Our historic building recording of Drapers’ Hall ahead of its transformation into a new music venue by Historic Coventry Trust with support from The Prince’s Foundation has been revealing the social history of the urban centre of Coventry during the Blitz. In this blog, Historic Building Officer Lauren Wilson explores what has been revealed about how the basement provided shelter for local people during the Second World War…
As part of our historic building recording at the Grade II* Listed Drapers’ Hall in Coventry we have been investigating the conversion and reuse of the basement as an ARP (Air Raid Precautions) shelter during the Second World War. The two shelters would have housed 200 people collectively in a series of connecting rooms.
Plans of the conversion logged in the Coventry Archives dating from 1939 document plans to build defensive ‘blast walls’ to protect the entrances and insert toilets for people sheltering in the basement to use. It is difficult to ascertain whether the full proposed plan of the shelter was enacted with only a few pieces of physical evidence, but blast walls appear to have been removed while some wall strengthening measures remain, and there is no evidence of the inserted toilets. However, two posters found during the built heritage survey provide a clear and strong message that ARP was a significant part of the building’s history.
