Lincoln St

Lincoln St from College St

Thomas Paul Flannery and Gerardine Mary Flannery moved from Castlebar Co Mayo to Leicester, to 135 Sherrard Road in 1959. Mary came originally from Sallynoggin, Dun Laoghaire. Thomas, known as Paul, had been over for a while with the older kids and the youngest came over later with Gerardine, 6 in all: Pauline, David, Rita, Robert, Hilary and Stella.

There had been an outbreak of gastro-enteritis which had killed some children in Castlebar and made one daughter, Hilary quite ill (the story was it was caused by the water supply). Gerardine always said that she didn't feel the same about living in Castlebar after this. The irony is they moved from a 'modern' council house with a bathroom into a terraced house with an outdoor loo and metal bath hung on the yard wall!!  Education was also a big consideration-at that point the Irish state was charging for education.

Tom had been over at times before looking for work: once over here he worked on the roads with Mayo CC and then got a job working at Frederick Parker's as a factory storekeeper. His version of the need to come over to England was that 'instead of seeing us off at Castlebar station one by one, we'd all go together.'

Gerardine had a lot of English connections in that her Dad was English and he lived in Cheltenham and her twin brother lived in Widnes.

The house was rented by a private landlord Mr Armstrong and eventually Tom and Gerardine bought it off him.
In the summer of 1968 the family had to move as the house was compulsory purchased and condemned. They moved to 6 Lincoln Street which they paid a mortgage for and David, the eldest son helped put down the deposit for, as at that point he was out to work.

Hilary still remembers her mum spending the removal day cleaning an empty house that was going to be knocked down-however, it was 1968, the year she was moving up to Collegiate Girl’s School, College St. and it was good to finally have a bathroom!

Tom played in a band called the 'Tom Cats'. He played the accordion and the piano and he sang, so he had quite a wide circle of friends in all the Irish Clubs. But they weren't often invited home-him and Gerardine tended to go out on their own on a Friday evening to the Belmont Hotel and Tom then went to play on Sat and sometimes Sundays. He was quite a performer and he delivered a range of songs in a range of styles-including boogie -woogie and he usually got people up dancing.

Gerardine had a few friends, not all from the Irish community, sometimes people she met from her cleaning jobs and from the Church such as Mary Stembarski, and Aggie Sullivan.

For a while, a great aunt Ann lived with them until she died in 1961-she had been a substitute mum for Gerardine.

Then there were a crowd of great aunts and uncles who had reared Gerardine who lived in Dun Laoghaire. As a family the children were invited back during school breaks to the house which was part of an ex-farm/smallholding and bank of cottages, magically named Thomastown, Sallynoggin Road.

Going back there as a child from industrial redbrick Leicester was like visiting a fantasy world of freedom, fresh air and flowers.

The family received Xmas cake which was as heavy as a brick and sprinkled with the silver balls like miniature ammunition and best of all real shamrock in a box for St Patrick’s Day. Tom and Gerardine always got sent The Connaught Telegraph and the occasional An Phobalcht from their good neighbours the Rotherys in Castlebar.

However, it tended to be one-way traffic back to Ireland with Gerardine and Tom going back during the Leicester industrial fortnight. Relatives never came to visit, except maybe some of Tom's family might drop in. The next door neighbours were English people, Reg and Ivy Brown.

The family frequented a range of pubs, mainly the Daniel Lambert, The Highfields Club, The Sacred Heart Club and The St Patrick's Club.  any other Working Men's Club. Skidmores, The Co-op.

Because there were 6 children they were fairly self-contained but there were families living locally they were friendly with-The Moran’s,  O'Callan’s and The Scannell’s.


For more of the Moran's story read Mere Rd.

Thanks to Colin Hyde for the photos: 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.

Mere Rd

John and Annie Moran lived at 54, and then 52, Mere Rd. Anne Moran (nee King) was from Dublin City and John Moran was from the Kilkelly and Midfield area of County Mayo, north of Knock and Castlebar, south of Charlestown. John had been over here a little while, working his way down the country in various mines. He stayed in St. Helen’s for a while but stopped moving around when he got to Leicester and worked at collieries in the south of Leicester, such as Ellistown.  Annie (nee King) had been looking after her mother back home until her younger sister “took over” which allowed her the freedom to come here. She came to do her nurse training at The General Hospital and lived in the nurse’s accommodation. She would later have to leave there when she got married as it was only for single women.

Humberstone Gate

John and Annie met at a dance at the Secular Hall, Humberstone Gate and later went back to Dublin to marry in 1946. They had 3 sons: Pat, John and Brien. Pat and John were born in a flat at 33 Lincoln St: Brien, at a bigger house at 88 Upper Conduit St. The house on Upper Conduit St. was owned by the butcher next door and they shared a yard with the shop and another family, the Howards and their son Frankie at No. 86. Brien remembers the Callaghans at 104 Upper Conduit St, who they were related to on his mother’s side, and was best friends with one of the Flannery’s, Rob, on Lincoln St.

When the Morans moved to Mere Rd they first lived at no. 54 which they rented from an English lady. The woman at 52 moved out when her husband died and John and Annie moved the family next door! This house was owned by a lady who lived on the South coast. Mr Quinn of Waring Street had worked at a firm of solicitors who managed the rent collection from the Morans at 54 and then 52 Mere Road. Both of these houses were owned by the same person.

The Jolly Miller was a kind of “local Irish embassy” where strangers to Leicester would arrive and find about work, lodgings and to find friends and family.

John remembers going out to the shop but refusing to take Brien with him: Brien went anyway and got lost. Annie had the neighbours and police out looking for him before he was brought home by the police! He also remembers Roger Iceson who lived two doors down. The house was one of those that had a large shop front window and inside he had a great model railway set.

John remembers that Anna Feeney, a neighbour the same age as him, would come to pick him and Pat up in the morning and they would walk down Upper Conduit St, meet Mrs. Veal and other children on the corner of Berner’s St and on to Scared Heart School. Mrs Veal was a formidable and well known teacher there.

Living so close to the railway station gave the boys plenty to do: Pat and John would go train spotting down on the platforms of London Rd station. Everyone would cut through a pedestrian walk way from Hutchinson St to Swain St. bridge: it was called 'The Bird Cage' as there was a pet shop on the corner and the boys would look through the gaps in the wooden slats running along the mesh fence to see the trains and identify the numbers. They would also go down to the Rally Banks at the bottom of Beal St. Rally Banks overlooked the locomotive sheds and was a good location for recording loco numbers.

There was a kind of shed that would hold amateur film shows that local kids would pay to go to see, this was opposite the fish and chip shop and next was a grocers and the Co-op.

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. 

Leicester's Irish streets.

Myrtle… Upper Conduit… St Saviour's… 
Mere… Gotham… Lincoln … Porter…
East Park… Saxby…

Do any of the streets above sound familiar? How good would it be to take part in a project that is mapping out these, and many more, streets? Let's see if we can remember where we all lived and the pubs and shops, the schools and churches that we all used.


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.