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.

Terraced Houses of Leicester

Frederick St

Whilst searching for a photo of an address I've been given I came across this website today:
Terraced Houses of Leicester. It's a celebration of the small pre-WW1 terraced housing that could be found in Leicester and in which many of us later lived.

College Avenue

This site, created by Colin Hyde at Leicester University as part of the East Midlands Oral History Archive, focuses mainly on the outsides of the houses and the look of the windows, roofs and doors. There are photos of some streets already mentioned in this blog eg Hartington St, Mere Rd but also others such as Frederick Rd, College Avenue and a pub called the George and Dragon.
How cool would it be if you found your old house here!  Let me know if you do and if you have any similar pictures that you might want to share.

Click here for more pictures from Terraced Houses of Leicester.


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

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

Hartington Rd

Danny Sweeney came from Co. Donegal and first left Ireland for Britain in 1947 spending time in Scotland and Lancashire. He came to Leicester in 1950 with a fellow he had been working with on an American Airbase up North.

This friend had a sister here, on Mere Rd, and he stayed with them for a while. Not long after he moved into 68 Melbourne Rd where he lodged and worked in the construction business

He met his wife-to-be, Mary Grimes, in Leicester at St. Peter’s Hall dance. Mary was from Castlebar, Co. Mayo and her sister, Lily was married to Joe Cusack.

Danny and Mary married at Sacred Heart church in 1952 and lived at 8 Hartington Rd.

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. 

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. 

Porter St

Tommy Holt came from Thomas Court, Dublin and joined the British Army. Looking for work he originally came to Stoke, England where he delivered coal.

Tommy already had an aunty living Leicester, Annie King, married to John Moran, and was probably coming over as early as 1948/49. Tommy met his wife-to-be, Greta Callaghan, back home in 1951 and they were married in 1951.  Greta came from Rainsford Avenue, Dublin and  came back over to Leicester with Tommy.

They originally lived on a first floor of a terraced house at 2 Porter St. in Highfields. Annie and John were then living near by at 88 Upper Conduit St. 

An old man lived downstairs and Greta took care of him as well as her own family. Their first child, Roseanna, was born in Bond St. hospital in 1952. She was named after Greta’s sister, Rosanna May who had died 6 months before baby Roseanna was born. Roseanna’s family has always called her May. When Greta was pregnant with their second child, Ray, the family moved down the street to  6 Porter St. where they had the two bedroom terraced house to themselves. As the only girl, Rosanna had the box room. It had been completely normal for them to have shared with others at No. 2 and they carried on sharing yard space and outside toilets with neighbours when at No. 6. The landlord called around to the house for the rent. The Sansomes lived at No. 8.

Tommy worked at Brigg’s Tannery almost facing their house and later at Gimson foundry, Vulcan Rd. His last job there was as a Castings Inspector and like many Irishmen and women Tommy sent money home regularly to his mother.

By the late 50s they were joined in Leicester by Tommy’s brother, Kinner who married an English girl. Greta’s brother, Paddy Callaghan, came too, with his wife Sarah (Hill).

Paddy and Sarah lived nearby at 104 Upper Conduit St with their children, Lynda and Sandra.  Rosanna would spend time with Aunty Sarah and her two daughters as her house with 3 brothers could get pretty hectic but all 5 cousins have fond memories of playing together and time spent in each other’s houses.

Roseanna has a memory of her Aunty Sarah expressing breast milk with a pump into glass bottles. These were then put into a tin box and put on the doorstep to be collected for the hospital. No refrigeration or cooler boxes then!

Greta had wanted Roseanna to go to Holy Cross School on New Walk but she actually went to Sacred Heart, Mere Rd. where her 3 brothers would follow her. In fact she originally went to Medway School, St. Peter’s Rd. May remembers walking to school, home for dinner and back again in the afternoon. May, Chris and Les later went to Corpus Christi and Ray went to Gateway.

Corner and local shops provided most of what everyone needed but Greta loved to get down to Leicester market and would walk down Sparkenhoe and Swain St. to get into town. Ray remembers being a delivery boy for the Co-op on the corner of St. Saviour’s Rd and Kitchener Rd.

 

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.

Mere Rd, Holmfield Rd Sileby.

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’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.

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

Dore Rd

Joe Cusack, from Westport, was actually heading towards Birmingham on the train but didn’t have enough money so got off at Leicester.

He first lived in a flat in B+B in Saxby St because he had seen the vacancy sign in the window. He then moved to Mere Rd.

He met his wife, Lily, one night at The Corn Exchange dance and she was living on Mere Rd with Elisabeth Grimes from Castlebar.

He saw an advert for a job labouring in the engineering on Abbey Lane. He later went to City of Leicester to take his exams to be a Capstan’s Inspector. At home he had worked in the catering trade.

They married and in 1958 bought a house at 8 Dore Rd. for £1,600. They later moved up to Wigston Magna and Jo moved to work for Northbridge Engineering, Vicking Rd.

In the 1949/50 Jo was called up but had gone down to Cornwall to avoid going to Korea. The police found him in Penzance but he didn’t pass the medical. He was given an X-ray in a mobile van and it showed a shadow on his lung but a check later in Leicester proved this to be an error.

His brother, Jim, had a second hand/bargain shop on Charnwood St. and a music shop, Power Music, on Green lane Rd.

Another brother, Padraig, had been in the RAF, Palestine police, and he came to Leicester afterwards.

Jo only went home for funerals or back to stay with Lily’s family

Jo and Lily have 3 sons, Tony, Jimmy and Paul. They went to Sacred Heart, St. John Fisher and Corpus Christi. 

