Toecutter

While our walk-and-talk interviews sometimes fall into familiar patterns, our interviewees always guided us to seeing each and every spot in Spon End with fresh new eyes. One of our interviews that did just that was with ‘Toecutter’ (a name adopted from the Mad Max movie), a skateboarder with a keen eye for all the minute changes that re-write his neighbourhood. He met with us and Gibo in the Rose Community Centre, and took us through one of the longest and most laid-back interview walks that we had the pleasure to conduct. The five of us took a leisurely and slow-paced stroll all around Spon End, where Toecutter and Gibo exchanged roles in leading us (and sometimes each other) to places to be discovered anew.

Toecutter moved to Spon End, Holyhead Road, in 2005. He considers Spon End his area because he has lived there for a long time, even though he didn’t grow up there:

I grew up in Chapelfields and in Earlsdon… I moved to Spon End in 2005, but I have… lived in Earlsdon, Chapelfields and Spon End pretty much my whole life.

Even though a lot of our interviewees expressed a strong social identity along the borderline between Spon End and Earlsdon (see our interviews with Caroline and Gibo for example), Toecutter thought these demarcations were clear only…

… when you go across to the far end [of each neighbourhood], but [otherwise]… there is not a distinct line… it is not like in London [where], when you cross a road, you go from poverty to wealth very distinctly, there is nothing like that [here]… it is not a drawn line… it is like airbrush gradient.

Having said that, however, Toecutter also reflected on how Earlsdon itself has changed:

When I was a child, a lot of Earlsdon was where ordinary working people could aspire to retire… Now it is a lot more expensive and you can see that there is a demographic shift.

In our interview, Toecutter spoke of the physical and material state of housing, the role of landlords, relationship to students housing and generally the infrastructure of the neighbourhood.

Houses, properties and landlords

When Toecutter first moved to Spon End, he moved into what he called “the unfashionable bit.” When we asked what he meant by that he explained:

It is an insider joke. These are lovely properties… all Victorian houses, which have almost all been turned into [single] flats and bedsits. In the road that I used to live in, there wasn’t one family home left… [When they moved away, and the properties were up for sale], they would be snapped up by landlords. In the road that I lived in, there were about ten houses [like that], and I knew that at least three were owned by this ghastly man, who has a bunch of houses in Spon End…

Toecutter blamed practices like these for downgrading the neighbourhood. He mentioned an example in which a landlord kept rolling six-months’ contracts, and if any tenant would complain about the upkeep of the house, he would simply replace them. The tenants, mainly people on benefits, were made too vulnerable to challenge the landlord.

Toecutter chatted to us about his own experiences, good and bad, sharing houses with, or next to, students. He provided us with a more complicated story than the way in which the presence of students is usually depicted. He had fond memories of his neighbouring students who loved to photograph his cat, but he also pinpointed the problems that sometimes arose and caused friction. The problems typically happen with those…

… who think it is beneath them to put the rubbish out, and have noisy parties and stuff, but that is a minority… [In] the 13 years that I lived there, I have had very, very few problems with the students. The main problem I had with the students… was that some of them would throw rubbish all over the place.

Another issue, he mentioned, related to the physical traces left behind by students: shopping trolleys.

Once, I was walking around the neighbourhood for about 20 minutes and I counted 46 trolleys within a 5 minute radius of my house… they were everywhere. The farthest I saw a Morrison’s trolley was in Broomfield Road… Now, that’s dedication!

Indeed, a shopping trolley was the first thing we encountered during our walk.

Nevertheless, the same students also gave Toecutter some of his fondest memories of Spon End.

I had a good relationship with the students who came… They would take pictures of my fluffy cat sitting on the wall… I particularly remember a really nice evening [when we threw a party] with [three students he used to share the house with]… We had 40 people, and I cooked, making onion bhajis, and they were in high demand. It was a really, really nice evening… there were quite a few students there and I had no idea who the people there were, because I was way older than everybody else… but they were really nice people.

