Stays near Longford, Coventry

Longford is a ward in the north of Coventry, with 18,538 residents at the 2011 census. It covers Longford Village, Foxford, Rowleys Green, Alderman's Green, Hawkesbury, Bell Green, Hall Green, Courthouse Green, Woodshires and Little Heath. Its neighbours are Holbrooks, Henley, Upper Stoke and Foleshill.

The area is mostly residential with some industry and green space, including Longford Park and Longford Community Nature Park on opposite sides of Longford Road. The Coventry Building Society Arena is in the north of the ward, with the Arena Park shopping centre beside it and Riley Square shopping centre nearby.

Houses and cottages at Longford and Foxford are mentioned as early as the fifteenth century, yet a count in 1730 found just 20 houses. Growth came in the mid-eighteenth century with ribbon weaving and a busy coal mine at Hawkesbury. Weavers' cottages with their large upper windows, later blocked up, could still be seen in Hurst Road in the 1960s.

Two canals meet here. The Oxford Canal was begun in 1769 and its first ten miles were finished by 1771. Because the Coventry and Oxford companies could not agree on tolls, the two waterways ran side by side from Hawkesbury to Longford until a court injunction had them joined at Longford in 1777; the junction today is at Hawkesbury. On the Coventry Canal towpath is The Stone Sofa, a sandstone sculpture unveiled in 1997.

Sullivan Heights, in Upper Stoke, is about 3 miles by road from Longford and about 3 miles from the Coventry Building Society Arena. Humber Hub, in Lower Stoke, is about 4 miles from Longford.