 

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

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

Myrtle Rd

Kitty Shields and Don Nolan were both from Dublin: Kitty, Ardee St/Watkins Sq and Don, The Realto/James Walk.  Don was Kitty’s brother’s friend and they married on Dec 28 1963. Kitty had been 21 on Oct 5.

Don had been over to London before but Kitty “came as bride” when they flew back the day after they were married. Kitty’s brother George was already living in Leicester on Melbourne St.

Kitty and Don first lived at 444 East Park Rd and paid £4 7/6 rent. Don was first working at Dunlop earning around £12 a week and continued at John Bull, Evington Valley Rd.

They had a flat on the bottom floor of a 3 storey house. Everyone shared a bathroom on the landing. She remembers her neighbour Dorothy.

 Kitty had two children here, Margaret and Shaun, and moved to a flat at 37 Myrtle Rd when Shaun was 6 months old.

George and his wife, Nelly, moved into no.35 when they told them there was a vacancy. They had an end terraced and shared a back garden

Kitty remembers that many people paid rent to a landlord whose office was on Peacock Lane. She also remembers a family of local doctors on Regent Rd: old Dr. Lenten, born and trained in Ireland: his nephew Dr. Peter (Lenten) and finally Peter’s son Jonathon who was known as “Jewish Jonathon.” Peter was also the doctor for Leicester City Boxers.

In 1966 the family moved to a terraced house on 5 St. Saviour’s Rd and stayed there for 10 yrs.

By 1974 there were eligible for a house from the Council as Shaun was 11 and having to share with his sister. The council moved them to a house on St. Saviours Estate which they later bought.

Kitty remembers taking the children to Wesley Hall, Mere Rd, to have the babies weighed and to get supplies of orange juice and rose hip syrup.

Kitty would shop at the Co-op on East Park Rd and a supermarket on Eugene Rd but would mainly walk into town to the market.

She remembers Mary Considine on St. Saviours Rd and they would meet when talking the kids to school. Kitty’s children went to Sacred Heart and then either The Convent/St. Paul’s and English Martyrs.

She remembers getting a china cabinet from a shop on Cork St, nr East Park Rd and somehow managing to get it home with Don.

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.

Evington St, Mere Rd

Steve  Beatty’s father went to America in 1910 and his mother, Kate, joined him the following year. They married and then lived in Boston, Massachusetts.

Steve’s father Michael worked in a warehouse and he and his wife returned to Galway in 1920.

Steve was born a month later in The Cladagh, Galway, on May 25. Steve’s father bought a small lorry and started his own business transporting pigs, sheep and flour. He later put a seat on the back of the lorry and would carry passengers around the town.

Steve had previously worked as a mechanic in Galway but his boss had had to make redundancies. Being single, Steve and another man were let go.

He left Ireland in 1939 and arrived in Coventry September 15. He found digs at 2 Rolloson Rd. and went back home in 1947 for his honeymoon.

Due to the petrol shortage after the war there were very few cars and therefore few jobs for mechanics. He got work driving in Coventry for £3/10s and £8 if he worked nights. After 2 years in the country Steve became eligible for National Service in the British Army but was exempt because of the work he was doing. Another brother, Johnny was also called up and served in Arnhem.

Steve transferred to Leicester in June 1945. His brother Martin, who had been living in Coventry, had then moved over to Leicester. He wrote to Steve saying that things were better in Leicester and to come over.

Martin saw an advert for a flat in a post office on Mere Rd and Steve got the ground floor flat in a 3 storey house at 37 Mere Rd.

He remembers needing a reference to get the flat and had one with him from his old boss in Ireland.

Steve got a job night driving for a transport company and then started doing car repairs. By 1947 he was selling cars and building up his own successful business.

In 1954 Martin bought a piece of land at 88-92 Sparkenhoe St and they set up the Beatty Brothers’ forecourt selling cars. He also bought a workshop at 1 Evington St. which was two terraced houses knocked together. He lived opposite at No. 2 Evington St. and could walk through the back door and into the office.

The piece of land had been the site of 2 houses bombed in 1941 which had lain disused for years. (Steve recalls that the council in Coventry were much more efficient when it came to clearing rubble from bombsites.)  It took 104 lorry loads to take away all the old brickwork, rubble and rubbish that had accumulated. Steve and Martin cleared the land and used it to display and sell used cars. Local people were very grateful that they had cleared the land, erecting a fence and putting up flower boxes!

The Beatty brothers built a car showroom in 1959 which could hold 30 cars with 14 cars in the car park. Steve describes himself as first “in the overalls”, in the workshop. Martin was Managing Director and Steve had a quarter share in the company. Because of the shortage of cars he would later travel around to car auctions in Hull and Lincolnshire looking for cars to sell. They sold the business in 1988 and Martin retired back home to Galway but was in bad health. Steve retired although he carried on dealing in cars for another 9 years: he says he feels very lucky to have been able to keep working as he did.

The brothers later became a Fiat Agency but it seemed that the public weren’t ready for foreign cars.

Steve and his wife Julie, nee McGrath, lived at 2 Evington St until he retired from the motor trade in 1956. They were married for 61 yrs. Julie was a nurse at The Towers Hospital and had come from a family of 9 children.

Martin had two daughters, Maureen, and Rosemary.

Steve and Julie have two sons: James and Geoffrey. James, born in 1947, went to Scared Heart and Gateway. Geoffrey, born 1961 went to Sacred Heart and City of Leicester School. 

Steve’s two sisters came over to Leicester because their brothers were here. Nora (married name, Robertson) bought a house in Aylestone for £3000 in 1950 and Ann (married name, Parker) lived at 92 Victoria Park Rd. for 30 years 



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.