Reader Doris Keen remembers skipping and playing hopscotch, hoops and marbles outside with her friends, and neighbours piling up wood in the centre of the street for a bonfire on Guy Fawkes night.

Mrs Keen lived in Covent Garden Market from the age of three until she was 20. Her father Bertie Hudson was the last man to leave the street before it was demolished in the early 1960s.

She said: "They were very friendly people. If you needed help they were always there for you."

Mrs Keen's earliest memory is of seeing her father, a painter and decorator, on a ladder painting the outside of the house.

She remembers sitting on doorsteps knitting with her friends, and moving to the sunny side of the street as the day wore on. On wet days children would play under the characteristic porches across houses lower down the road.

As she got older she went to the Kingdom Hall, a sort of youth club in the lower part of the road.

But by the 1950s the housing was seen as dilapidated, and many of Leamington's 'slum' areas were pulled down. Mrs Keen, herself one of six children, remembers many of the small houses held families of four or more, often in bad conditions.

She added: "It wasn't good. The walls were sometimes infested with bugs. It must have been the sort of plaster they used."

Many streets were condemned, but Covent Garden Market was one of the most distinctive.

When the houses were demolished the Courier carried a piece entitled Death of a Street and Mrs Keen's father was pictured on one of the corners.

She added: "I was very saddened. When you come from a family that lived in the street for so long and all your memories are there it is sad when it is knocked down."

Older readers may recall when this was a common sight in lanes and fields around Warwickshire.

Some may even recognise the man pictured - a young farmer taking part in a hedge laying competition at Campion Hills in the early 1960s.

Former Courier photographer Frank Cooper took this picture at a time when the practice - a means of building a strong hedge by weaving branches together - was still a valued skill.

He said: "It was commonplace for young farmers clubs to hold hedge laying competitions.

"The practice is almost gone now. They just put a fence up instead."

It was a time when agriculture was still an important part of the county's economy, and Mr Cooper recalls at least one and sometimes two pages of the paper were devoted to farming.

In those days every village had a young farmers' club that would hold competitions as well as organise social events.

Mr Cooper is hoping the man pictured, or some of his friends and fellow young farmers can provide a name.

Call the newsroom on 457720 if you can name the young man in the picture.