Stays near Walsgrave and University Hospital Coventry

Walsgrave on Sowe, usually just Walsgrave, is a suburb about three and a half miles north-east of central Coventry. It was built on what was once marshland and is now an outer suburb on the city side of the villages of Ansty and Shilton, with Potters Green, Wyken, Henley Green and Woodway Park among its neighbours.

A chapel stood here by 1221 and St Mary's Church occupies the same site today. The village grew on farming and on coal from Craven Colliery, off Henley Road. In 1932, a year after a census counted 2,250 people, the parish was split between Coventry and its neighbours.

Walsgrave lies just south of the point where the M6 and M69 meet. The Walsgrave Triangle Retail Park and Cross Point Business Park, opposite Paradise Way, bring a cinema, a large supermarket, hotels and a cluster of offices.

Most visitors know it for University Hospital Coventry, which replaced the old Walsgrave Hospital. The new hospital opened in July 2006, had 1,064 beds in 2020 and became one of four trauma units in the West Midlands in March 2012. It has a helipad and takes patients from across the Midlands.

Sullivan Heights, in Upper Stoke, is about 2 miles by road from Walsgrave and from the hospital. With three bedrooms, a full kitchen, a washing machine and tumble dryer and free parking on the street, it is a practical base for agency staff, locums and families visiting someone in hospital.