How beautiful bank survived the Blitz and aftermath
Amid the ruins of Coventry a gem of a building survived – but they still wanted to pull it down.
Luckily a man who later made his home in the West Midlands made sure it survived.
It stands proud to this day, although Leslie Dean's daughter Rae Livesey wonders why Coventry doesn't make more of a fuss of it.
Rae, who lives at Stottesdon, near Bridgnorth, recalls her father's role in the recovery of Coventry after our recent feature about the 80th anniversary of the November 1940 blitz on the city.
A picture we carried of the devastation caught her eye, showing that building – a bank – which was her father's post-war workplace.
"It's now the National Westminster Bank, but used to be the National Provincial Bank. We moved to Coventry from Yorkshire in 1947, and I was aged seven," she said.
"The only thing standing in the centre of Coventry was the old spire, and that bank. They put up little corrugated shops.
"The bank is a beautiful building. Apart from its white pillars there are silver doors divided into squares depicting different coins.
"They wanted to pull it down. My father was accountant in charge and he wouldn't let them. The last time I was there, which is going back 10 or 15 years now, they had got it as a show branch exactly as it was, with mahogany desks and tiled floors.
"It's beautiful, but nobody ever mentions it. It's a bit strange. Somebody ought to stir them up a bit, I think. Apart from the cathedral, it was the only other interesting building left."
Despite only being a child, Rae remembers how shocking the devastation in the Broadgate area of the city was.
The new Broadgate was the first part of the new city centre to be completed and was officially opened by the then Princess Elizabeth in 1948.
"With my father being in charge of the bank we went there and took photographs from the top of the bank roof.
"We were in Coventry for seven years, and then my father was manager at Dudley and Brierley Hill for the National Provincial Bank."
The blitz on Coventry caused widespread devastation, although plans by the Germans to also target Wolverhampton with mass bombing never came to fruition. One bomber involved in follow-up raids on the region crashed near Bridgnorth and survivors from the crew were captured.
