Spon Street is Coventry's most coherent medieval streetscape, even if it is partially an artificial one. Some of the timber-framed buildings lining the cobbled street are original to the location — the street predates the Norman Conquest — but others were relocated here from elsewhere in the city during postwar redevelopment, rather than being demolished. The result is a concentrated strip of medieval and Tudor half-timbering that would otherwise have been scattered or lost entirely.
The street runs west from the ring road, and while some of the buildings are occupied by pubs and small businesses, the overall effect is of a preserved medieval lane. The Old Windmill pub at number 22, with its low beams and uneven floors, is one of the city's oldest surviving drinking establishments. Walking Spon Street and comparing it to the brutalist ring road that frames it makes for an unusually stark lesson in what Coventry was and what it became.