Why were the hostels built ?                                                

Before the outbreak of World War Two, Coventry was producing vehicles and aircraft in its many factories. These were turner over to ever type of war time production along with the extra shadow factories which were built during the war, famous names like; Alvis, Courtaulds, Dunlop, Herbert’s, Whitworth and the many other shadow factories dotted around the City.

The Coventry Council Minutes [1940-1] show that the city had due to the huge influx of factory workers for the war effort, and in November 1940, the city council instigated Compulsory Billeting for industrial workers. By December, the amount of workers required the clearing of the London Road Institution for use as a reception and clearing-house for incoming workers.  

Were where the Coventry sites?

[Extracts from 'Twentieth Century Coventry' by K. Richards]

The hostels belonged to the National Service Hostels Corporation, which was formed in May 1941 to bring the problem of housing war workers under central control and to make the best use of available building, labour and materials.

They were built to a common pattern, consisting of a number of blocks of bedrooms erected according to the most austere wartime standards and a communal block, which provided a large dining room and recreational facilities.

The bricks of which they were built provided a shelter from wind and weather and the roofs were of felt, cheap and easy to erect. They were not pleasing in appearance, being rather like army camps, which were built by the same contractors at the same time. The hostels provided accommodation that was a good deal cheaper and cleaner than could be found elsewhere, good food and rooms in which games could be played, letters written home, a book read, or the radio listened to. We look a little wryly now at talk of the hostels as a great experiment in communal living which would help break down the barriers between classes, but this was not entirely unfounded.

The total number of hostels built in the Coventry area by the National Service Hostel Corporation was fifteen or sixteen  from Exhall to Baginton Fields in the South; from Clifford Bridge Road in the East to Kirby Corner in the West.

It appears that members of the City Council were not over pleased at the amount of temporary hostel type constructions appearing all around the city. In order to bring all those concerned together, Lord Rushciffe, Chairman of the National Service Hostel Corporation arranged a grand lunch at the Baginton Fields Hostels on the 26^th June 1943.

These Hostels were not only used for war time factory workers who came from all over the world, it should be noted that two out of three properties in the city were either damaged or unsafe to be lived in after the air raids of 1941. Approximately 8,500 houses were demolished, due to war damage, causing a huge accommodation problem in the city. [end]

Due to the male population, apart from essential workers, being called up into the services there was a huge lack of factory workers, so women were conscripted from all occupations and every part of the county. They were mostly single, as women with children [a few married women were moved] where left to look after their homes or found jobs locally by the Ministry of Labour.

Women who had possibly never seen the inside of a factory were trained at times for as little as a week, before starting work on machines, these later became skilled artisans in their own right.

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