Top 10 places to visit in city
HERE IS A LIST OF THE TOP 10 PLACES TO VISIT IN COVENTRY ACCORDING TO POPULAR RATINGS WEBSITE TRIP ADVISOR
WHILE Hinckley is in Leicestershire, we are very close to Coventry which is often overlooked by people wanting ideas for a day out.
So we have taken a look at the city to see what Trip Advisor rates as the top 10 places to visit.
The popular website is a collection of reviews left by members of the public so these are what visitors to the city have voted as the best things to do.
Remember, the list can change.
1) Coventry Car Museum.
This place boasts the world’s largest display of British-made transport and is open from 10am to 5pm, seven days a week.
Coventry Transport Museum is a motor museum, located in the city centre. It houses a collection of British-made road transport. It is located in Coventry because the city was previously the centre of the British car industry.
There are more than 240 cars and commercial vehicles, 100 motorcycles, 200 bicycles.
Admission to the museum is free. It has a full-time archive department, which deals with an array of historical items, and offers a public enquiry service answering questions and finding items and information.
Notable exhibits in the museum are Thrust 2 and Thrust SSC, the British jet cars which broke the land speed record in 1983 and 1997, respectively, and some of the Royal cars - Queen Mary’s and King George V’s state limousines.
Many conventional cars are in the collection, including an Austin Allegro, an Austin Metro previously owned by Lady Diana Spencer, a Ford Escort MK2, Hillman Imp, Triumph Acclaim, Talbot Sunbeam, Talbot Horizon, Peugeot 206, Peugeot 405 and a DeLorean DMC-12 car made famous by the Back to the Future films.
A Humber staff car used by General Montgomery during the Second World War is also on display.
The museum displays many Jaguars and other Coventry-built cars such as the Triumph, Humber and Standard marques, an Alvis tank, Massey Ferguson tractors, and Coventry-built buses, including the bus that the Coventry City football team paraded in after their victory in the 1987 FA Cup Final.
Coventry motorcycle marques are also represented in the museum’s collection including: Triumph, Francis-Barnett, Rudge-Whitworth and Coventry-Eagle.
www.transport-museum.com
2) Coventry Music Museum
Apparently, this is a sound place to go!
The museum is the life-long vision of Coventry music historian and journalist Pete Chambers and his wife Julie. They say it is not a 2-Tone museum, although 2-Tone is the unique selling point.
But 55% of the museum is dedicated to non-ska related displays that look at the music from Coventry, Rugby, Leamington Spa, Nuneaton, Bedworth even touching on Birmingham in places.
The museum opened in 2013 and has an extensive website.
3) Coventry Cathedral
The city has had three cathedrals. The first was St Mary’s, a monastic building, of which only a few ruins remain. The second was St Michael’s, a 14th-century Gothic church later designated a cathedral, that remains a ruined shell after its bombing during the Second World War. The third is the new St Michael’s Cathedral, built after the destruction of the former.
The current St Michael’s Cathedral, built next to the remains of the old, was designed by Basil Spence and Arup, built by John Laing and is a Grade I listed building.
The selection of Spence for the work was a result of a competition held in 1950 to find an architect for the new Coventry Cathedral; his design was chosen from more than 200 submitted.
Spence (later knighted for this work) insisted that instead of re-building the old cathedral it should be kept in ruins as a garden of remembrance and that the new cathedral should be built alongside, the two buildings together effectively forming one church. The use of Hollington sandstone for the new Coventry Cathedral provides an element of unity between the buildings.
The foundation stone of the new cathedral was laid by Elizabeth II on 23 March 1956. The unconventional spire (known as a flèche) is 80 feet (24 m) tall and was lowered onto the flat roof by a helicopter, flown by Wing Commander John Dowling in April 1962.
The cathedral was consecrated on 25 May 1962, and Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, composed for the occasion, was premiered in the new cathedral on 30 May to mark its consecration.
4) Coombe Abbey Country Park
This 500-acre site has several lakes, parkland, adventure playgrounds, gardens and nature walks. Very popular with children, families can enjoy picnics on their lawns. It has taken 10 centuries and the vision of many individuals for the magnificent country park to reach its present splendour. Come and explore its beautiful garden, woodland and lakeside walks and relax in the historic surroundings.
5) Herbert Art Gallery and Museum
This is another virtually unknown gem of a place in the heart of Coventry.
It is just a short walk from the shops and is also free to get in.
One of the exhibitions on at the moment brings to life the fascinating adventures of those fearsome and legendary Vikings with a touring exhibition from York Jorvik Viking Centre.
Making the perilous journey through the crashing waves of the North Sea, the bloody and brutal Viking invasions of Britain are legendary– but what did they do while they were here?
Families can step back in time and discover the 1,000-year old human innovations that built a vast empire and saw people travels thousands of miles across northern Europe, the Mediterranean, the coasts of Africa and even America.
