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.

Upper Conduit St

Paddy and Sarah Callaghan (nee Hill) came over to Leicester together in the mid 1950s. Both were from Dublin: Sarah, Carmen’s Hall and Paddy, Rainsford Ave, by the Guinness factory. Paddy had already been working in Leicester as his sister, Greta, lived here with Tommy Holt in Porter St.

Back home in Dublin Sarah was friends with one of Tommy’s sisters, Eileen Holt, and through that connection Tommy’s brother, Kinner, had a taken a shine to her. He didn’t have any luck though: as Greta was now part of the Holt family Sarah got to know her brother, Paddy Callaghan.

Sarah had also already been to England. She came over when she was 17 to work in Pershore where her Uncle Jim (Ormsby) lived. Sarah worked as a barmaid and lodged with a woman who treated her like her own daughter. Back home in Dublin she worked as a cleaner at Brown Thomas dept. store. and she and Paddy met up again.

They married in Thomas St Church, Dec 26, 1954.

They first lived at 32 Berners St and their first daughter Lynda was born in Bond St, 1957, hospital while they were there. Paddy was working down the pit by now and Sarah had a very good friend and neighbour in Pem, next door.

They perhaps just had rooms here as by 1960, and their second daughter, Sandra, they had moved to 104 Upper Conduit St. where they had the whole house.  Sandra was born at home and Sarah would express her extra breast milk for the mums who couldn’t feed their own babies.

Paddy was a miner and this meant a generous coal allowance that sat outside in the coal shed. They shared an open yard with the neighbours, Alf and Sheila Johnson and their children. Lynda remembers the spiders and the cold in the shared outside toilet. She also remembers throwing snow balls with her cousin Les Holt, against the gable end of the houses in the yard, trying to see who could reach the highest. Roseanna Holt would come around to Aunty Sarah’s to help and to spend time in a house of girls as a rest from her house with 3 brothers!

The house was almost facing Underhill St which was already half demolished by then. It was a kids’ paradise of rubble and empty houses: Lynda and her cousin Les both remember that the kids would drag old mattresses against the empty houses, climb inside the derelict shell and jump out of the first floor window onto the soft landing below! Underhill St was also famous for its huge bonfire on Nov 5 piled high with old furniture.

Lynda had warts on her hand as a child and remembers being told to rub them with raw meat and bury it in the ground down Underhill St.

104 Upper Conduit St. had a broad shop front window and some of the old shop furnishings inside. Brien Moran, a cousin of Les’ on the Holt side, remembers Uncle Paddy putting him into one of the green biscuit boxes and shutting it tight!

The girls remember going home to Ireland regularly for what seemed like the whole summer. Sarah’s other sisters would go home too and sometimes up to a dozen English cousins would be making their way out to Bray or Howth for the day. Sarah’s youngest sister, Chrissie often came over from Coventry with her husband Tony Gill. They drove a Triumph Herald and Chrissie lent Lynda her wedding tiara for her Holy Communion and confirmation. Another sister Rita had a son the same age as Lynda and they would alternate Xmas between Leicester and London.

 Silver Cladgahs would come though the post for the girls from Sarah’s mother and fresh boxes of shamrock for St. Patrick’s day.

Lynda and Sandra both went to Sacred Heart but the family was moved to Eyres Monsell by 1965 as the council began to demolish the area that covered Upper Kent St to Guthlaxton St., St Peters Rd to Berners St. The girls were among the first group of pupils to go to the newly built Holy Cross School on Stonesby Avenue. They continued to visit the Holts who had been moved out to Goodwood Estate.



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.

Gotham St

George Corry came to Leicester in 1958 where his cousin Michael Howard was working as a ward orderly. Michael had told George that there was work in Leicester and that the money was good.

Michael worked at The Hilcrest, Sparkenhoe St. and spoke to the ward sister/assistant matron who was from Belfast about George needing a job and she told him to come up to see her. He went up on the Monday and started work the next day earning 15/- a week. Most of the staff, nurses and ward orderlies where from either Ireland or the West Indies.

George first lived in was a room in a terraced house in Gopsall St but only stayed a couple of weeks. He then had a room around the corner in 22 Gotham St which cost him 7/6d a week. He got all his food at work and worked 7-5. Some shifts included a break between 2 and 4 which meant you had to then work till 8.

Gotham St.

He lived in Gotham St for a couple of years and shared a room.

A friend of his lived in Tichbourne St, but he and his girlfriend, were killed by a faulty gas pipe in the house.

A friend in Gotham St asked George if he’d like to move over to another place and so he moved to Tennyson St. Here he had a room on the top floor of a 3 storey building. He did his own cooking using a cooker on the landing shared with a lady who had the other room.

Gotham St.

George remembers going to 7.00 mass at Holy Cross on a Sunday and being late for work. However, the Matron was Catholic too and he’d have been in more trouble with her if he hadn’t gone!

He remembers dances at The Corn Exchange, Sacred Heart, the Palais de Dance. and Joe Willis running dances at The Trade Hall.

George married Sorca Gregan and they  moved to Eastleigh Rd then Latimer Rd.

He worked at Wolsey Hosiery.

George’s two children Gerard and Sara went to Christ the King and later English Martyr’s school.



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.

St Patrick's festivities

Ever since I began this work in September 2011 it made sense to culminate in a celebration event as part of  Leicester's St. Patrick's festivities.

I am checking and double checking, proof reading and editing: still collecting photos and following up contacts. But of course, this isn't the end; it's an opportunity for the Irish in Leicester to see their story in print, on DVD and on the web. It's the point at which those stories get out there for all to read and to enjoy and it's also the time for everyone else to get involved.

Read the stories, check out the photos and dive into the map. Tell us your story......

Why did your family come over? 

When did they come over to Leicester?

Where did you and your family live?

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.