The next Open Day is Saturday 10th August (10am – 4pm) when the Sherbourne String Quartet will be playing a selection of medieval and baroque music at various points throughout the day. The group’s performance will be alternated with Weaver’s House trustee Jennifer Waters playing music of the period on the recorder. This will be the final chance this year to see the ‘solar’ the upstairs part of the house containing the replica loom.
UPDATE: 3 August – the musical element of this Open Day has been postponed.
We’re so pleased that our first Open Day of 2021 went well, and are delighted that we are also able to open up for further days, including the fantastic Heritage Open Days in Coventry.
The Weaver’s House will next be open on Saturday 21st August 2021. This will be free to visit and will feature the ‘rub a bug’ brass rubbing type activity for children which was very popular last time we included it. There will also be some Medieval games to try.
The house will then reopen for Heritage Open Days on Saturday 11th and Sunday 12th September, 2021.
For all of these, the opening times will be 10am until 4pm. All are free entry.
The lower part of The Weaver’s House will be open to visit in small groups, and the garden will be open, and still looking lovely at this time of the year.
Please be aware the small ‘solar’ working room which contains the loom will not be open, and we are not opening the tea room this year. Masks are recommended for the indoor areas as these are small spaces.
It was a long time coming, but the first Open Day of 2021 was enjoyed by visitors and volunteers alike. This was our first day in the best part of two years! We wanted to get back into the swing of things carefully, to benefit both our staff and guests alike, and we were pleased that everything went so smoothly. A huge thank you is owed to all our volunteers and our visitors for making things go so well – THANK YOU!
Visitors to our first Open Day of 2021
We had the lower part of The Weaver’s House open to visit in small groups and the garden had displays and demonstrations to enjoy. We had a steady amount of visitors dropping in through the day, with many people spending quite a bit of time in the garden which is looking stunning at the moment.
We opened both doors of The Weaver’s House for ventilation and had displays and demonstrations in the garden
We weren’t able to open the small ‘solar’ working room which contains the loom, but as usual, it was free to enter, and we hope people will be able to return to see anything they have missed.
Our lovely medieval garden in full bloom
As well as display by the spinners, we also had natural dyes, raw wool and eco-printing displays. Find out how to do your own eco-printing here.
We intend to open in August and also in September for Heritage Open Days, please stay tuned for announcements!
Good news for fans of Coventry’s heritage, we will be holding an Open Day in July 2021!
We are pleased that we will be opening to the public, incredibly to us, this will be for the first time since September 2019. This will be the first time we have been open since making our improvements to the garden, which began last year. With all the challenges that are still present, we have only set one day so far to test the waters. We hope to add more of course, and we are very much looking forward to welcoming people back on site to see our medieval house and garden!
Here are the essentials that you need to know if you are planning to visit us in July, followed by an FAQ section below, please read so you know what to expect from us and what we need visitors to be aware of:
When: Saturday 10 July, from 10am until 4pm
What: A free Open Day
Where: The Weaver’s House, Coventry: Garden and selected areas of the house
What will be there?
The Weaver’s House will be open for limited amounts of visitors. We will have demonstrations of the traditional craft of spinning and a display about the loom and weaving in the garden.
Visitors will be able to enter The Weaver’s House to view the two rooms on the ground floor, in small groups at a time. We will be running talks by our knowledgeable and enthusiastic volunteers in our Tudor garden area.
We aren’t able to run this Open Day in our usual way, but we are hoping to provide an interesting experience for visitors who join us. Our Open Days are always free, so visitors can return and see more another time.
What additional measures are in place?
Visitors enter the house wearing a mask, this can be removed in the garden area.
All visitors sign in via the Track and Trace app or a paper alternative.
Hand gel is provided in the entrance area.
We will be limiting the number of people on site at one time.
A one-way system is in place where the nature of the site allows.
Talks will take place outside.
Do I need to book in advance?
No, it is drop in, however we will be limiting numbers on site.
We will be closing at 4pm, please bear this in mind.
