This film is part of Free

Know Your Midlands No 2

A short travelogue to help Midlands television viewers become more familiar with their region takes us to the traditional centre of England.

Non-Fiction 1957 4 mins Silent

From the collection of:

Logo for Media Archive for Central England

Overview

The traditional centre of England is at Meriden and here we see the wayside cross that marks this symbolic site a few years after it was restored during the Festival of Britain. Also featured is the nearby town of Royal Leamington Spa with its spring water and, on a lovely early summer day, we also tour the historic Jephson Gardens. A hint of the industrial Midlands is glimpsed with a view of car bodies on their way from Birmingham for assembly in Oxford.

Meriden was part of Warwickshire until 1974 when it became part of the West Midlands. In 2002 the Ordnance Survey made a more exact check on the true centre of England and came up with a new location of Fenny Drayton located eleven miles north of Meriden in Leicestershire.