More readers have written in with their recollections of growing up in a neighbourhood where everybody seemed to know everyone else.

Molly Burton was born in Smith Street in 1933 and lived there until she was 18 in a house that dated back to Elizabethan times. It was said to be haunted, but this was only part of the excitement for children in the street.

Mr Burton said: "One day during the war Gerald McInerney, Gordon Parsons, his sister Joyce and others from Priory Road and Cross Street made up a jazz band with rusty tin drums from Factory Yard, and to the amazement of everyone, marched through Smith Street and cheered people up."

During air raids people would go into the street's air raid shelter, an old wine cellar which is now The Cellar restaurant.

The cellar had bunk beds for people to sleep in, but one night in 1940 Mrs Burton watched the German raid that destroyed much of Coventry from the steps of the building.

She remembers her father, who had been sent home from work at Kench's flour mill, telling her to watch the raid and remember it, "so that it should not happen again".

Another Warwick child was Margaret Arrowsmith (now Fletcher), who lived in Budbrook Barracks and later West Street and Crompton Street.

She would run down Smith Street to school in Coten End and would call at Boyes newsagent for a penny apple to have for her lunch.

There was also the chance to peer throught the windows of Warwick's own children's clinic in the Butts.

Mrs Fletcher said: "I and many of my schoolgirl friends used to think it was magic to be able to stand on tiptoe and be able to look through the windows and see the tiny babies in their cribs."

Mrs Fletcher also remembers hours spent playing on the common, paddling in the brook at St Nicholas Park and being thrown candy and chewing gum from American soldiers as they passed in their lorries.

She added: "They were wonderful, safe and happy days."

Do you have memories and photos of the area in times gone by? Call reporter Robert Collins on 457720 to tell your story.

* This picture of the Warwick Central junior and senior teams from the 1963 and 1964 season was taken at the end of an eventful year

The shot was sent in by former secretary Pat Gwynne, who recalls how the club travelled to the Netherlands, where they lost 6-1 to both Rapide of Maastricht and then KVG, salvaging some pride in that the mostly under-18 Warwick players lost to much older opposition.

The under-21 side had mixed fortunes, scoring only three more goals than the 56 they conceded that season.