Bishop Gate and back to the start

s you approach the top of Bishop Street from the Ring Road footpath you'll arrive at the Canal Basin bridge (right), near where Bishop Gate would have stood in the roadway directly in front of you. David Hale's illustration, below right, depicts the gate from the "town" side.

Before the ring road intervened in the late 1960s, St. Nicholas Street would have continued straight on northwards from here. Now, however, the two roads are joined via the footbridge which primarily gives access to the Canal Basin. At the base of the Bishop Street side of the bridge, the plaque pictured below has been laid giving a few details.

Bishop Gate by Coventry artist, David Hale. (This image must not be copied or reproduced in any way without permission from the artist.)

limbing the steps of the footbridge and looking back southwards towards the town centre grants this next view of the two spires, which must be a similar scene to that surveyed by the watchmen standing over the gate many centuries ago. Back then, of course, the view would have been unspoilt by modern clutter across the skyline!

Find it on the map....

In the centre of this photograph, taken by Steve Orland in 2020, is the Old Grammar School at the junction of Hales Street and Corporation Street, with the Burges continuing southwards from Bishop Street towards Primark (better remembered by most locals as Owen Owen).

Walled Coventry from the north - could our view really have looked like this?

From Bishop gate the wall continued for 40 metres north east - however, we cannot follow it on foot, as it would take us to the middle of the Ring Road! At the far northerly extent of the wall was another square tower, from where the wall turned right to meander south east, past another semi-circular tower, to join back up with Cook Street gate.

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