Coventry

I headed through a typical British shopping center full of tracksuited teens and concrete canopies. Lady Godiva sat outside Burger King and Peeping Tom craned his neck for a sneaky eyeful. I ignored them both and, spotting a priest, followed him into the old cathedral.

Coventry’s cathedral was flattened in the second world war. The Allies revenged its destruction by pointlessly razing Dresden to the ground. Both cities have dealt with their ruins in different ways; Dresden rebuilt her Frauenkirche whereas Coventry has left its church open to the heavens and built another next door. Both are symbols of their respective skylines and the cities are formally twinned.

On a blue-sky August day the bombed-out interior was popular with lunchtime office workers. Linked to the old church was the new one; designed postwar by Basil Spence in bricky modernist style. Inside, the windows trapped the midday sun and I had to look up just to make sure it had a roof. Most churches ask you not to use a camera flash but in Coventry you didn’t need one at all; one cathedral was open to the sky and the other full of sunlight.

Spon Street is an attempt to cluster the city’s medieval architecture into one area. St John’s Church, the source of the Sent to Coventry phrase sits at one end but several of the timber-framed cottages have been relocated from elsewhere in the city and fast food signs have been tacked onto many of the fronts. One of the more sympathetic conversions housed the Tin Angel. It was both record shop and café, all mismatched furniture and paper flyers. 60s garage rock filtered through from the adjoining space and it reminded me of my student days and how much I miss places like these.