Coventry dairies

Kaga. From a 4ft x 3ft poster I have. Just for you:

Thank you Manor House. Did you know an inspector went round, checked the bottles on your vehicle, if you had a bottle from some other firm you were fined heavily. The government restricted your street runs, each milk round had to swop customers to conserve distance, petrol and time during the war, that made the street use the same milkman more or less. Towards the end we were allowed to sell Carnation Tinned Milk.

I did know that Kaga. There was a widespread misuse of churns, crates & bottles. In 1930 a firm called 'Milk Vessel Recovery Ltd' was formed to try and sort out the illegal practices of using another dairies materials. I remember back in the 1960's, after school 2 or 3 of us would play down the old mill in Alderman's Green Rd, we would walk past stacks and stacks of crates with 1000s of empty milk bottles. In one of the buildings, the bottles which had gone astray were being sorted, they were then sent back to their rightful owner/dairy. The book, 'BRITAIN'S WARTIME MILKMEN', gives a good insight to the troubled times the dairy industry faced during the war.

Manor House, There was a milk-bottling dairy at the top of the Mill Yard, so there would be a lot of empty bottles, In between the mill and the dairy, the old buildings held several large looms from the turn of the century, but historians and collectors missed them, same as they did about Manor House (Wood End) Main Pit Farm, and Main Cottages that ran the railway to the Craven.

Kaga. It could well have been a dairy when you knew it, but it was where bottles were sorted when I did. Milk Vessel Recovery Ltd had 18 depots in the UK. The 1st in Coventry was at Harris Road (1936), later moving to Harefield Rd, then to Alderman's Green around 1952. From the C.E.T.

Too much time spent during this lockdown on the internet and a well know auction site. I was the only bidder on these and they arrived couple of days ago. I just had to get them! Salt & Pepper pots.

If my memory serves me right there used to be two Co-op dairies, one in Swan Lane which was Coventry Co-op and one in Lockhurst Lane, next to the Lockhurst Lane Co-op bakery, just down from Northey Road before what was or is a garage, which there again might be on the old Co-op site. I could be wrong as I often am.

I've not heard of the dairy in Lockhurst Lane. The Coventry Co-operative dairy in Swan Lane opened in 1913. It was equipped to deal with 1,200 gallons of milk a week then, but at its peak in the 1970's it was upwards of 16,000 gallons of milk which left the dairy every day! They had a fleet of 26 boats which brought coal from Polesworth to their basin across the road from the dairy in Swan Lane, up to the 1920's. The Coventry Co-op dairy was the first of the Co-operatives dairies in the UK to use glass milk bottles when it opened in 1913. 1980's into the 90's, they stopped bottling milk there, it came from Leicester and they reduced the size of the dairy and there was a name change to Midlands Co-operative Society Ltd. 2018 is when they left Swan Lane site I believe. There is a new housing estate on the site with the main road into it called 'Dairy Road', and a building merchant in the last buildings used by them.

I thought the picture was familiar. Isn't it in the Co-op Jubilee book?

I wasn't aware of a Co-op Jubilee book, but I am now so will seek out a copy. I have it saved on a memory stick so most likely saved it from a FB post. Edited by member, 5th May 2020 10:40 am

Co-op Jubilee book Swan Lane dairy picture at page 260. Free to read. It's an interesting book.

It is indeed a interesting book. Pages 33-38 & 263-273 are of a great interest. And have only given it a quick flick through for now.