Foleshill’s Gas Storage Tank and the New Ricoh Arena Coventry

Coventry’s first gasworks near the city centre was privately owned and had started in 1824. It was a restricted site, with coal having to be delivered by horse and cart, which had been hand-loaded via pan-shovels from a railway siding some distance away.

It was found that this privately owned company was unable to meet the city’s demands and later, the supply of gas was taken over by the city council.

Foleshill gas storage tank 1995 and the rear view of the new Ricoh Arena 2009. Both photos taken from the same canal towpath.

On the west side of the Coventry Canal in the district of Foleshill, the council purchased and developed a 40 acre site for gas supplies. This included a massive storage tank about 85 yards high and 43 yards in diameter, which could contain up to 5 million cubic feet of gas.

Another reason the council had chosen this site was because, being next to the canal, it allowed easy access for narrow-boats ferrying the coal supply. Also there was a convenient railway siding connection nearby. Since its erection in 1909, the silver-coloured gas tank at Foleshill had dominated the skyline.

Apart from its normal services, the gas supply was to prove vital to the city’s munitions factories during the following two wars.

Before and after: 2 photos taken from the same area of Foleshill gas storage tank before demolition in 1995 and the newly-built Ricoh Arena, Coventry in 2009.

Unfortunately, being a dominant landmark, the gasworks provided the ideal target for enemy bombers. Factories and buildings in Foleshill were set on fire by high concentrations of incendiary bombs during raids in 1940 and after. The gasworks’ coke plant was struck and set on fire. The cinema next to a library just a few hundred yards away suffered the same fate.

The cinema’s projectionist was lodging with our family during one such bomb raid. For a treat, he would allow my elder brother, who was in his early teens, to accompany him in the film projection room. An air raid siren had once sounded and a sign warning put onto the screen. The projectionist said to my brother, “your family will be worried; you had better run home!”

My brother told me later that shrapnel from anti-aircraft ack-ack shells had rained down as he sped down the road. He also remembers the ‘swish’ as incendiaries struck the library next to the cinema. Both buildings were gutted, as communication to the fire brigade had been disconnected during the raid.

Foleshill Gasometer, Coventry. Before and after. 2 photos taken from a mound on the same spot between the oak tree and pylon.

A few days after, clad in gasmasks and with identity cards about our necks, my younger brother and I, along with other school children, trudged to the nearby railway station to be evacuated.

Many of us returned to Coventry shortly after to be reunited with the skyline that reminds me of home. Being close to where we lived, one advantage the gasworks had was the coke filtration plant that poured hot water into the canal. This allowed us to take a dip, even on cold days.

And now, over fifty years later, early one morning in September 2002, over 4000 people watched as the steel gasometer Tower, hoarding tens of pounds of explosives, collapse. The new Ricoh complex would signal a new age and a new skyline.

The complex was originally intended to be a replacement venue for Coventry City Football Club and the stadium hosted its first game of football in 2005. Instead, the Japanese-owned Ricoh bestowed the stadium its name and was officially opened in 2007. It now boasts a casino and shopping centre.

Today with pension and bus-pass, I sometimes travel to the Ricoh Shopping Centre and walk along the canal towpath to where the old coke plant outlet had once stood.

But I would always remember how the landscape had once looked and the old gasworks dominating the skyline.