So you may remember my report from a few years ago of the Coventry Radiator and Presswork Company which was latterly known as 'COVRAD'. At the time I commented that its sister company on the same site, 'COVPRESS' (latterly owned by Mr Guptas Liberty group) was probably on borrowed time too. Well of course I was right and here we are a little over 2 years later and we have another little bit of bread and butter industry to explore on my manor.. I have a few connections to the company through work so wasn't too keen to try my luck too early on but after giving the place a few months to settle down and stripping out work a chance to wind down myself and Dave decided it was well overdue a visit a few weeks back.
Exploring wise things were pretty chilled. Easy enough access and little sign of anyone around at first. After a while we did see someone walking around on the ground floor level so we decided it was best to stay upstairs as much as possible after that.
The building is a lovely 1950s 'cathedral of industrial' affair. Its basically two large press shops each with a mezzanine level that would have contained a mixture of sub assembly cells and originally a kind of production 'track' where panels travelled around hung off a monorail system (the remains of which could be found in a redundant link bridge between the two buildings that for some reason i forgot to shoot!) Checking out my other report will give you most of the company's history, originally manufacturing radiators and later moving on to car panels for the likes of JLR, GM and Renault. The company finally closed for good in January 2023
Exploring wise things were pretty chilled. Easy enough access and little sign of anyone around at first. After a while we did see someone walking around on the ground floor level so we decided it was best to stay upstairs as much as possible after that.
The building is a lovely 1950s 'cathedral of industrial' affair. Its basically two large press shops each with a mezzanine level that would have contained a mixture of sub assembly cells and originally a kind of production 'track' where panels travelled around hung off a monorail system (the remains of which could be found in a redundant link bridge between the two buildings that for some reason i forgot to shoot!) Checking out my other report will give you most of the company's history, originally manufacturing radiators and later moving on to car panels for the likes of JLR, GM and Renault. The company finally closed for good in January 2023
Last edited:
