The story of the spire begins in the early 13th Century, when the Earl of Chester, Ranulf de Blondeville, authorised Franciscan monks to erect a monastery on his Cheylesmore Manor estate – the land beneath your very feet. This monastery became known as Greyfriars, named after their grey robes 

In 1234, King Henry III gifted timber to build the monastic Greyfriars church and the estate was enlarged again in 1289 when more land was gifted to the monastery by, Roger de Monalt, Earl of Chester.

As a landmark building even in its day, the Greyfriars Church, which would have likely stood as a simple wooden structure, became the resting place of the very first Mayor of Coventry, John Ward in 1348.

The construction of the tower you see before you didn’t begin until 1359 when the Black Prince allowed the monks to take stone from his quarries. The newly constructed tower and spire formed the centre of the Church of Greyfriars.

Let’s jump to nearly 200 years to the tyrannical Tudor. In the 16th Century, when Rome rejected King Henry VIII’s second divorce, he set to create the Church of England and the Friary became victim to the dissolution of the monasteries and demolished in 1542. Thankfully the tower and spire were spared.

A few years later, the spire atop the tower was blown down during a storm, and the top of the tower was remodelled without a spire.

The lone standing spire was later restored in the 17th and 18th century serving a number of purposes throughout the years, including a storehouse and a pigsty until 1829, when the Christchurch was built around it.

The Christchurch stood for little over 100 years until it was raised to the ground during WWII and the intense bombing campaign by Nazi Germany on 10 April 1941. Once again, the tower and spire survived and the site was restored in 1970 by the Coventry Corporation.

This spire stands today as a daily reminder of Coventry’s heritage, standing at 211 feet, it’s the shortest of the three spires of the iconic Coventry skyline.