Wartime Fire Services

Hello Kaga, You are probably correct about the painting of these signs. I only base my opinion on the fact that one of the fatalities from the November 1940 raid lived in the big house on the corner of Foleshill Rd and Lythalls Lane and so it is therefore a possibility that the cellar of the damaged building was later used as a Static Water Tank. This would explain the Emergency Water Supply sign painted on the wall (which hid from us all behind a telephone kiosk for many years). Those signs were staring us in the face in years gone by when we could actually have asked the old firemen precisely what they indicated and when they were done. Foleshill certainly had the factories and the Coventry Canal could not have been better placed to provide an extra supply of water to fight the fires, that is provided your father and his mates got the boards in to reduce any water loss where the banks had been breached. Another advantage to Foleshill was that each of the works fire brigades had a very good knowledge of their own individual factories and had probably drilled for years in the most effective way to fight a blaze. Those firemen who were in the city centre would have been facing a situation that few could have imagined and those firemen drafted in from elsewhere would also be working in unfamiliar surrounds.