As I gather stories from The Irish in Leicester the conversation inevitabley turns to the clubs and pubs that we would gather in for the drink, the music, the camaraderie and the craic. I hear about lots: The Jolly Miller, The Hare and Hounds, The JFK, The Corn Exchange, The Highfields Working Men's club and so many more buy unfortunately I have very few photos of any of them apart from the ones here of St. Pat's club, The Palais and The Secular Hall. I'd really like to begin to gather more stories and photos about the clubs and pubs so please do get in touch if you have any.
St. Pat's.
Jimmy and Benny McEneaney
Upstairs Bar. Jim Stretton wearing the St.Patrick's tug of war shirt.
Doug McCarthy with the pool cue, Mick Shearer in the background,right, with the dark shirt and Patsy Feeney in the foreground, white shirt.
The Palais
Etta and Patrick at The Palais.
The Secular Hall
Humberstone Gate.
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.
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.
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. .
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.
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.
This account of a St Patrick's day procession and the good times to be had around the Royal East St/Abbey Steet area comes from a lovely member of the Irish community in Leicester.
The day was March 17th 1935 and a St. Patrick’s flag waved proudly over the mean, close pack of streets surrounding St. Patrick’s Church, Royal East St. Oh, the magic in the air as the crowd swirled around before entering church for the special St. Patrick’s day mass. Carr’s button factory, on the opposite side of Royal East St, had allowed any Irish the day off and the rest of the workforce peeped out of the doorways and available windows, interested and excited by the patriotic fervour across the way.
I was seven at the time and had been diligently practicing the Kyrie, the Agnus Die and the Sanctus in Latin. I was a proud member of the choir; dressed in a green velvet dress and matching green beret made by my aunt. I definitely still remember the magic of it all: the whole day was filled with feasting, drinking, of course, and music that lives with me forever.
My mother was a fine singer and “Kathleen Mavorneen” was her special song. My Dad’s cousin Martin was steward at the club: his special song was “Irish Manufacture” the story of a salesman going around promoting Irish goods. Granny had two special songs: “The hat my father wore” and “If I had the wings of a swallow”. At St Patrick's club, Paul’s regular was “County Armagh”: Peggy’s: “The Croppy Boy.”
We lived and breathed Irish culture as children and knew every song from “Mistral Boy” to “The Old Bog Road.”
Though a mixture of nationalities inhabited the surrounding area, the Irish and the feel of Ireland were predominant. One priest, a Father Parle, was beloved by the whole population in that area. A big strapping Irishman in his prime, and a rugby player, he organised the May and June processions through the streets of Leicester carrying the Blessed Sacrament under a canopy up to the Town Hall square where he would conduct Benediction. Sadly he died suddenly, only in his thirties. The whole area went into mourning regardless of religion; the crowds surrounded the area weeping.
This area around Royal East St./Abbey St. was peopled first by a trickle of Irish immigrants fleeing the famine and then onwards through the lean times in Ireland in the 20s, 30s and 40s.
At this time Leicester was a prosperous city, renowned for its cleanliness and its variety of manufacturing, particularly hosiery and shoes. Even in those days, Corahs and Wolsey were known world wide so Irish immigrants had no trouble finding work and were diligent and prized by their employers.
St Patrick's school, Royal East St.
On the social side, a parish hall was added to the side of the school and church in Royal East St. which was eventually licensed and became the St. Patrick’s club.
The club became the mecca of the newly arrived immigrants over the years. Here they felt at home and everyone knew everyone so the area retained and embellished its Irishness.
As the years rolled by new Catholic churches were built and the social life of the Irish in Leicester widened out. St. Joseph’s had its parish priest, Father Leahy, who organised the building of a huge church on the site of a stable on the corner of Goodwood/Uppingham Rd: he always drew great crowds to his dances.
Mr. Joseph Willis ran an Irish dance on Saturday or Sunday nights at the Secular Hall, Humberstone Gate. Sacred Heart Hall was also a popular venue.
Meanwhile, when the old St. Patrick’s church school was closed the old club was replaced by a new one facing the, now widened Abbey St. and St Margaret’s bus station. The new bus station replaced all those terraced houses and mean streets that once bustled with life that today’s citizens could never compete with. There was faith, love, loyalty, neighbourliness and tolerance that today’s Leicester would never understand. Irish humour lay over all.
