The Bedworth Society & Heritage Centre

The Bedworth Society & Heritage Centre The Bedworth Society was founded in 1981 as an historical society focused on local preservation.

FLASHBACK FRIDAY 1 ST MAY 2026This week I am using postcards from the last century, taken from my own collection. If you...
02/05/2026

FLASHBACK FRIDAY 1 ST MAY 2026

This week I am using postcards from the last century, taken from my own collection. If you are lucky, and persistent, and these days, can afford the prices, you can build up a complete set of postcards taken by a known photographer, at one particular time, often the same day, and then sold individually in local shops a few days later. The more valuable ones are real photographic, which means they have been processed as a real photograph in a darkroom but using photographic paper which was pre-printed on the address side. Generally, these were fewer in quantity because processing photographs takes time and some skill, and often they were produced locally rather than by the big London companies that straddled the globe with their machine printed postcards.
The set of six I am showing were machine printed in the 1930s and are all of Exhall. I will add comments after each card.

FLASHBACK FRIDAY 24 APRIL 2026Apologies for the delay. I have been laid low with a cough and cold that kept me from the ...
26/04/2026

FLASHBACK FRIDAY 24 APRIL 2026

Apologies for the delay. I have been laid low with a cough and cold that kept me from the computer for four days. I have shown in earlier articles how talented the many branches of the Bunney family were in Bedworth and beyond, spreading their retailing skills as far as Liverpool and North Wales.
The skilled workers were weavers and coalminers in the 18th and early 19th centuries but their skills expanded as the 19th century progressed and brought more opportunities to enterprising families. We don't know much about the brick making side of the family but it might have had something to do with Luther Bunney, who also established a successful building company which enlarged Pickering and Luckman's hat making factory as we saw in last week's article. It seems likely that the Brick Company was in Collycroft, and presumably Luther used their own bricks in his construction work, best seen on the corner of Coventry Road and Park Road, as you will see in the photographs.

One of the family, descended from Henry and Hannah, another Henry, ran a general store in Market Place, moving there from high Street. He tried his hand at many things, selling flower seeds at one time, but running a photographic studio. At least the shop was in Market place, the studio was in Croxall Street,

A generation later we see Luther setting up his building company but also trying his hand at watercolours, one of which is shown here. And Percy was a brilliant woodwork craftsman, photographer and teacher, and he lived in the first house in Park road, on the left, next to the Limes, also lived in by builder Luther and his family.

Another grandchild of Henry and Hannah was Sydney Bunney, who lived in Coventry was a very accomplished water colour painter. The Herbert in Coventry has a large collection of his work and produced a book of some of them.

More details under the photographs

FLASHBACK FRIDAY 17 APRIL 2026Apologies for the delay in publishing this post. I hope it will be of interest to our regu...
20/04/2026

FLASHBACK FRIDAY 17 APRIL 2026

Apologies for the delay in publishing this post. I hope it will be of interest to our regular readers.

I am returning for another look at the Bunney family who were an important presence in Bedworth, and elsewhere for most of the 19th and 20th centuries. They included retailers of various goods, photographers, artists, teachers, preachers and lawyers, though originally coal miners and ribbon weavers.

For today's article I am starting with Harry Bunney, born in 1818, who started life as a ribbon weaver. He married Hannah Drakeford, six years younger than him. Hannah lived till she was 87 and died in 1911. Her husband outlived her and died, aged 94, in 1913.

Harry and Hannah had eight children, two of whom, Arthur Henry and Percy, moved to Liverpool and set up a very successful department store in the centre of the city, and a further shop in Llandudno. Another child, Luther, became a builder in Bedworth and we start with him as the first three pictures show the site where Tesco now is and which featured in the last three weeks of Flashback Friday, and so give us a link back to 1903!

The rest of the story can be picked up under the photographs.

This week we are finishing the story of the third Tesco site in the middle of Bedworth. The pictures show from start to ...
10/04/2026

This week we are finishing the story of the third Tesco site in the middle of Bedworth. The pictures show from start to finish of the construction from April to December 2011.
I am sure that many of you will have memories of 15 years ago as we watched the gradual appearance of this huge building, and I know that many other people were recording it, perfectly possible now that mobile phones and their cameras have transformed photography all over the world, so that now we are all photo-journalists - though quality varies!

