Mary
Warrener (maiden name MacCarthy) came to England in 1956 with her parents when she was 15½. Her
father was a business man who had been unsuccessful in Ireland and came over to
Birmingham to find paid work. He then went to London where he lived in an
Irish boarding house and worked in the Post Office sorting office.
Mary’s mother and sister came over to join
him in summer 1956 and Mary stayed at home with her Grandma. Mary herself
arrived at Euston, 11 Nov 1956, on the same day her grandmother was buried and
was sent to a convent school in Harrow.
She married at 23. Her husband was a civil
servant from Lincoln working in London and she was a stenographer. Geoff Warrener applied for a new posting in
the Civil Service and was offered Crawley or Leicester. They chose the
Leicester post where Geoff worked for the Official Receiver; it was also convenient for visiting Geoff’s
family in Lincoln. They married in
Harrow-Weald on 12 September 1964 and the Polish priest who married them was
the only person they knew who had been to Leicester.
Mary came up first by train in early
January 1965 to find accommodation. She went to Holy Cross Church for advice
and a priest suggested an Irish landlady on Saxby St. who gave her lodgings
while she looked for something more permanent. This was a lodging house mainly
for Irishmen working in Leicester but Mary was able to share a room with
another woman for a couple of nights. The landlady turned out to be a distant
relative of Mary’s from home!
Mary and Geoff had first looked at a house in Clarendon Park but hadn’t got enough money for a deposit. A few months later, they were able to put down a deposit on a not-yet built house, enabled by an Irish Free State Bond Mary had inherited from her grandmother. And so they bought their first house in Sileby Leicestershire, 168 Homefield Rd in August 1965. It was a 3 bedroom semi-detached house, up a hill, with a view over to the Charnwood Hills, 15 mins. by train from Leicester. It cost them £2,400. Mary’s father, working for the Co-op in Harrow, gave them a second hand bed and Geoff’s parents emptied their attic to provide them with furniture in their new home.
Mary and Geoff’s first place together was 131
Mere Rd, the top floor of a 2 storey house with a tiny back yard facing
Spinney Hill Park. The landlady was a Mrs Keeley from the Isle of Man. A
kleptomaniac, single Irish woman lived downstairs on one side of the hall door. The kleptomaniac lady was an attendant at daily mass.
Mary and Geoff had first looked at a house in Clarendon Park but hadn’t got enough money for a deposit. A few months later, they were able to put down a deposit on a not-yet built house, enabled by an Irish Free State Bond Mary had inherited from her grandmother. And so they bought their first house in Sileby Leicestershire, 168 Homefield Rd in August 1965. It was a 3 bedroom semi-detached house, up a hill, with a view over to the Charnwood Hills, 15 mins. by train from Leicester. It cost them £2,400. Mary’s father, working for the Co-op in Harrow, gave them a second hand bed and Geoff’s parents emptied their attic to provide them with furniture in their new home.
In Sileby in the 1960s Mary remembers
having a grocery book from the local Co-op, leaving a shopping list in the shop
on a Tuesday and the groceries being delivered before the weekend. She would
then go in on Saturday to pay.
Mary started working for East Midlands Gas
shortly after arriving in Leicester, in mid January 1965. About three years later, Geoff also started
working for East Midlands Gas because he would otherwise have had to return to
London to continue working for the Board of Trade. Both preferred living outside of London.
If you'd like to be involved contact us on 0116 276 9186 or pop in to:
The Emerald Centre, Gipsy Lane, Leicester. LE5 OTB
We're now also on Twitter: follow me on @irishleicester or join The Irish in Leicester group on Facebook.
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