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.
Upstairs Bar. Jim Stretton wearing the St.Patrick's tug of war shirt.
Doug McCarthy with the pool cue, Mick Shearer in the background,right, with the dark shirt and Patsy Feeney in the foreground, white shirt.
I have recently met Pete Kinsey, an Englishman who followed the Irish showband music scene and was a member of St Patrick's club from 1975-1986. It is from Pete that I have the amazing roll call of names below. Thanks to Pete for all the memories and to Jim Stretton for the fabulous photos!
More of Pete's story later. Please let me know if you know and remember any of the following Irish in Leicester...
Eamon McGovern
Secretary
Former accountant. Born
Belturbet, Cavan. Best male Irish friend, sadly died 1985. Lived in Campbell St
Kevin and Marion Smyth
Born Navan, lived in Duncan Rd area.
Patsy and Ann Smyth
Leicester born daughters of Kevin and Marion. Patsy married Jonjo Shearer, son of Bill.
Bill and John Shearer
Brothers from Castlecomer. County Kilkenny. Lived in New Parks.
Jonjo Shearer
Bar Steward
Martin Fogerty
Born Wexford
Joe Mcentaggart
Born Duleek, County Meath.
Benny Mceneary
Entertainment Secretary
Jim
Entertainment Secretary
From Drogheda
Gloria Sherry (Smyth)
Showband singer
born Monaghan, neice of Marion and Kevin. Lives with husband Donal in Monaghan Town.
Other Irish friends
Camelia Keane (stage name Kim Keane). Born 1952, from Limerick, singer with Joe Loss.
Tony Evans, and Wild Honey. Persuaded Pete to visit Ireland in the first place.
Carole Wallace (Carol Clarke) lead singer with New Blues (1976-1983) born May 8 1958 in Bettystown, County Meath. Now living in Drogheda.
John McManus, drummer with New Blues, the Cotton Mill Boys. Born Dublin, formerly engaged to Carole Wallace.
Jimmy and Benny McEneaney
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.
Jim Stretton from Kerry came to Leicester on Sept 1, 1967 with his wife Catherine (McCarthy). They had previously been living in London but couldn’t afford to stay there. Jim worked in civil engineering. They had a house on 25 Bardolph St. and later moved to 53 Lainesborough Rd.
They had two children in London, James and Geraldine, born in Paddington. Two more children were born in Leicester: John at Bond St. hospital and Janet at the Royal Infirmary. The children went to St.Patrick’s and English Martyrs.
Catherine Stretton at 25 Bardolphe st
Jim remembers the Catholic Club on Highfield St, the JFK on Sparkenoe St., St. Patrick’s on Abbey St and St Peter’s Catholic Club on Hinckley Rd. He recalls that Jim Finnegan ran the Royal Oak in Belgrave Gate and that Melton Rd was a good shopping area.
Jim Stretton: Tug of war anchorman
Jim was well known in Leicester as a powerful anchor man for the St. Patrick's Tug of war team.
I met with Pete Kinsey, an Leicester man who embraced the Irish showband culture in the 70s and has followed it ever since. Do the names New Blues, The Cotton Mill Boys and The Nevada ring any bells? Pete has fond memories of showbands and of St. Patrick's Club, Abbey St.and the good friends who worked there.
I started to write up a story from Royal East St and St Patrick's school.
I visited the Corby Heritage Centre to film " Migrant Stories" with Colin Hyde, for the Midlands Oral History Project. We spent Friday listening to the wonderful stories of new comers to Corby: this time from Scotland, Walsall and London, all with similar tales of needing to move for work, the loss of leaving family behind and the struggle to make a new life for themselves. This was part of my own training in film and sound and I hope to be making movie stars of my own dear, dear Irish ladies and gentelmen soon.
And finally this week we were in the Leicester Mercury. The new Mr. Leicester, Austin Ruddy, was kind enough to make us the lead feature on Friday night. He is of Irish stock himself so I'm hoping to be telling his story here too one day soon.
More details of all this in the week to come.
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.
