Town Guide Photographs, 1952 – 1965
1952
The first post-war Town Guide re-used many pre-war photographs with this one notable exception. This aerial view includes the land-mine damaged Abbey End and, bottom right, a glimpse of the tannery.
c 1957
Parking was allowed in The Square but only on one side; the sides were alternated every few years to be fair to all shopkeepers. Bomb damage to the clocktower and buildings behind is evident.
The Castle was obviously a selling point to town visitors. Of interest is the garden layout ‘renovated’ at extraordinary cost five decades later, and, top right, the open fields that were soon to become a new housing estate.
The Abbey Fields too provided opportunities for attractive photographs; the Oxpen Meadow, seen complete with grazing cattle, became a permanent lake in 1997.
The classic view of the swimming pool as reconstructed in 1935. The hedging to the left and behind the slide was at the top of the embankments that surrounded the original, smaller, pool built in 1896.
A slightly better quality print of Abbey End was included, this is a crop to better show some of the detail.
c1963
This version of the guide largely repeated the photo content of the previous edition but included this advert for the Rouncil Towers Motel, believed to be the first of its type in the country. It is intended to eventually have a page dedicated to Town Guide advertisements.
c1965
The guide was reprinted just a couple of years later with the same photographic content so again an advert is chosen. The history of M H Hurst Ltd can be found in my book Kenilworth’s Engineering Age
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