Phantom Coach, Fletchamstead Highway
| Alternative Addresses: | Canley Road, Canley Lane | ||
This pub is on the old coaching route between Coventry and Cheltenham. It is said that one night a coach left this inn and disappeared, never to be seen again. The legend has it that the coach sunk without trace in the marshland that covered this area before drainage. If this is so, what was the name of the pub at that time? At that time the main road was the track that we now call Canley Ford.
In 1935 Atkinsons built this large red brick pub on the new main road called Fletchamstead Highway. On the 30th December that year the Coventry Evening Telegraph reported that the soon to be opened pub would make sure "that full catering arrangements for the travelling public will be made at at all convenient hours".
On the 2nd January 1936 the licence was removed from the Board Vaults in Cross Cheaping, and the Phantom Coach opened the next day.
In 1982 it was described as 'a modern pub on the Coventry by-pass. Coaches by appointment only (phantom or otherwise) says the sign'. | |||
LICENSEES:1936 George Joseph Mark Chattaway (Jan to Feb) 1936 - 1939 Ernest Berkeley Thorn 1939 Finlay George Clarke (previously at Sydenham Palace) 1951 Maurice Eldridge (moved to the Queen's Hotel, Hertford Street) 1951 William Felton (moved from the Queen's Hotel, Hertford Street) 1955 - 1957 Frank A. Parker 1960 - 1963 Albert Followell 1963 Frank Glover Brooks 1969 - 1975 Stan Adkins (former Coventry and England rugby player, capped seven times) 1976 - 1977 Vernon Godfrey 1983 - 1984 Hugh Curley 2015 Jamie Phillips | |||
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