Permanent working museum .......
In August 2002 the Museum project agreed to purchase for £ 31,000, a parcel of land and three derelict cottages built in around 1820 known as Court number 7 Spon Street . The cottages are the only remaining part of the Court and the City Conservation Officer believes that this is the only surviving court in Coventry. At one time there were hundreds of courts which had been built on land at the rear of large town houses. There would be a cobbled yard down the centre and a row of cottages either side . The properties were badly overpopulated and the wells were in close proximity to the outside toilets, which led to Coventry having one of the worst health records and mortality rates in the country. In spite of the uniqueness of the buildings, they are only locally listed and this is only by virtue of them being in the conservation area.
The site is situated at the rear of the Shakespeare Public house and the Midlands Co-op car park borders us to the rear and on one side. This part of Spon St (Lower Spon St) is a no through road bordered by the ring road although there is pedestrian access to Upper Spon St via a subway. Our part of the street has a relatively low footfall during daytime but contains several restaurants , public houses , a night club complex, niche businesses and the Caribbean social club. The separate Upper Spon St area is considered to be socially deprived and has attracted European funding. A map showing the museum site is available here .
At the time of agreeing to purchase , we still had to get outline planning permission for change of use from residential to museum and accordingly a 10% deposit was paid and it was agreed that the balance would be paid over when we got agreement from The Coventry Corporation Planning dept. We had hopes of being able to open up the site to the general public for the European Heritage weekend in mid September 2002, but it was obvious we had a monumental task on our hands as the site had been used as a dumping ground for a number of years and was overgrown with weeds , bushes and small trees. The adjoining laurel hedge on the Co-op's land was badly out of hand and was over 20 ft tall and had encroached so far over the boundary fence that it was touching the cottages.
However, a small band of volunteers tackled the problem enthusiastically and the vegetation was all cut back and either burnt or removed from the site in skips along with a variety of rubbish that included old bicycles, mattresses, cookers , furniture and a vast amount of broken glass. We were able to open the site for the heritage weekend and were gratified to receive over 600 visitors and a number of the visitors were able to tell us about relatives that had lived in the cottages. One gentleman had actually been born in one of the cottages in 1935 and was able to tell us of his experiences living there during the blitz.