Earlsdon House still stands on Earlsdon Street but is hardly visible now. It was built in 1852 by John Flinn and is thought to have been the first house to be built on the newly laid out Earlsdon estate. Flinn was a watch manufacturer who had moved from Prescot to Coventry and, as a member of the Coventry Branch of the Freehold Land Society, was well placed to choose a prime site when the estate was developed. It was built as a typical solid Victorian double-fronted villa, with five bedrooms and two large attics, and had a substantial workshop attached.
This workshop no doubt attracted the next occupant when Flinn moved out in 1868. The property was bought by Joseph White, Earlsdon’s most important watch manufacturer, who lived there with his wife and twelve children and carried on his watchmaking business until his death in 1907. The house again sold, this time to Alexander Craig, Managing Director of the Maudesley Motor Company, although the White family retained use of the rear workshop.
Fronting Warwick Street a tin shed had been built on the old paddock, used at various times as a ribbon weaving workshop and later by James Thrift for his Viking Motor Body business from 1909. In 1913 Walter Tatlow and his brother-in-law Harry Harley took it over. With a few machines and fewer employees, these two men established what was later to become the successful Coventry Gauge and Tool Company.
Disagreements between the partners eventually led to Harley buying Tatlow out, and under his leadership the business grew rapidly. By 1930 he had acquired the whole of the Warwick Street site and bought Earlsdon House itself, adding an extension at the front to serve as offices. When he moved to larger purpose-built premises on Fletchamstead Highway in 1936, the Earlsdon factory was bought by the Coventry Precision and Repetition Company, who remained until 1965.
In 1965 the house was bought by local builder Arthur Coopey who modernised the frontage, turning the premises into two retail outlets. It is only by standing well back and looking carefully above the shop frontage that a glimpse of Flinn’s original handsome villa can still be seen.