Photo poser 8

As the city sets itself up for the City of Culture, as a visitor to your city over many years, I think someone should go round naming things of interest, or daft things like this with nothing to tell you why it's here or what it is. OK I've seen it moved from A to B over the years but it's never had a plaque telling you anything about it. Yes, I have asked on site but no passerby seems to know anything about it. I would say something to do with the Royal Air Force but that's only with looking at it on the previous site before being moved to its new resting place here (? I would just like to know, thank you in advance)

Its "Flywheel" by Michael Furrell. Peter.

Peter B. You’re a gent - thanks I don't think many would know the history of that lump of rock. I did take photo's of it years ago. It was where you said, at the back of the wall. You could only see it if you walked round onto the grass. A fly-wheel - I'll remember that but you must admit it did look like it could have been there to represent the part of a jet engine, with what it was on show with.

Fooled me, can't understand that train of thought. I thought it was a nautilus sea-shell, looks closer to a sea-shell than a modern item. Can’t really see why a flywheel represents the jet, flywheels have been about for a thousand years.

It’s modern art, modern sculpture, Kaga - not meant to make any sense (not to us oldies anyway)!

It does resemble the shape of a centrifugal compressor from a gas turbine engine if you use a bit of imagination. Certainly not a turbine shape.

Sorry but I've that many photo's of different things that seemed unusual at the time. I just can't find my photo of the wall where it stood for 26 years with the background photo's of some sort of Air Force pictures on. Anyway I hope you don't mind me adding this on. Why did I take this photo on one of my walks round your city that I should find interesting.

I think what's interesting in relation to this walled gateway is what is behind where you were standing and opposite the gate.

It’s London Road - but I don’t know why you took it

Yes I know about the gate across the road but this was more interesting at the time, it may be of interest to others Edited by member, 4th Jan 2020 11:01 pm

That is interesting Dougie. Line of trees in 1889 It's not obvious on the 1889 map but on the 1850 map, the river runs very straight past Charterhouse but there is a wiggly field boundary that looks like the original river course. It weaves much closer to the London Road. It was more wiggly to the south too as can be observed moving through the maps. A lot of wiggles have been removed or straightened along the Sherbourne. The blue line is the River Sherbourne as in 1850. The green line is a field boundary with trees along parts of its route. It looks like it might have been an old river course. The red line is a guestimate of how the river might have flowed from the green route. The turquoise line is the mill race and the green dot is where the Charter mill stood (roughly). If the Chapel was between the Sherbourne and the London road, was the square boundary in green part of a moat round it? Or was it even closer to the road? ps The scrubby grass area next to the river is lower than the nice lawned area to the left of the green dotted line. The area is very level and very oblong. It's quite possible that this area has been levelled to create the playing fields, destroying any western loop of the river. Chapels and churches tended to be built on higher ground. So maybe the river created an oblong plot with the green dotted line? Edited by member, 5th Jan 2020 1:47 am

Helen. Thanks, even I can understand it better now. We had just come through the cemetery from the Mile Lane side onto London Road. I've just had it up on Google Streets and can picture myself walking down and standing in front of the house looking across to London Road. They were just laying the steam pipes that bring the steam/hot water from the waste plant to the city.

Some may know about this, some may not, but these pipes run from the waste plant at the bottom of London Road right into the city centre, bringing steam to heat your public buildings. The pipes you see run under the roads.

Dougie, Helen, There is a history of Mills in Coventry on the internet. It looks like there were some on the Sherborne around the Charterhouse so the straightening could have been due to one of the mills. Peter.

Thanks Peter, I keep forgetting about that resource. I know the location of quite a few of the mills but I haven't sat down and tagged them all to see if there are any named mills missing from my map or any likely locations for a mill without a name. Sone of the mills had pools but others just tapped off the normal river flow. When water was short they'd have had to wait for the other mills to send their stocks downstream before they could grind or whatever they were purposed to do. With hind sight, the true river route might have been closer to Charterhouse and the wiggly boundary a stream. Without seeing the terrain live, it's hard to tell which way it wiggled. It might have been straightened for a mill (usually an offshoot from the original route, cutting straight to speed up the water) or it may be ornamental. The whole stretch from Brick Lane to at least Whitley Mill looks like it was dotted with mills.