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Coventry Transport Museum

Coventry · 0.1 miles

Coventry Transport Museum is a transport museum, located in Coventry city centre, England.

Statue of Lady Godiva

Coventry · 0.6 miles

A bronze equestrian figure of Lady Godiva stands on a Portland-stone plinth in Broadgate, the central commercial area of Coventry. The monument, recorded by Historic England as a listed historic feature, presents the legendary rider in the act that gave the city its name. The plinth bears excerpts from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem “Godiva” together with a dedication from the original patron, William Bassett-Green, to both the lady and the people of Coventry. The work was first commissioned in 1936 by the local businessman William Bassett-Green. By 1940 a scale model had been produced by the sculptor Sir William Reid Dick, who continued to develop the design throughout the Second World War. After hostilities ended, the full-size statue was cast, set on a plinth whose design was influenced by Sir Edwin Lutyens, and unveiled on 22 October 1949 by Peggy Zinsser Douglas, wife of the American ambassador Lewis Williams Douglas. Originally oriented to face south, the figure was turned westward in 1989 when the Cathedral Lanes Shopping Centre was built; a protective canopy added at that time was later removed in 2008. Located on a public thoroughfare, the statue can be approached directly from the surrounding streets of Broadgate. No admission charge applies, and the site forms part of the open urban landscape, allowing visitors to view the sculpture and its inscriptions at any time without the need for specialised facilities.

Spencer Park

Earlsdon · 1.2 miles

Scenic tree-lined park with an expansive field, children's play areas & cycling paths.

War Memorial Park

Styvechale Grange · 1.2 miles

Spanning roughly 48.5 hectares on the southern edge of Coventry, the park offers a substantial green space that also serves as a memorial to the 2,587 local men who lost their lives in the First World War. Opened in July 1921 after the council bought the former Styvechale common from the Gregory-Hood family, the site was later shaped by landscaped gardens and sporting fields added in the late-1920s and 1930s. A prominent 90-foot Portland-stone monument, erected in 1927 and dedicated by Field Marshal Douglas Haig, houses the Chamber of Silence where the Roll of the Fallen is displayed each Remembrance Sunday. Wartime remnants such as concrete blocks from the Second World War’s anti-aircraft installations remain near the Coat of Arms bridge. The park received a Grade II listing in 2013, the memorial itself holds a Grade II* status, and it has retained Green Flag accreditation since 2013. In July 2014, Prince William formally launched the Centenary Fields programme here. Visitors can make use of football pitches, bowling greens, a modest golf course, tennis courts, a splash-play area, a small aviary and a skateboard zone, while extensive open lawns and tree-lined pathways provide space for casual walks. A perimeter path encircles the whole area, and the venue regularly hosts events such as the Godiva Festival, Donkey Derby, Caribbean Festival, Vaisakhi Mela and weekly parkruns that attract several hundred participants. The site also accommodated Radio 1’s Big Weekend in May 2022. Access is via a large tarmacked car park off Kenilworth Road, served by a park-and-ride service to the city centre, with additional smaller car parks on Coat of Arms Bridge Road and near the northern end of Leamington Road. Admission to the park and its facilities is unrestricted.

Hearsall Common

Chapelfields · 1.9 miles

A public green space set in the Earlsdon district of Coventry, close to the Chapelfields area, offers a mix of open grass, a small tarmac-gravel section and a wooded nature reserve. Entry is free and the site is legally open to the public at any hour, although an embankment has been erected alongside the adjacent road to stop vehicles from entering after complaints about itinerant travellers. Visitors can reach the common via Hearsall Common Road, where the landscape is bounded by the grassy field on one side and the woodland on the other. The area has been recorded as common land since at least the thirteenth century, with a detailed survey of the surrounding waste ground dating back to 1423. Historically it served as grazing ground for the city’s freemen, a right that persisted into the nineteenth century. The Coventry Corporation Act of 1927 transferred Hearsall Common, together with several other local commons, to the status of a recreation ground and terminated the remaining commoning rights, compensating the freemen with an annual sum. By the mid-1950s, twenty-one acres of the site had been laid out as sports pitches, and the common has long hosted fairs, including the historic ‘crock fair’. Today the eastern expanse of the common is a popular venue for dog walkers, kite flyers, sunbathers and informal football games, while the northern edge near the woods holds a cycle-speedway track used by the Coventry Cycle Speedway Club. The site regularly accommodates travelling circuses – the Moscow State Circus performed there in November 2004 – and has acted as a temporary base for the Earlsdon Festival during the May Day bank-holiday weekend. In 2007 the Donkey Derby was also staged on the common after heavy summer rain elsewhere. A plaque on the ground commemorates the 1916 aircraft landing that, according to local legend, sparked Frank Whittle’s interest in aeronautics.

Caludon Castle

Wyken · 2.5 miles

A fragment of sandstone wall marks the remains of a defensive castle that once dominated the Wyken area east of Coventry city centre. The ruin sits within an urban park managed by Coventry City Council, and a second moated site about 190 metres to the south is also protected as a Scheduled Ancient Monument. Visitors can view the surviving wall, walk around the open grassland and see the medieval moat, which encloses roughly an acre of historic ground. The site has been occupied since at least the 11th century, originally as a large house that pre-dated the Norman Conquest. After the conquest the property passed to the Earls of Chester and was later granted to the Segrave family, who first described it as a manor in 1239. Licences to crenellate were obtained in 1305 and again in 1354, converting the house into a fortified enclosure with a moat, gatehouse and surrounding wall. In the late 14th century the castle came into the hands of Thomas de Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk, before falling into disrepair after his banishment in 1398. A rebuilding as a mansion occurred around 1580, but the structure was largely destroyed in 1662, later providing stone for a farmhouse erected in 1800. The estate was fragmented in the 19th century, and most of the land was acquired by the city after the First World War for housing development. Today the park offers free public access to the historic ruins and the adjacent moat. As a council-run amenity, it does not charge admission and provides open space for walking and informal recreation, with the castle fragment serving as a tangible reminder of the area's medieval heritage.