Visitors can learn more about the people who settled in Britain from excavated skeletons, and explore the Norse myths and legends passed down through generations in our unique family friendly Viking settlement.
Real examples of Viking crafts - including intricate metalwork, and a replica 15ft fishing boat, decorated with designs which reveal the true creative spirit of the Viking Age - will be on display.
The venue also hosts many events as well as numerous special exhibitions.
The museum side of the Herbert has four sections entitled visual arts, social and industrial history, archaeology and natural history.
There is also a lot about the history of Coventry.
The venue is open Monday to Saturday from 10am to 4pm and from noon to 4pm on Sundays.
6) St Mary’s Guildhall
An atmospheric and architecturally stunning survivor of the medieval age, St Mary’s is widely considered to be the finest remaining medieval guildhall in the country.
Built in 1340-42 and much altered and extended between 1392 and 1430, the guildhall originally served as the headquarters of various guilds during the middle ages. Following the suppression of guilds in 1547, for a time it served as the city’s armoury and (until 1822) its treasury, as well as the headquarters for administration for the city council until the Council House was opened in 1920.
The building retains a collection of royal portraits from the 17th to 19th centuries, arms and armour, fine stained glass and one of the country’s most important tapestries dating from about 1500.
7) Midland Air Museum
This is situated just outside the village of Baginton and is adjacent to
Coventry Airport.
The museum includes the Sir Frank Whittle Jet Heritage Centre (named after the Lutterworth aviation pioneer and inventor of the jet engine), where many exhibits are on display in a large hangar. It also has a small hangar, and a fenced-off green area where many aircraft are on display in the open.
The museum’s two largest aircraft are Cold War-era planes Avro Vulcan B.2 and an Armstrong Whitworth Argosy AW.650 (series 101).
The restored Avro Vulcan is a delta-winged aircraft that was originally part of the V bomber force and could be equipped with nuclear missiles as part of Britain’s role in NATO’s nuclear deterrent force during the Cold War. It is on display near the museum’s car park, together with an Avro Blue Steel missile, an early design format of such a nuclear missile, and a Boulton Paul BP.111A, an experimental deltawinged aircraft of the 1950s.
8) War Memorial Park, Coventr
Initially a tribute to the city’s 2,587 soldiers who lost their lives during the First World War this is Coventry’s largest city park which opened in July 1921.
Coventry Council bought the 48.5 hectares of land situated in southern Coventry from the Lords of Styvechale Manor, the GregoryHood family, when it was little more than a large grassed area that once formed Styvechale common.
The landscaped gardens and sports areas were originally created in the late-1920s and 1930s and the most prominent construction in the park is the 90-foot high war memorial monument, built in 1927 after a design competition was set up and is made of Portland stone.
The park’s features include football pitches, bowling greens, a small golf course, tennis courts, a splash and play area, an aviary for small birds, and a skate board area, but it mainly comprises large open green areas with many trees and shrubberies.
A perimeter path lies just inside the park’s boundaries, and now encircles the entire park following completion of groundwork on the south-western segment in the summer of 2006.
Visitors may park their cars in the park’s main car park, which is also used by visitors to Coventry city centre who use the park and ride scheme.
The park is the venue for a number of annual events including the Godiva Festival, Donkey Derby, Caribbean Festival and the Vaisakhiy Mela. The park also holds weekly parkruns – free, timed 5km (3.1mi) runs – that attract hundreds of people to the park every Saturday.
9) Belgrade Theatre, Coventry
This is a popular theatre in the centre of the city which opened in 1958. The Belgrade acquired its name in recognition and thanks for a gift of timber from the Yugoslavian (today Serbian) capital city of Bel- grade (Coventry’s official sister city), that was used extensively in the construction of the auditorium. Since opening in 1958, the theatre has established itself as a centre for the new and innovative productions.
The theatre reopened in September 2007 after undergoing a £12 million refurbishment with a 7-storey extension to provide a second auditorium.
10) Brandon Marsh Nature Reserve, near Brandon.
It is situated adjacent to the River Avon, near the village of Brandon, a few miles east of Coventry.
The reserve is also the headquarters of the Warwickshire Wildlife Trust.
Formerly used for sand and gravel quarrying, the 92 hectare (228 acre) site is owned by French industrial company LaFarge Industries and is leased to the Trust.
Today, Brandon Marsh is a mixture of flooded gravel pits, fen, scrubland, reedbeds and woodland, much of which is uncommon habitat for the local area.
The site is particularly important for birdlife, with a wide range of breeding and wintering birds—234 different species had been recorded up to the end of 2015. The reserve also supports a variety of mammals and insects, over 500 species of plant, and more than 570 species of fungi.
The nature reserve and Visitor Centre are open to the public seven days a week.