Kenilworth Past and Present

Photo Credit: Mike Musson

Having got to know a few residents who were born-and-bred in Kenilworth I've enjoyed finding out about the history of some of the buildings in town.

I've learnt that the house a few doors down was a popular fish-and-chip shop, a house over the road was hit by anti-aircraft fire from Crackley Woods in 1940 resulting the death of the owner, and the recycling centre on Cherry Orchard was formerly a large brick-works which supplied many of the bricks from which Kenilworth is built.

And the Coconut Lagoon (aka "Balti Towers") on Warwick Road apparently used to house the local House of Negotiable Affection!

Properly spicy!

To settle an argument in the office about whether the She Bar used to be the old station waiting room (apparently it wasn't, although it certainly felt like it sometimes!) I looked up a couple of local history websites and found some old pictures of Kenilworth Station.  There's currently a lot of talk about re-building Kenilworth's railway station, especially with HS2 in the news, but while I often walk along Station Road on the way into town it's hard to get a sense of there ever being a station down there.

Inspired by the blog of a Russian photographer called Sergy Larenkov (who has merged WW2 photos with more recent pictures to make some truly haunting images) and the History Pin website (which lets users overlay historic photos onto Google Maps' Street View application) I thought it'd be interesting to fire up photoshop and see how much the view has changed in the last 100 years.

After a bit of fiddling about with the software I ended up with a reasonably fair representation of how things might have looked back in 1900.  It's remarkable how unchanged many of the buildings are... with the exception of a few additional chimneys and some TV aerials the view isn't too much different to a century ago.

The back-and-white photo comes from the Warwickshire Railways website and is dated approx 1900-1910; the colour image is a recent picture taken by the Google Maps service.

It's hard to make out but according to Robin Leach (an excellent local historian who has uncovered loads of interesting info about Kenilworth's past) the office window on the house on the left reads "Walter J Lockhart, Coal and Coke Merchants, Agents to Hunt, Edmunds and Co, Brewers, Banbury".

Although it's a bit rough-and-ready this technique does help bring Kenilworth's history to life so I might try to dig out some higher-quality images and see what other locations around town might lend themselves to it.

 Kenilworth Clock Tower: 1910 vs 2010

(Source: WW2 in Kenilworth)

All change for Raffles

From the end of March 2012 Raffles Restaurant will have a new home in Kenilworth.

The popular Colonial Malaysian restaurant is moving a couple of hundred yards down Warwick Road and from 29 March will take up residence in the Grand Hotel.

This afternoon the decorators were out putting the finishing touches to the outside of the hotel in preparation for next week's re-opening.

Raffles have recently been offering some decent money-off deals via the Groupon website; the current deal expires on 31 March but if the offer is refreshed it might provide a good opportunity to try the new venue.

It will also be interesting to see whether another restaurant will move into Raffles' previous home.

I'd love to see a really good BBQ restaurant (along the lines of Bodean's or Pitt Cue Co) but I fear another bland chain restaurant may snap up the building.

And it's not just Raffles that's changing... since the demise of V2 earlier this year a lot of work has been taking place in the building on Station Road.  New shutters are up in the windows, and the old "She Bar" sign has been put back up (although to be honest it might never have come down!).

I'm surprised that this venue isn't more successful, but the last two ventures have folded relatively swiftly; I guess it's always going to be tough for a new bar/restaurant to establish itself in a relatively small town like Kenilworth, but Ego, Zizzi and Beef have managed it in the last couple of years so there is clearly a market for something new.

 

Kenilworth Restaurant Reviews

I tend to do most of the cooking at home -  after spending all day staring at a computer screen there's something intensely relaxing about coming home from work and preparing a meal for the family (even if it's just a quick plate of Spaghetti Monsters). 

When your working day is measured in miliseconds you cannot beat pottering about in the kitchen with a cold cider in hand and a bit of Bassdrive on the stereo while waiting for a casserole to gently bubble in the oven or some homemade pizza dough to rise.
 
But now and again it's nice to let someone else take the strain in the kitchen and head out for a meal.  When we moved to Kenilworth we were pleasantly suprised by the variety of places to eat.   There are at least 45 different places where you can get a meal in Kenilworth - everything from formal French bistro dining to trendy gastro-pubs and cosy cafes to late-night takeaways.  For a town of 25,000 this is remarkably good; in contrast the village where I grew up boasts a single pub and a chinese restaurant (plus a kebab van at weekends!).

In the six years we've been living here we've sampled a fair amount of the food establishments in town, but my plan over the next few months is to get around as many of the rest as possible and share my thoughts on this blog.

Can't beat Spaghetti Monsters for tea

When I eat in town I'm usually joined by two delightful dining companions: my better half and my 3y/old daughter, plus various other friends and family depending on the occasion.

Kenilworth is increasingly a family-oriented town, and now that I am well into my 30s I have found that the criteria by which I judge a pub or restaurant tend include how well they accommodate small children and provide space for families to relax and spread out (rather than the ease with which they allow me to nail Jaegerbombs on a Friday night).

Clearly there are some restaurants in town which are not aimed at children, so on the rare occasions we get a child-free evening Mrs W. and I will aim to visit these establishments with our expectations appropriately adjusted.

So here's the list... I've separated it out into restaurants, pubs (only those which serve food), cafes & tea rooms, and takeaways.  There are also a couple of places slightly further afield which are close enough to interest locals and visitors to Kenilworth.

