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| Peter Joseph Breen outside 26 Bakewell St. |
Patch Breen’s father, Peter Joseph Breen
came from County Wexford. He had volunteered to join the British Army and
served in the Dublin Fusiliers. He fought in WW1 and sadly lost a leg in battle
in France.
Rose Lawson, Patch’s mother, was an English
girl from Leeds. Her family had moved to Leicester and they rented a house at
26 Bakewell St. in Highfields.
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| Rose Breen |
Peter and Rose met in 1945 at the Wolsey
hosiery factory on Abbey Lane where they both worked. He was a sweeper up, she
was an overlocker. They went for drinks
in a pub on Conduit St. opposite The Jolly Miller, called The Hare and Hounds run by Harry Callaghan. As far at Patch knows it was frequented by Irish and
Scots drinkers.
She was a Protestant and he, a Catholic. This
never seemed to be a problem although sometimes “ if she was in one room and he
was in another my dad would ask me to go over and ask her if she’d become a
Catholic. But there wasn’t any real seriousness in that I don’t think.”
There was quite an age difference; he was
65 and she was 45 when they were married in 1947 and they had Patch two years
later on March 17 in 1949. “As far as I know I think the neigbours thought that
Mam and Dad were too old to have a child. It was her first child and she was
47 and Dad was 67.”
Once they married, Peter moved into
Bakewell St. with Rose and her father. Patch doesn’t know why his father came to
Leicester but does know that the marriage certificate states that he was living
in Slawson St. at the time.
26 was
a corner house and had several rooms that Rose’s family would rent out and
Peter and Rose carried on. It was rented for £1 from Spencer’s at the time.
In the 50s, because of Irish migration, there
were lots of Irish lodgers and Patch remembers a particular couple of Irish
lads that lodged with them when he was a child: Paddy Holly was in his 20s and
stayed with the family for about 10yrs. Pat Deveane stayed for a few months and
later became Entertainment Secretary of the Spinney Hill Working Men’s Club.
Rose would tell a story that Pat forgot his
keys one night and had to climb up the drainpipe. Patch has an idea that his Dad met the two
lads, and other people that stayed in the house, at The Imperial pub in
Highfields on Mere Rd, just round the corner. It wasn’t too far for Peter to
walk with his bad leg.
Paddy Holly worked at Pollards in the Engineering
on St. Saviour’s Rd. again not very far from Bakewell St. Patch remembers that
he didn’t drink but he used to back the horses.
Across the street lived an Eastern European family: she was German and he was Czech, "as we used to say." They
had a lodger, an Irish girl called Brenda. She was single and in her late fifties
and had been a ballet dancer previously in her life.
An Irish couple lived next door at 24
Bakewell St; Minnie (nee Reid) and Alex Pryor. There was another Irish family down the road at No. 18, The
Merrymans.
“The street then was cobbled, it wasn’t
tarred, so on Bonfire night you could have bonfires in the street. I remember
that we played out a lot on the streets but when they tarred them you
couldn’t, which was probably in the late Fifties.”
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| Patch and his Mam, Rose, on holiday in Skegness. |
Patch went to Sacred Heart School and would go to
Saturday night mass at Sacred Heart Church with his father. He remembers Cannon Lindboom visiting one time and the
Cannon died in the pulpit giving a sermon! “ I imagine he died there and then
in those days there were no paramedics.” The parish priest was Father Murdoch.
He was taught by nuns at Sacred Heart;
Sister Columbo was the Headmistress with two other nuns, Sister Joan and Sister Gemma, who each
had a year class. There was a convent on Mere Rd above
Bakewell St. and they’d walk from the convent to Sacred Heart everyday and back
again.
Patch remembers
“ having a bit of a roll about on the floor, a fight, not a real fight with
my Polish friend Schindler, I can’t
remember his first name. The two nuns passed us and didn’t say a word. The next
day in assembly Mr. Riley called us out. “The two boys who were fighting on
Mere Rd yesterday can they come to the front of the hall" and all the rest of
it. Then we went to see the Headmaster, Mr. Blacklock. Sister Columbo must have
left by then. He did nothing, had a quick word with us and that was it. I
thought we were going to get the cane!””
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| Patch Breen, centre left, with his Mam, centre right, having a drink in a pub on the front at Skegness. |
Further down from Bakewell St. on the corner
with Chatsworth St, there was Lee’s newsagent where Patch’s friend Tez Lee
lived. There was another newsagent, Bert’s on Hartington
Rd, the other end of on Bakewell St. Tom Dorral ran the Post Office where Peter
went for his pension.
“ We were near the railway on Bakewell St.
and we used to play on this place called the Rally Banks. It was right near to
the railway line, on top of Melbourne St, if I can remember. It was a steep
embankment really and we just used to climb up it and slide down it. And there
were lots of sticky sort of things. Any plant that was growing there used to
stick on you but it was black with soot. Your trousers got black but you didn’t
think about it as a kid really.”
Patch married Breda Maclean from Belfast in
1976. They met because they both worked on Dorothy Rd, on the other side of
Spinney Hill Park. Patch worked at Consort Press, a printers. Breda worked in the office for Crypto Peerless
at the other end of Dorothy Rd. They made machines for kitchens and offices and
Breda worked in the office.
“I was a van driver at the printers, I was always
outside loading the van or driving. That’s how I met Breda, when she was walking
by to the Post Office round the corner on St. Saviours Rd."
Patch’s father died in 1961 when Patch was
12. His mother Rose died in 1975 when he was 25 and he continued to live in the same house
on his own. When Patch and Breda got married in 1975 she moved in too. Some
years later when she became pregnant Patch realised just how damp the house had
become and he felt ” you couldn’t bring a baby up in this”. So they had to find
somewhere else to live.
The East Midlands Housing Association got
them a house on Frederick Rd. This was great and just in time for the baby,
Damien, being born in June 1982. But in Frederick Rd. they had a neighbor who
made a hell of a lot of noise, ‘you could hear the bass coming through all the
while”. There was nothing they could do about it and lived there for a year. A
friend of Patch’s, Johnny Maloney, lived on the next street, Grove Rd. When he
wanted to move out Patch asked the Housing Association if he and his family
could move in and they agreed. The lads had a couple of bikes and cycled down to
Narborough Rd. to hire a van. They put the bikes in the van, came back and moved
the two houses on the same day!
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Patch playing steel pans at Leicester's Caribbean Carnival mid 80s
For others who live on Bakewell St. click here. |
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.
