Sitting in the southeast of Coventry, Ernesford Grange borders the areas of Binley, Stoke Aldermoor, and Willenhall, and falls within the Coventry South Constituency. The suburb was built across two decades, with a three-phase housing estate constructed throughout the 1960s and 1970s. A notable detail of the estate’s layout is that many of the closes in phases two and three carry the names of former managers who worked at Binley Colliery, giving the street names a quiet industrial history.
Green Space and Local Facilities
Binley Little Woods sits within the phase one closes and is a protected site. Each May, it produces an extensive display of bluebells, making it a well-visited spot for local residents during spring. Just outside the suburb on Allard Way, the Alan Higgs Centre opened in 2004 and includes a 50-metre swimming pool, one of the longer pools in the Coventry area.
History and Archaeology
The name Ernesford has long roots. It appears under the Binley entry in William Dugdale’s The Antiquities of Warwickshire Illustrated, published in 1656, where Ernesford Grange is recorded as having once belonged to the Abbey of Combe. The moated site of Ernesford Grange was first listed as an ancient monument in 1954 under the Ancient Monuments Act 1931, then reclassified as a scheduled monument under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979. The site lies within the grounds of Ernesford Grange Community Academy and has been partly excavated. In 1971, archaeologists uncovered the foundations of an L-shaped building containing a hall, a kitchen with two circular ovens, a chamber, and a garderobe.
Schools and Education
Ernesford Grange has four primary schools: Ernesford Grange, Corpus Christi Catholic, Sowe Valley, and St Bartholomew’s Church of England. Secondary education is provided by Ernesford Grange Community Academy, beside which sits Riverbank Academy, a school catering for pupils with special educational needs.