LOOKING BACK - February 1, 2018 edition

This is another edition inspired by Harry Gregory’s cuttings collection from the Advertiser in the mid-1970s.

I’m also grateful to my equivalent Memory Lane reporter at that time who did all this research, which I’m picking out for you today.

You’ll probably recognise these as the old North Street cottages, which we have featured before, but I don’t ever remember seeing the back of one before or this first one quite so close up.

They were built between 1550 and 1600 and were demolished in 1933.

It was early one Monday morning when their demolition was determined.

Heavy traffic on the Sunday together with the weakness of a front window lintel and main roof beam caused the thatched roof to collapse.

An account in the Advertiser in June 1933 referred to them being the oldest row of houses in Rugby.

The cottages - 9, 10, 11 and 12 North Street belonged to the Lawrence family until 1840, and then the Benn family, before a Lutterworth solicitor Mr BHC Fox bought them.

The Advertiser said at the time of the 1933 demolition: “The lamentable demolition had its humorous aspect, however, as the last use to which the end houses were put was to provide a ‘haunted house’ at the 1932 BTH Rag.