Geographies of Skating

A lot of Toecutter’s memories were connected to where and how he would skate, or teach to skate. We asked him about this, but he told us that he prefers teaching skateboarding in the Memorial Park. While Spon End has a few pedestrianised spots, the problem with the pedestrianised stretch just ahead of the subway is that…

It is slightly downhill toward the road, and on the other end, you have a really steep drop to the subway. It is not the first place I would choose to teach someone to skateboard. I taught my nephew there, but he is little. If I am teaching teenagers or adults, I take them to the park, it is safer there.

Skateboarding also attests for the changes occurring in Spon End. The houses just across from the Estate, for instance, didn’t always used to be behind a fence.

I used to skate down this road here [Barras Lane] and through, all down this road, slide around the corner, jump that curb and straight down that path and then turn right straight down the subway. They changed all this…

The other junction Toecutter mastered navigating is the intersection of Doe Bank Lane (that leads to Spon Gate School) with Northumberland Road. In our interview, he pointed at a smooth patch of asphalt and said…

They patched that about six month ago because there used to be a hole that was that deep, and it just got worse and worse. I used to skate [there], so I had to be increasingly careful to avoid this pothole, these two manholes… and to avoid hitting that corner.

While these geographies of skating might seem very personal, Toecutter was clear on how holes relate to political and economic decisions:

It is the Council! Look at the state of the roads down here. Some roads are so smooth that you walk on them with your bare feet and you wouldn’t even get dirty. Around here, Northumberland Road has holes that a dog could hide in…

Still speaking of Northumberland Road, we were reminded of how small everyday effects wear out the solidity of urban infrastructures…

This road used to be smooth, but there weren’t speed bumps. People used to come here to avoid all the street lights, so they put speed bumps… Now coming down the hill, the road is just torn-up before the speed bumps, because the cars break suddenly, so it has become awful in the past three years.

***

Throughout our walk, Toecutter generously shared stories, memories and even gossip about almost every building we passed by. We went to his old house and he showed us the physical deterioration that neglect brings upon some of the beautiful old houses along Holyhead Road. We also navigated through piles of trash, and took peeks into front gardens and various letting advertisements.

At different points in our walk, Gibo would lead the way, and Toecutter would remark: “I have never taken that detour to Holyhead road, why would I?” At others, like at the end of Northumberland Road, Toecutter led us to one of his secret Spon End gems in an area that we, as well as Gibo, had never really explored. He guided us all the way down the street until we saw, tucked away in a cul-de-sac, a façade of a beautiful red-brick house.

It is one of the older houses in Spon End… it has something to do with the Waterworks, I know nothing about its history… I have actually been tempted to knock on their door and ask them if they know anything about it, because it is so, so beautiful!

Although we knew about this house from our research, we hadn’t walked all the way in what seemed like a very quiet, small and residential street. The building was indeed the original waterworks manager’s house with a beautiful sandstone wall and a trace of one of Spon End’s most enduring icons: the waterworks. The waterworks, initially known as the Pumping Station, were planned by Thomas Hawkesley, an eminent 19th century engineer who planned several waterworks across Britain. It was completed in 1847 (source). A pumping station was set up near Spon End Bridge. The waterworks initially had two tall chimneys that dominated most of Spon End’s panorama (source).

The waterworks buildings are part of Spon End’s most distinctive features. The house Toecutter led us to, is locally listed. A 2003 report drafted by the Council says that the Waterworks Green at the end of the Northumberland Road is the site of “Coventry’s earliest municipal waterworks and traces of that remain in the form of a number of ornamental trees and the green itself, which covers a large disused water tank.”

Toecutter’s many stories, and his attention to the physical and material changes of Spon End helped to remind us that infrastructures are what bind neighbourhoods together. We mean that in both physical terms, such as roads, good houses, electricity and the like, as well as in emotional terms, including memories, stories, shared senses of community and conviviality. Therefore, decisions to maintain a neighbourhood or to leave it to ruin are always interwoven with how we come to view places as special, or not-so-special.

Works mentioned:

• Coventry City Council and Spon End and Chapelfields Community Forum, Spon End and Nauls Mill Area of Local Distinctiveness: Area Character Statement andDesign Guidelines and Designation of Two Conservation Areas”, August 2003, p. 18. Available as PDF from: http://www.coventry.gov.uk/download/downloads/id/973/spon_end_and_nauls_mill_area_of_local_distinctiveness.pdf