Rebuilding a City After the Devastation of The Blitz _ Our History

This is a city. A city called Coventry. A city whose name gave a new word to the language of violence. To Coventrate, to wipe out. But Coventry is people as well as stone and bricks and mortar. And Coventry has risen again. This new block of flats is just part of one of the most spectacular rebuilding programs Britain has ever seen. Its name is Phoenix House. Many of the scars are gone now but not the memories. The Lord Mayor and these men of Coventry remember. How could they forget? Evelyn belongs to Coventry too. But she doesn't remember, not like the older ones. For Evelyn was born in the Blitz, when the city seemed to be dying under the wings of 400 German bombers. The ruins tell the tale of that night, of the high explosives, of the incendiaries that set Coventry alight and left her a charred ruin. It was a night that called for faith as well as courage. The night of November 14th, 1940. A night for the history books. A night of terror when hundreds of her citizens died in the flames. When the city reeled and familiar buildings crashed and fire spread. When people lived for the dawn to find the city of the three spires, the city of Godiva, their city, smouldering and devastated. And their 500 year old cathedral, a burned out shell. Out of the night's fury they came to start the job of tidying up. To start as they meant to go on. The men are different today and their equipment more efficient. Cranes, mechanical grabs, bulldozers, all the armaments of reconstruction have been thrown into the making of the new Coventry. Almost before the bombers had done their worst, Coventry was ready to rebuild. The raid and those other raids on two April nights in 1941 gave Coventry the stimulus it needed to put up a city to be proud of. A real 20th century city. New cities are first of all visions, then models. And behind their growth are determined men. Here are two of the local officials behind the new Coventry. Town clerk Charles Barrett and city architect Arthur Ling. Visions, what about this for a car park? And now the real thing. A car park and a half this, with space for more than 200 cars on top of the retail market. In this new Coventry there are new buildings, new ideas wherever you go. This is the precinct, the main shopping district, where the shops are on two levels and only pedestrians are allowed. Why shoppers like Evelyn are even protected from the rain by canopies or arcades. They can even cross from one side to the other without getting wet and come across murals, mosaics, sculptures and carvings. It's around this cruciform shaped precinct that the city's commercial and trading life revolves. And if you're not busy shopping there's always something to see, like the rooftop car park with its novel traffic ramps. They're heated by the way to prevent icing in winter. Or the cafe on air that's shaped like a drum. This is Evelyn's world of brand new flats and houses, clubs and shops and stores. The rebirth of her city has brought Coventry one of Britain's most modern hotels costing half a million pounds, a fine civic theatre costing quarter of a million, a new museum and art gallery, a new local newspaper office and even a new police station. The traffic problems however are still the old ones. Coventry has a lot more plans to put into operation including flyover bridges. And here's a model of the new city centre as it will look when all the work's done. And the man behind the building which more than any other stands for the reborn Coventry, Sir Basil Spence, designer of the cathedral. Coventry since the war has given undreamed scope to many a young architect and even now 20 years after the blitz, Coventry still surveys for tomorrow. For more flats must be built, more pubs, coffee bars and car parks, a new fire station, central library and swimming bars. Coventry is still rising from the ashes. Sometimes it seems that in this city men have always been clawing at the rubble and at the earth. And here will appear the new railway station costing a cool million. And what a Lord Mayor's show Coventry puts on every working day. Look at this for a Salvation Army headquarters. And this is the College of Art and Technology. But whatever you see in Coventry is the cathedral as the centrepiece. It's startling, it's controversial, yet it has a defiant grandeur all its own. A commanding symmetry that makes it one of the architectural wonders of the age-gone age. The stained glass windows will focus their vivid colours on the altar. Green and yellow for youth, pink and red for adolescence, multi-coloured for experience, deep blue and purple for wisdom. And the new cathedral is linked with the ruin of the old, to remind people of what happened that November night. On an outside wall is Sir Jacob Epstein's last major work, his monumental conception of St Michael, patron of the cathedral, as conqueror of the devil. And like all Epstein's work, this is already the subject of controversy. Coventry doesn't forget its past. Here it's believed is the grave of Lady Godiva, who has her own memorial in the city where she's said to have ridden naked to win a tax concession for the citizens. And now for Evelyn, a pilot's eye view of the city that has grown with her. A city transformed beyond the wildest dreams of those who had the vision, of those who suffered in 1940, of those who planned and toiled and acquired the land and got the money to build. Today, Coventry is a mecca for men and women from all over the world. Tourists, government officials, journalists, teachers, students and architects of course, all want to see the city that burned and was reborn. From America they come and Russia, from Spain and Poland and from Germany too. Coventry has become a symbol of the spirit of man. Some just stand and look. Some take pictures. Some, like this Russian architect, make sketches. What was that night really like? But that was yesterday and today, 20 years later, the words written by Pamela Ross as a girl of nine have come true. For the city will rise from its ruins as the phoenix rose from its nest. The people will help with the building and God will do the rest.