Entry is free but donations are appreciated.
Can I see the replica loom?
Unfortunately, it will not be possible to open the small upstairs ‘solar’ room containing the loom. It is simply too small to manage access and ventilation to accommodate visitors.
What facilities are open?
Toilets including accessible toilet will be open.
Cold drinks will be available, we are unable to provide other refreshments on this occasion. We are a short walk from the city centre.
We hope this has answered any questions that you may have about coming to visit us, but if you do have any further queries, please get in touch with us. Please use the contact form on the website or social channels if possible, it is usually quicker than using the phone number. We look forward to welcoming you.
Whilst we have been closed, we have made some improvements in our garden area including a brick block paved area and installing some more woven fence panels.
We reused old bricks to fit in with the rest of the garden, and we also needed quite a lot of sand and gravel!
The volunteer work was led by John Homer and we are grateful for him for donating his time and expertise to the project. Although weather wasn’t the greatest we did have a few moments of sun. Throughout, our volunteers worked really hard to get the area completed and we are hoping the weather will repay us with sunshine when we are ready for Open Days!
We’re so pleased to have been able to give these old bricks a new lease of life and to have an additional area in the garden for displays.
It wasn’t all just bricks and blocks, we also spent some time tending to the garden which needed a little post-winter care, as all gardens do. It’s a wonderful place to spend some time, and always hard to believe that it is so close to the city centre.
We have regular gardening days for volunteers and welcome new recruits. It doesn’t need to be a regular commitment – if you would like to find out more about working in our garden, or you have other skills you would like to volunteer, please see our Volunteering page. Come and join the history of this amazing little house.
A special version of Monopoly is coming to our city.
We’re excited to hear about a new version of the famous board game to mark the City of Culture year in Coventry! We’re even more excited to know that it is possible to nominate a landmark to include on the well-known format. Nominations must be sent to Winning Moves, who produce the game, via coventry@winningmoves.co.uk or The MONOPOLY: Coventry Edition game Facebook page, or post. You’ll need to be quick, as the deadline for entries is 11.59pm on April 24, full details at the bottom of this post. We would LOVE to see The Weaver’s House featured as we show a unique side of Coventry’s history:
Our little medieval house and the surrounding buildings of Black Swan Terrace were built in 1455 on Spon Street, one of the most historic streets in Coventry. The terrace of six cottages underwent many changes throughout the centuries and even survived the Blitz. Once abandoned and derelict, they were lovingly brought back to life by a dedicated team of local volunteers! The Weaver’s House building had by far the most original medieval features of the terrace with much of the medieval structure surviving and visible. The Trust was able to restore it to show off its long history, and it now looks much as it would in 1540, when a medieval weaver and his family lived here.
The Weaver’s House is unusual for a historical building of this age because it was lived in by a working class family. Many of these type of buildings are long gone. The Weaver’s House has survived through the centuries by adapting and accommodating the different trades of Coventry from cloth makers and farm workers, through to silk ribbons and watch making, to cycle making and finally, in its last incarnation, in a row of shops. It is now a Grade 2 Star listed heritage building which has regularly been open to the public since 2007, via free Open Days. We celebrated our tenth anniversary in 2017 and recreated our own version of the famous Coventry Blue colour.
Nominate us now!
People wanting to nominate landmarks and charities to feature in the game can email their suggestions to Winning Moves, who produce the game, via coventry@winningmoves.co.uk or by post to The MONOPOLY: Coventry Edition game, Winning Moves UK, 7 Praed Street, London W2 1NJ. Nominations can also be submitted via The MONOPOLY: Coventry Edition game Facebook page. The deadline for entries is 11.59pm on April 24.
Whilst we are still locked down and unsure of plans for the year ahead, it was a delight to see these beautiful photos of The Weaver’s House in the snow.
The photos were taken by our resident, Charlie, and you can read about his experience moving into the site last year, here.
In a few months, this lavender will be covered in lovely flowers and hopefully bees.Snow covers the garden.
