In 1772 the Half Moon at Stoke, then the house of Thomas Bray, was used for an auction. This is the earliest record we have yet located.
From 1831 for several years the Half Moon was the used as the entry point for horses being registered for the Stoke Races, which had taken over from what had once been the Coventry Races. The race course appears to have had its starting line across Bray's Lane from the pub, the riders proceeding northwards towards the Sowe Road - now Walsgrave Road - before turning left towards Gosford Green.
In September 1851 Jonathan Bray put the premises, described as a Cottage Residence, up To Be Let, containing, among other features, Ale and Wine Cellars and a Brew House.
On the 9th October 1857 the Coventry Standard reported that "William Tomes, servant to Mr. Bray at the Half Moon, Stoke," was charged with stealing Mr. Bray's nephew's coat, worth £2, and was sentenced to three months' labour in the House of Correction.
John Bray died in November 1859, and that appears to be more-or-less the end for the Half Moon, with the exception of one final advertisement in the Coventry Herald for a "Sale of Grass Keeping, by Brown and Suffolk, at the Half-Moon, Stoke, at Eleven" on Friday 23rd December 1859.
In Rev. T. A. Blythe's 1897 book The History of Stoke, the Half Moon Inn is described as standing at the south east corner of Bray's Lane, and kept by John Bray, victualler and farmer - and possibly the person whom the street was named after. The Coventry Standard, in 1917, described with more accuracy that this old inn merged into the Coventry Co-operative Stores (pictured above, around 1918), the location of which today is the Coventry Building Society.
The half moon can be a symbol of love and romance, and also a symbol of hope and new beginnings. |