The Irish in Leicester Trail.

On your way to work over the next few weeks, or on an evening stroll, look out for the symbol below. To celebrate St Patrick's Day key streets in Leicester will be adorned with QR coded posters telling the story of where the Irish lived when they came over from Ireland. Each poster will link through to this blog  and will tell the story of a different person each time; why they came to Leicester and where they lived. Many Irish lived in and around Highfields in those early days of the 50s but some ventured out along Melton Rd and others up to New Parks, Clarendon Park and Eyres Monsell. 

The posters will up on the streets by St. Patrick's Day, March 17.

You will need a QR reader on a Smart phone or tablet and you're set to go. 
Take a stroll around Leicester and see some of where the Irish in Leicester lived when they first came over.

                                                 The Irish in Leicester

  In and around Highfields: 
Bakewell St, Berners St, Brookhouse St, Dronfield St, East Park Rd, Evington Rd, Evington Valley Rd, Gopsall St, Gotham St, Haddon St, Hartington St, Hobart St, Kent St, Kimberley Rd, Laurel Rd, Lincoln St, Maidstone Rd, Medway St, Mere Rd, Myrtle St, Porter St (as was), Saxby St, Severn St, Shellard St, Sparkenhoe St,St. Peter's Rd, St. Saviour's Rd, St.Steven's St, Tichbourne St, Upper Conduit St (as was), Upper Tichbourne St, Vulcan Rd.

                                     …around Leicester Prison and New Walk:
                                            Lower Hastings St. Princess Rd, Tower St, Turner St, 

                                              …around Clarendon Park:
                                               St. Leonard's Rd, Cecila Rd, Victoria Park Rd.

                                                   …Fosse Rd North, Biddle Rd

                                            … Harrison Rd,Moira St, Bardolphe St.

                                                        …and Henray Avenue.

                               
                       Not to mention other areas and various places of work across the city.

If your family are not yet represented here on the blog and you would like to tell their story please do get in touch.

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. 

Spinney Hill Park

Etta Grady, centre, with her son Brendan

Living first on Berners St and then, Upper Conduit St, Spinney Hill Park was our park of choice. Victoria Park seemed too far away and I didn't really get to know it till we'd been moved out to Eyres Monsell and  I came back to Highfields to go to Collegiate Girl's on College St.

I can remember climbing, what felt like, the huge hills of Darley and Dale St to get to the top of the park: the expanse of it would then stretch out before you and you could run all the way down to the bottom. I would go with my cousins, the Holt's, and recall getting very sick from crab apples we picked from somewhere down by that little brook. I can also remember sitting on a dog's back to get up the hill (don't know who he belonged to!) and a particular corner shop where we'd buy broken biscuits out of a square tin box with a see through lid. But sadly no photos..until now.

I was thrilled to get this photo recently of Etta Grady and her son Brendan enjoying a day at the park.
What do you remember about Spinney Hill Park? Who else has any photos?

 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.