If you know of anywhere I've missed please leave me a comment or send me a tweet and let me know!

As I visit and review each establishment I'll update this post and add a link to the blog's sidebar.

Restaurants
Petit Gourmand  |  Harringtons-on-the-Hill  |  Beef  |  Restuarant Bosquet  |  The Cross  |  Loch Fyne  |  The Grand Hotel  | Ego  |  Zizzi  |  212 Bistro @ Holiday Inn  |  She Bar / V2  |  Thai Kitchen  |  Jade Restaurant  |  Full House Chinese  |  Raffles  |  Coconut Lagoon  |  Zaika  |  Indian Edge  |  Seetar Tandori  |  Sunam  |  Bilash

Pubs
The Green Man  |  The Clarendon Arms  |  The Queen and Castle  |  The Famous Virgins and Castle  |  The Almanack  |  The Cottage Inn  |  The Bear & Ragged Staff  |  The Lion  |  The Gauntlet  |  The Tiltyard

Takeaways
Alfie Grimshaw's  |  School Lane Fish Bar  |  Chips 'n' Fishes |  Kenilworth Kebab House  |  Sonali  |   Crystal Chinese  |  Kenilworth Cantonese  |  Mulan  |  Pizza Bella  |  Dominos Pizza  |  Subway

Cafes / Tea Rooms
Rocking Horse Cafe  |  The King's Table  |  Kenilworth Castle Tea Room  |  Cherry Tree Cafe  |  Escape  |  Ardens  |  Time for Tea  |  Costa  |  Starbucks

Further afield
The Anchor in Leek Wootton  |  The Saxon Mill in Warwick  |  The Red Lion in Hunningham

SMART Polaris 1/2 Watt LED Rear Lights

Now that I'm back cycling one of my first tasks was to sort out some new bike lights.

Over the last few years LEDs have pretty much sown up the market for consumer bike lights, and since I was last on two wheels LED technology has moved on immensely so I thought it worthwhile upgrading my lights.

I started with rear lights as these are (arguably) the most important lights to get right, simply because cars approaching from behind are on the same side of the road and therefore need more warning.

To help me decide I spent a fair bit of time online looking at what other cyclists are using.  As with anything in life you can spend a little or a lot depending on what you want.

I set my budget at £10-£15 to start with - if I ever start commuting or riding more frequently I'd consider spending more, but for the occasional ride to the pub or Kenilworth Tennis Club a basic set should be fine.

After reading some visitor comments on the London Cyclist blog I decided to try the SMART Polaris 1/2 Watt LEDs.

I ended up buying two Polaris lights from Planet X cycles - they happened to have a special offer on their website and I managed to get them for £6 each (incl. delivery) which was a real bargain.

 
The Polaris lights are small, light-weight and exceptionally bright and at less than £10 they won't break the bank.  Illumination is provided by three LEDS - a half-Watt central LED for the main light and two smaller LEDs to provide visibility from the sides.  The Polaris has two modes - flashing and constant - and is attached to the bike with a simple clip and bracket.  It's also possible to attach the lights to clothing or bags etc using the same clip but I prefer to keep mine fixed to the bike frame.

So far I'm really pleased with them - I have one mounted on the seatpost which is set to flashing mode, and another on the rear fork which is set to constant mode.

 

This provides approaching drivers with the best of both worlds: a bright flash to gain attention and a steady light to help judge distance and speed.   There's also a reasonable amount of spill from the sides to help visibility at junctions etc.

As you can see from the video these are seriously bright lights - ideal in town to stand out against other competing light sources, and also useful on some of the darker country roads around Kenilworth when I want to be seen as far ahead as possible (especially useful when bombing down Silks' Hill in Leek Wootton on the way back from a late night session at the Saxon Mill!)

I'm still on my first set of batteries, so I cannot comment yet on burn times, but because my journeys tend to be there-and-back-again I've put a small sticker (courtesy of my 3y/old daughter) on one of the lights so I can rotate between flashing and constant to even out the battery wear.

Back On Two Wheels...

Nearly six years after we moved to the Midlands I finally decided to rescue my old bike from the shed.

I guess it qualifies as a “classic” by now… a 1994 Marin Muirwoods which I got for my 16th birthday.

Needed a bit of a scrub, and I treated it to a service from John Atkins Cycles in Leamington; the only major work required was a set of new gear shifters and a replacement front tyre, but otherwise it’s in pretty good shape for an 18 y/old bicycle!

First proper ride was a chilly 16 mile loop west of Kenilworth on some of the quieter country roads, heading through Haseley Knob, Berkswell and Balsall Common.

Plan is to gradually replace shorter car journeys with the bike, based on petrol costs of 15p/mile I’ll need to cycle 660 miles to recoup the cost of the service and repairs... that's the equivalent of cycling to Glasgow and back so it might take a while!

I'm using a site called Endomondo to track my distance - hopefully being able to watch the miles build up will help with the motivation!

With the weather being so grim recently I've been a bit slow starting but the miles are building up.  I've separated out riding for "fun" and riding when I'd usually use the car: the latter will be off-set against petrol costs, but all miles are good miles!

And in the end it's not the number of miles that matters... it's about getting out of the car and into in the great outdoors with the wind in my hair.