Coventry folk who wandered along Elsdon Lane (now Earlsdon Avenue) in the 1830s would have noticed a handsome new farmhouse nestling in the fields nearby. It had been built by John Moore, Coventry farmer and butcher, on his little estate of six fields covering an area of 31 acres between Elsdon Lane and Whor Lane (now Beechwood Avenue). Two of the closes were arable, the rest pasture where Moore grazed his cattle. He named his house Elsdon Cottage — something of a misnomer, given its substantial size.
Moore was a businessman who also owned a brickworks. When he died in November 1846, aged 80, he left considerable property. He appears to have been a cantankerous individual — several codicils to his will ensured that a number of would-be beneficiaries, including one he called his ‘so-called brother’, were greatly disappointed. His estate at Elsdon was sold by auction on 1 May 1847 to William Pickering, a Coventry cow dealer, for £3,215.
Pickering sold it five years later to the Coventry Branch of the Freehold Land Society for £4,000 — a nice profit. The hedges were grubbed up, the area levelled, eight streets laid out, a water supply installed from the Artesian Well at Spon End, and 250 building plots marked out. The nucleus of residential Earlsdon was born.
The farmhouse was first converted into a pub, the Bowling Green, which failed, then became a private house known as the ‘Manor House’ for almost seventy years. In later years a business ‘Flexwheel’ operated there, and it was while drains were being dug for their expansion that a workman’s pickaxe hit a large stone — and he nearly fell down an 80-foot well shaft, John Moore’s original well, cut through solid sandstone. It has been safely capped, but water remains at the bottom. When Earlsdon’s streets were named in 1852, the street fronting the old house was called Moore Street in his memory — though the final ‘e’ has since been lost.