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The Side Roads (Continued)
From the very beginning the side roads were badly rutted, often flooded and sometimes impassable except on
foot. Residents would wear wellingtons in bad weather and change into shoes at Rugby Road, hiding the
wellingtons in the hedge. The only attempt to improve conditions would be the layer of clinker from coal
fires thrown out by the residents. The relatively poorer quality of life of those along the side roads was
reflected in a number of ways, in particular the comparatively slow development there. On the side roads,
were 21 timber bungalows. Although there were also 29 houses built, 22 of these were in Woodlands Road,
one road in a relatively good state. Scattered around the other five side roads were seven houses, 20
timber bungalows and 28 bungalows of various brick, rough caste, concrete and asbestos construction,
giving quite a different character to that part of the development. Some of the timber bungalows given
planning permission were very primitive indeed, one in 1930 measured just eight foot by ten.
Heather Road remained almost exclusively small bungalows, many of them wooden. The difference in cost
between brick and wood was great. A number of firms offered prefabricated wooden bungalows including
Pelhams Portable Homes from Uxbridge, Middlesex, In 1932 they provided a four room wooden bungalow for a
resident. It later fell foul of the 1932 Planning Act and the momentum of the Coventry Town Planning
Scheme. Official permission for the construction of wooden dwellings was only granted temporarily. The
maximum time given was for nineteen months for a bungalow in 1935. Less well off buyers, and difficulty
in financing subsequent building might account for the number of less substantial timber constructions.
Mains sewerage was not laid on until the 1960s. It was not until the early 1960s that the side roads were
adopted by the Rugby R D C. when all residents had paid a substantial fee, often in excess of £200, to
cover the cost of upgrading them.
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