Tonight and tomorrow night, 3rd and 4th April, the Mayor of Nuneaton and Bedworth, has organised a multicultural event o...
03/04/2026

Tonight and tomorrow night, 3rd and 4th April, the Mayor of Nuneaton and Bedworth, has organised a multicultural event of dance and drama at the Abbey theatre in Nuneaton. You can buy tickets via theQR code on the poster, or by paying at the door.
Tickets £15
Concessions £10
Children and students £5

FLASHBACK FRIDAY 3 APRIL 2026This week we take a further look at the biggest transformation to the face of Bedworth sinc...
03/04/2026

FLASHBACK FRIDAY 3 APRIL 2026

This week we take a further look at the biggest transformation to the face of Bedworth since the major redevelopment of the 1970s and the construction of the 1980 Tesco store.
That building was certainly solidly built and took a long time to demolish, like the old Pickering hat factory before it. The new Tesco is largely steel and glass and consequently was built more quickly. More of that next week.
For today we look at the processes going on during April 2011, exactly 15 years ago. The reinforced concrete was a massive demolition taks and as it came down, as you'll see in the pictures, created mountains of rubble, all of which had to be disposed of and recycled. The pictures give an idea of what was involved.

FLASHBACK FRIDAY 27 MARCH 2026This week I am showing the first of two selections on the redevelopment of the Tesco site....
28/03/2026

FLASHBACK FRIDAY 27 MARCH 2026

This week I am showing the first of two selections on the redevelopment of the Tesco site.

Earlier Flashback Fridays have shown the 20th century changes on the site, when it was Pickerings hat factory, then Clear Ho***rs, and in 1980 the huge Tesco building with its car park above the store.

Today's pictures show the preparation of the site, pre-demolition of the 1980 store, and the demolition of the White Swan pub. Many readers will have memories of this huge change to Bedworth's landscape. All ten of today's pictures date from February 2011, just 15 years ago, but, what changes!

FLASHBACK FRIDAY 20 MARCH 2026I have shown a picture of the Tower House in High Street in earlier FF articles, and reade...
20/03/2026

FLASHBACK FRIDAY 20 MARCH 2026

I have shown a picture of the Tower House in High Street in earlier FF articles, and readers will also recall earlier pictures of classes from George Street School taken by one of the teachers there, Dorothy Edmands, who lived at the Tower House until it was demolished in 1963, when she moved to Hill Top in Nuneaton. There were four children during this generation of Edmands. The parents were just the latest of several generations of Edmands living and working at the Tower House (remembered by many who lived through the war for the fact that the air raid siren was housed on top of the tower) The four children were Ronald, Muriel, Dorothy and Geoffrey. Only Geoffrey married.

Today I am showing a few more pictures of Tower House in its prime, and then a sequence taken by Geoff Edmands during demolition. Geoff and Ronald were both keen photographers and were cousins of Reg Bull who was the best documenter of the changing face of Nuneaton from 1950 - 1990.

The Edmands family had lived at Tower House for about 150 years. There is some mystery about why the tower was built but it was used in the manufacturing that was carried out there. It was a large building and they produced one of the more esoteric parts of the ribbon industry, making the decorative edging, frills, often quite elaborate, that was sometimes on the base of other ribbons or for lamp shades, spreads, and similar items.

On Thursday morning, Lynda Burton spent the morning with pupil ambassadors for Geography and History from Race Leys Juni...
20/03/2026

On Thursday morning, Lynda Burton spent the morning with pupil ambassadors for Geography and History from Race Leys Junior School, showing them aspects of Bedworth's history in a walk from The Old meeting via The Heritage Centre's two buildings, the almshouse frontage,High Street and as far as the Miners' Welfare Park entrance. By late afternoon the school had posted this report on their FB site.

Apologies for the lack of Flashback Friday this week. We had a close family funeral on Thursday and consequently I did n...
15/03/2026

Apologies for the lack of Flashback Friday this week. We had a close family funeral on Thursday and consequently I did not have time to prepare a feature. Back next week, but before then, for people living locally, there is a talk and slide show next Wednesday afternoon at 2.00 at Chilvers Coton Heritage Centre, in aid of the Mayor's Appeal. The subject is Dr Lionel Orton, who took over the practice, based in Congreve House, from his father, who had started the practice in 1876 and died in 1904, and Lionel ran it until he retired in 1938.
The talk and slides show his life and times in pre-NHS times in Bedworth and includes some of his writing about his memories of being a Dr in Bedworth, which he wrote during his retirement after the war. The poster below gives a few more details. All welcome.

Address

The Parsonage Heritage Centre, All Saints Square
Bedworth
CV128NR

Opening Hours

Tuesday 10:30am - 1pm
Friday 10:30am - 1pm
Saturday 10:30am - 1pm

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