Bakewell St

Etta Burns came from Forkhill, South Armagh to Leicester in 1957. She came for work and lived with family at 49 Upper Kent St. until she got married. 

41-47 Upper Kent St

Her uncle, Tommy Burns, had come over in 1939. He used to work at St. Pat’s club, Abbey St so she would spend a lot of time there and loved it.

She met Patrick Grady at a Co-op Hall dance but had seen him around at St. Pat’s and other places and decided that he was the one. However, she does say that the girls could have their pick of the fellas, have dates with no-strings attached and even have a couple "on the go" before you made up your mind! She married Patrick Grady in 1960 and was married for 50 yrs.
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Etta and Patrick at The Palais.

Etta and Patrick first lived in a flat on Nottingham Rd, near Imperial Typewriters which cost £2/10. She remembers being happy and busy and having a good life.

She first worked in Woolworth’s, where she was paid £4/18, but didn’t like having to work Saturdays. After Woolworth's she worked at Abbey bakeries, then Castle Lloyd's Printing, and Imperial Typewriters. She stopped work once she got married.

Patrick worked for Sowden's Building Contractors, based on Tudor Road. He was a pipe layer then and always stuck to the ground work up to when he retired.

Patrick Grady and his son Brendan in the back yard of Bakewell St.

Etta and Patrick had one son, Brendan, who was born in 1961 after they had just moved to Bakewell St. They had bought their first house at 58 Bakewell St for £900 and moved to the Uppingham Rd area in 1969.

Etta, Patrick and Brendan in his pram on Bakewell St.

For a while in the 1960s, Etta worked with Alice McCreesh selling tea towels, mist cloths, soaps etc on behalf of the blind and disabled. The work was door to door, 6-9 in the evenings: they were paid £3 a week but had to, at least, sell that amount of stuff. After that they were on commission. 

“We would call to the council houses at the weekend, when they had money, and the private ones in the week.”

Etta says she would go home twice a year when she was single and once a year once she was married and had a family. The only time she missed was the year she had her son.

Patrick, Etta and Brendan in the back yard of Bakewell St.

Upper Kent St has now gone and  would have been where Maidstone Rd now stands. Thanks to Dennis Calow at Vanished Leicester for the photo.

Vanished Leicester is part of a fantastic resource, My Leicestershire , which is part of The East Midlands Oral History archive

 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.

Click here to view a map of The Irish in Leicester.

Upper Kent St

Upper Kent St 41-47 1965

Etta Grady came from Forkhill, South Armagh to Leicester in 1957. She came over for work and lived with family here. Later she lived at 49 Upper Kent St. Her uncle used to work at St. Pat’s club, Abbey St and so she used to spend a lot of time there and had a great time. She married in 1960 and was married for 50 yrs. She remembers being happy and busy and having a good life.

Upper Kent St has now gone and  would have been where Maidstone Rd now stands. Thanks to Dennis Calow at Vanished Leicester for the photo.

Vanished Leicester is part of a fantastic resource, My Leicestershire , which is part of The East Midlands Oral History archive


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

Click here to view a map of The Irish in Leicester.

Upper Conduit St

Paddy and Sarah Callaghan (nee Hill) came over to Leicester together in the mid 1950s. Both were from Dublin: Sarah, Carmen’s Hall and Paddy, Rainsford Ave, by the Guinness factory. Paddy had already been working in Leicester as his sister, Greta, lived here with Tommy Holt in Porter St.

Back home in Dublin Sarah was friends with one of Tommy’s sisters, Eileen Holt, and through that connection Tommy’s brother, Kinner, had a taken a shine to her. He didn’t have any luck though: as Greta was now part of the Holt family Sarah got to know her brother, Paddy Callaghan.

Sarah had also already been to England. She came over when she was 17 to work in Pershore where her Uncle Jim (Ormsby) lived. Sarah worked as a barmaid and lodged with a woman who treated her like her own daughter. Back home in Dublin she worked as a cleaner at Brown Thomas dept. store. and she and Paddy met up again.

They married in Thomas St Church, Dec 26, 1954.

They first lived at 32 Berners St and their first daughter Lynda was born in Bond St, 1957, hospital while they were there. Paddy was working down the pit by now and Sarah had a very good friend and neighbour in Pem, next door.

They perhaps just had rooms here as by 1960, and their second daughter, Sandra, they had moved to 104 Upper Conduit St. where they had the whole house.  Sandra was born at home and Sarah would express her extra breast milk for the mums who couldn’t feed their own babies.

Paddy was a miner and this meant a generous coal allowance that sat outside in the coal shed. They shared an open yard with the neighbours, Alf and Sheila Johnson and their children. Lynda remembers the spiders and the cold in the shared outside toilet. She also remembers throwing snow balls with her cousin Les Holt, against the gable end of the houses in the yard, trying to see who could reach the highest. Roseanna Holt would come around to Aunty Sarah’s to help and to spend time in a house of girls as a rest from her house with 3 brothers!

The house was almost facing Underhill St which was already half demolished by then. It was a kids’ paradise of rubble and empty houses: Lynda and her cousin Les both remember that the kids would drag old mattresses against the empty houses, climb inside the derelict shell and jump out of the first floor window onto the soft landing below! Underhill St was also famous for its huge bonfire on Nov 5 piled high with old furniture.

Lynda had warts on her hand as a child and remembers being told to rub them with raw meat and bury it in the ground down Underhill St.

104 Upper Conduit St. had a broad shop front window and some of the old shop furnishings inside. Brien Moran, a cousin of Les’ on the Holt side, remembers Uncle Paddy putting him into one of the green biscuit boxes and shutting it tight!

The girls remember going home to Ireland regularly for what seemed like the whole summer. Sarah’s other sisters would go home too and sometimes up to a dozen English cousins would be making their way out to Bray or Howth for the day. Sarah’s youngest sister, Chrissie often came over from Coventry with her husband Tony Gill. They drove a Triumph Herald and Chrissie lent Lynda her wedding tiara for her Holy Communion and confirmation. Another sister Rita had a son the same age as Lynda and they would alternate Xmas between Leicester and London.

 Silver Cladgahs would come though the post for the girls from Sarah’s mother and fresh boxes of shamrock for St. Patrick’s day.

Lynda and Sandra both went to Sacred Heart but the family was moved to Eyres Monsell by 1965 as the council began to demolish the area that covered Upper Kent St to Guthlaxton St., St Peters Rd to Berners St. The girls were among the first group of pupils to go to the newly built Holy Cross School on Stonesby Avenue. They continued to visit the Holts who had been moved out to Goodwood Estate.



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.

Click here to view a map of The Irish in Leicester.