Working out of a converted Victorian power station on the Coventry Canal has its quirks. Every so often it means a future king turns up outside the window.
On 25 May 2021 the Prince of Wales came to Coventry to mark the start of the city’s year as UK City of Culture. It was a long day for him. The Cathedral first thing, with a wreath laid at the Altar of Rubble in the ruins, then the Herbert Art Gallery and the 2 Tone exhibition. The Duchess of Cornwall spent part of the day at Coventry Central Library launching a reading challenge for the city.
The stop that brought him down to our end of town was the canal.
He is patron of the Canal & River Trust, and he came to see what had been done to the stretch of water that runs past Electric Wharf. First the old Daimler factory building next door, now the Daimler Powerhouse and home to a group of arts organisations. Then over the bridge onto the towpath, where he boarded Scorpio, a working heritage boat, for a ten minute trip down to Coventry Canal Basin.
On board were people from the community groups and volunteers who had spent the previous eighteen months hauling that section of canal back into use. At the Basin he watched a preview from physical theatre company Highly Sprung and art collective Random String.
Electric Wharf started life in 1894 as Coventry’s electricity generating station, the Electric Light Works. By the late nineties it was standing empty. Complex Development Projects took it on and began work in 2004, turning the shell and the land around it into offices, live-work lofts, apartments and canal-front houses.
It worked, and not just in our opinion. In 2010 the West Midlands regeneration awards named Electric Wharf Outstanding Place of the Decade, ahead of Birmingham’s Mailbox and the Bullring.
We have been based here since 2006. Ten minutes’ walk from the city centre, a canal running past the door, and occasionally a royal visit going by on a boat.