British Highways and Byways from a Motor Car: Being a Record of a Five Thousand Mile Tour in England, Wales and Scotland — John Shaqi
British Highways and Byways from a Motor Car: Being a Record of a Five Thousand Mile Tour in England, Wales and ScotlandMurphy, Thos. D. (Thomas Dowler)
History
British Highways and Byways from a Motor Car: Being a Record of a Five Thousand Mile Tour in England, Wales and Scotland
Murphy, Thos. D. (Thomas Dowler)
Great Britain -- Description and travel; Great Britain -- Maps
probably no other road in England over which there is greater motor
travel, and supplies of all kinds are to be had every mile or two. The
careless motorist would not have far to walk should he neglect to keep
up his supply of petrol--or motor spirit, as they call it everywhere in
Britain.
Long before we reached Coventry, we saw the famous "three spires"
outlined against a rather threatening cloud, and just as we entered the
crooked streets of the old town, the rain began to fall heavily. The
King's Head Hotel was comfortable and up-to-date, and the large room
given us, with its fire burning brightly in the open grate, was
acceptable indeed after the drive in the face of a sharp wind, which had
chilled us through. And, by the way, there is little danger of being
supplied with too many clothes and wraps when motoring in Britain. There
were very few days during our entire summer's tour when one could
dispense with cloaks and overcoats.
Coventry, with its odd buildings and narrow, crowded streets, reminded
Nathaniel Hawthorne of Boston--not the old English Boston, but its big
namesake in America. Many parts of the city are indeed quaint and
ancient, the finest of the older buildings dating from about the year
1400; but these form only a nucleus for the more modern city which has
grown up around them. Coventry now has a population of about
seventy-five thousand, and still maintains its old-time reputation as
an important manufacturing center. Once it was famed for its silks,
ribbons and watches, but this trade was lost to the French and
Swiss--some say for lack of a protective tariff. Now cycles and motor
cars are the principal products; and we saw several of the famous
Daimler cars, made here, being tested on the streets.
Coventry has three fine old churches, whose tall needlelike spires form
a landmark from almost any point of view in Warwickshire, and give to
the town the appellation by which it is often known--"The City of the
Three Spires." Nor could we well have forgotten Coventry's unique
legend, for high up on one of the gables of our hotel was a wooden
figure said to represent Peeping Tom, who earned eternal ignominy by his
curiosity when Lady Godiva resorted to her remarkable expedient to
reduce the tax levy of Coventry. Our faith in the story, so beautifully
re-told by Tennyson, will not be shaken by the iconoclastic assertion
that the effigy is merely an old sign taken from an armourer's shop;
that the legend of Lady Godiva is common to half a dozen towns; and that
she certainly never had anything to do with Coventry, in any event.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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