The Definitive Guide to the History of
Pubs and Beerhouses in Coventry

Drinking in an Old English Town

Burnt Post, Kenpas Highway

There is some dispute over the derivation of this name. A hamlet called Burnt Post stood off the Kenilworth Road around its present junction with Kenpas Highway. It had a pool with an attractive huddle of thatched and timbered cottages called Burnt Post Cottages. It is claimed that this was originally called Bourne Post from a boundary marker. The more populist explanation is that Coventry's gibbet stood nearby, which is where the place name, Gibbet Hill, comes from. After its disuse, the gibbet was burnt and became the Burnt Post. Whatever the truth, it is the popular belief that the pub is named after the incinerated gibbet ! In 1929 the license for the Fountain, Cross Cheaping, was surrendered in order to facilitate the removal of that of the Boadicea, Market Place, to the Burnt Post. In the 1980s it was quite a thriving community pub with boules/petanque played and a folk club held in the upstairs room every Sunday.

LICENSEES: 1931 - 1933 Ernest A. Prestwick 1934 - c1963 or even later William Leslie Fletcher