A snow day would have been a very different matter for the residents of these little cottages in medieval times. There were no windows installed then, for a start, just cloth to keep out the draughts. The nearby River Sherbourne would probably have frozen. Nowadays we don’t see snow that often, so we are grateful to Charlie for sending us these pics (especially as taking them from his vantage point means they are untroubled by footprints!).
What a busy year it has been for The Weaver’s House. This is the first year that we have had a special theme for every Open Day. Let’s take a whistle-stop tour…
It doesn’t seem a blink of an eye since we began the open season with Signs of Spring, on a sunny April day. A few weeks later, we had an extremely memorable day as reenactor group Coventry Militia brought expertise, costumes and weaponry for an authentic historical experience and some exciting medieval action! We are hoping they will join us for a future Open Day.
June and July delved into delicacies and dirt respectively, with Open Days on Tudor cooking and an archaeological dig. The Tudor recipes included Pease Pottage which visitors sampled on tiny trenchers (bread plates), and mostly declared that it was better than they expected! Coventry And District Archaeological Society (CADAS) ran the on-site dig for July, which unearthed finds including medieval pottery and later dated items such as glass, animal bones and pipe bowl/stem.
August brought a day of Summer Fun in the Garden. Young visitors enjoyed making woolly snails, weaving and “rub-a-bug” a brass rubbing style activity, featuring mini-beasts.
Before we knew it, it was September, and the annual festival of Heritage Open Days, this year celebrating its 25th anniversary. Back in the 90s it was just a single day. It runs across nearly two weeks now, and we opened for both weekends.
This year, the first Saturday coincided with the Spon Spun Arts and Heritage Trail, with the house hosting artwork by Karen Rose Textiles, marking the connection between weaving and the nearby river Sherbourne. This work is currently displayed at the Healing Arts Gallery at University Hospital Coventry & Warwickshire. During the second weekend, we celebrated the centenary of the birth of previous resident, Sid O’ Neil, with his descendants. Of course, we had cake!
Thanks to the skills of the Weavers’ Workshop, throughout September the window of The Weaver’s House was turned gold, along with most of Earlsdon, in tribute to Ben Crowther.
Although Open Day season ended in September, the house was open in October and November this year for Coventry Biennial. Three artworks were brought together to explore weaving as a historic and contemporary practice which is undertaken in almost every community across the globe. The exhibition closed in late November, ending our public openings for this year.
We also had some private groups in of course, including the Design Nation project and visitors with ancestors connected to the area.
What a busy year! We have next year’s dates in the diary and once we have finalised a few details, we’ll be listing them here very soon! We always welcome new volunteers, so if you have an interest in heritage, Coventry history, gardening or would just like to get involved, find out more here.
We enjoyed a sunny September for the first Heritage Open Days weekend of 2019, the 25th anniversary year of the festival.
On the Saturday we, and visitors, were treated to an extra slice of culture as The Weaver’s House hosted part of the Spon Spun Arts & Heritage Trail in the form of an exhibition by Karen-Rose-Textiles.
The Spon Spun exhibition featured artworks entitled ‘Scir Burna’ (Clear Stream in Old English) representing the river Sherbourne that flows through and under the city. The pieces representing the ‘life giving force’ of the river are made from naturally dyed felted wool and were accompanied by a soundscape during the installation.
The river itself would have been used for washing and dyeing in the time when the house was lived in by the medieval weaver and family. The artworks, created especially for display in The Weaver’s House, connects the river and the history of Coventry’s weaving, dyeing and spinning industry and the house’s previous residents. The pieces also pay homage to the dye colour Coventry Blue “as true as Coventry blue.”
Earlier in 2019 Karen was commissioned by Artspace Coventry and Spon Spun to plan and deliver a community based intergenerational project linking together The Weaver’s House and the pupils from neighbouring Spon Gate Primary School. The project introduced pupils from year 3 and 4 to the ancient craft of weaving and its strong links with medieval Coventry. They also visited The Weaver’s House and learnt some weaving techniques from the Weavers’ Workshop.
