, an imaginary animal sometimes represented in coats of arms, with the forepart of a dragon, the tail of a scorpion, the feet of a bird, and wings expanded.

While it is usual for me to use a large quantity of boiled linseed oil on such carvings, it is not necessary on these, being so well preserved. The old trefoil doorway was very rotten, and was broken in the course of demolition.

Near to these houses stood the Catherine Bayley's School, adjoining the Draper's Hall. This school was founded at this place in 1723, but later moved to Little Park Street, where Catherine Bayley lived, and died in 1730, aged 52 years; the building is now occupied by Messrs. Middlemore.

In a cellar opposite Much Park Street is a pebble roadway leading towards Much Park Street, which was probably a lower road in that direction, This road runs at such an angle that I think it must cross beneath Bayley Lane, and may be found on the site of the Museum.

On the Earl Street side a part of Messrs. Wheeler's building was found to be old, possibly 17th century, but the shop adjoining appeared to be at least 15th century, and its clay plaster was still adhering to the hand-cut laths. On St. Mary's Street side, the building in which the mobile police have their office had once been a house, and the thin bricks show its age to be about early 17th century.

The Drapers' Hall, built 1829, stands on the site of two previous Wool Halls, and no doubt the "Searching house" stood there from a very early period. In London and Oxford we find the Guilds as early as Henry I., 1000 to 1035. It is thought that the Drapers' Guild of Coventry may have been founded even earlier to the Guild in London. Mention is made of the Drapers of Coventry, in 1247, who with others were in trouble because they had buried a man who had been drowned, before an inquest had been held upon him.

Many cloth merchants from Ireland, Devon, and Cornwall came to Coventry, and also undressed cloth from Gloucestershire. These merchants were restricted by the Drapers of Coventry, and had to hold their sales in a house called "The Drapery," near the Drapers' Hall, which had been given for that purpose by William Walshman, a great benefactor to St. John's Guild.

In 1320 mention is made of a place in the market where cloth is sold. From 1425 to 1455 an illicit market was held in the south porch of St. Michael's Church. Not only did traders come here, but trade with foreign parts was increased, for we find in 1398 a quantity of frieze worth £200 lay in the Baltic port of Stralsund. No doubt the mills, of which there were thirty-two between Spon End and Whitley, played a great part in the trade of cloth manufacture. Not only did the Guild help in the building of churches, etc., but they also found 59 men to man the city walls, and 93 suits of armour, in readiness for any trouble arising over the Wars of the Roses. In 1619 the Drapery had a clock over the door, on the dial of which was inscribed - "Ecce ut hora sic fugit vita."

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