Freeth Street

Freeth St was accessed from Jordan Well just up from the Gaumont and the Acorn pub which stood on the corner of Cox St and Jordan Well. Licence was transferred to the Acorn at Ringwood Highway, which is now shut and I believe demolished. Once in Freeth St you turned left and right where the ice store was. My uncle Ken French ran the ice store which was probably connected to the ice and salt store in French’s Yard, Godiva St. This was run by my grandfather Eli French. I think after the war you could exit into New St but I recall it as bomb damaged derelict area. Ken French also had butchers shops in East St and Allesley Old Rd.

Thanks for posting all this information There are numerous references in other threads to both Freeth Street and French's Yard - these can be found using the search facility

There are some excellent views of that area in Britain From Above and photos from mostly after the war at Historic England. There were quite a lot of buildings that survived the war. From Jordan Well, Freeth Street ran north to a t-junction where you could head east onto Cox Street or west and then north onto New Street. There is a picture of the building on New Street from under which Freeth Street emerged.

Newly discovered from the Kristoffersson collection (see the collections thread) and identified by none other than our very own Helen - a super rare image at ground level of Freeth Street looking north. The photographer has their back to the junction with Jordan Well.

My grandmother Florence Reddington was born in Freeth Street in March 1891 and appears on the 1891 Census as 1 month old living at no.17 Freeth Street with her mother and brother and sister.

No.17 is visible on this 1954 map, Derrick, although it may depend on the Court number.

My mate Dean Nelson has just come up with this 50's shot from the spire, which includes some good Freeth Street detail.

What's left of it. I like the ghost of what looks like a timber frame against the factory on the right, half way up. Dean couldn't do me a zoom of that could he?

This bit you mean Helen? best I could do as the resolution on Deans copy is not brilliant. He said its a Getty image originally if I can find it -

Yes Neil, that's the bit If it's in Getty, I'm happy to go look for it myself. There's almost certainly a better black and white version somewhere but this picture helps me work out where it was. Thanks Nope, I changed my mind. Getty Images are [insert swear word] useless. What idiot thinks that a key word for photos of flowers should be where they were photographed? Increasingly picture searches are terrible because there is no common sense in sorting them. The new Herbert picture library is verging on that and it hasn't got that many pictures in it. Edited by member, 26th May 2021 4:17 pm