Joan Parsons was born in Parkeston, Dorset on 8th October 1906, the daughter of Rev. Randolph Cecil Parsons, a descendant of the 2nd Earl of Rosse. Little is known of Joan’s early life but the family came to live at 19 Avenue Road, Leamington, when her father retired from his last parish in Warwickshire. What … Read more
This is a slideshow by Alan Griffin which has images of many buildings which were coach houses in years past. Click on the forward and back arrows on screen or on the keyboard to navigate through the presentation. Click on the square symbol in the bottom right corner to enter full-screen mode. Coach houses slideshow … Read more
The streamline cycle, shown here in an early press photograph, used a new energy-storing device calculated to revolutionise cycling by storing energy when travelling downhill and releasing it on climbing. It was designed by Ben Bowden, a well-known Leamington industrial designer and consulting engineer, to be displayed at the Britain Can Make It exhibition in … Read more
Long before Concorde went into service and as long ago as 1943, the Coventry firm of Sir W G Armstrong Whitworth developed an experimental, tail-less jet aircraft, the AW52 which became known as the Flying Wing. This aircraft had no fuselage or tail section and was essentially a large fixed wing powered by two Rolls … Read more
When I was a young lad growing up in the nineteen- fifties, my father was a baker in the small Warwickshire town of Southam. In 1947 he had purchased the old windmill and the bakery business that went with it and my two brothers and I moved in to the small cottage that went with the … Read more
As many of us begin dusting off our bikes for a burst of spring fitness, we don’t usually give much thought to cycling’s early days, or how cycles came to be made. Many of the early models were very much a local product but still hard to come by. In 1837, the young John Charles Manning was desperate … Read more
Contact the Secretary, Margaret Rushton: secretary@leamingtonhistory.co.uk
June 9, 2026
May 26, 2026