The City Arms and the Royal Oak were built as pubs, but the Earlsdon Cottage Inn has a different story. Joseph Aston Atkins, a watch motioner, signed the conveyance for plot 131, Warwick Street on 10 May 1852 — one of Earlsdon’s earliest residents. By 1861 the census shows him, now aged 37, in his Warwick Street home with his wife Eliza, a nephew and an apprentice, both working in the watch trade. The house had a parlour, living room, two bedrooms, kitchen and backyard privy, with Joseph’s top shop above the kitchen where he and his apprentices worked under large windows.
By the 1871 Census, Joseph was no longer a watchmaker but a licensed victualler, and the cottage had become the Earlsdon Cottage Inn. Why he changed vocation we can only guess. Just four months after the census Joseph was dead, the cause of death given as ‘softening of the brain’. His widow Eliza married a neighbour, George Harper, who moved in with his five children and took over the licence. Fourteen years later Eliza was widowed again; Alfred Harper, the third son, ran the inn until his early death at 33 in 1895, whereupon his young widow Caroline kept control.
In 1901 she sold to Bishop and Bares, the Coventry Wine and Spirit Merchants, for £2,000. Thereafter a succession of tenant licensees included George Chaplin, a former fullback and captain of Coventry City Football Club, in the 1920s. In 1924 the Cottage underwent transformation: a smoke room was added and Joseph Atkins’ old top shop was converted into a concert room. William Clews was at the Cottage for twenty-eight years until 1957. More recently it underwent a 21st century refurbishment which changed its character and clientele.