St. Peter's Rd

 

Nora Barry was from Tralee, County Kerry and went to London in 1955 as she had relatives there. While she was there she worked at British Home Stores. When she came to Leicester she worked in Woolworths.

She first lived in a room on St. Peter's Rd, then a room on New Walk. By then she had two kids, Terry and Anne, and got a house on Slawson St, finally moving to Saffron Lane area.Terry went to school with Lynda Callaghan at the new Holy Cross on Stonesby Avenue.. He later went to Gateway and Ann went to English Martyrs

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

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Kimberley Rd

Josie Silk (nee Doran) first went to Eastbourne, Sussex to do her nurse training and stayed for a couple of years. She and her boyfriend had split up but he came to England looking for her and they decided to give it another go. They went back to Dublin to get married in 1955. Going home to get married proved that she wasn’t pregnant! 

Josie’s husband Tom, from Galway, worked in the building: there was plenty of work in Leicester at the time so they decided to stay. Josie worked at the Towers Hospital and they first lived in rooms at 127 East Park Rd. She remembers the landlord nagging them about not using too much electricity. They then moved to 35 Kimberley Rd. They were considering buying a house on Mayfield Rd for £2000 but were also on the council list and a house came up in Eyres Monsell.

f you'd like to be involved contact us on 0116 276 9186 or pop in to:

The Emerald Centre, Gipsy Lane, Leicester. LE5 OTB

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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

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Haddon St

Deidre Wrafter (nee Poutch) came from Dublin and came to Leicester with her, then, boyfriend Bobby in 1955. Bobby had been working for the Post Office in Dublin and Deidre was working too. So although they both had jobs they were young and wanted to come over anyway. Bobby knew someone who’d already come here as there was plenty of work in Leicester.

They first lived in Laurel Rd, then 37 Severn St and then 66 Haddon St. This was their first mortgage and Deidre’s mother gave them the £50 deposit for the house which cost them £900 to buy. They paid £7 a month mortgage and £7 per half year rates. Deidre remembers that the solicitors were Stewart, Parish and Freeman and they paid the solicitor fees off monthly. Deidre’s brothers came over in the 1960s to live with her when her parents died.

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

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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.

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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.

Medway St

Mary Considine (nee Collins) came from Tullamore and spent several years working in service at hotels and private colleges in England before settling in Leicester.

Agencies recruited staff in Ireland, gave them a room in staff houses and found them jobs. The agency paid the fare over from Ireland and the young recruits paid it back out of their wages. One of her jobs was at Lyon’s, Cadby Hall, High St Kensington. At the time the factory was preparing the meals for aeroplanes and Mary had to print out the labels using a sort of John Bull printing set.

Mary later worked at Ampleforth College, a large private Benedictine college for boys in York, between 1953 and1956. The college was run by monks and Mary’s job, along with the other women, was to look after the boys: set up tables for meals, serve food, clean, polish and make beds. They also took the priests their breakfast. The girls were not allowed to ever speak to the boys and would have been sent home if found out.

She next worked at the Gloucester Hotel in London and then the Hyde Park Rd. Hotel in Knightsbridge.

She met her husband Paul at a dance 1958 in Ealing Broadway and they married in 1960 at Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church, Brook Green, Shepherds’ Bush. Mary went back home to Ireland the following year as she had a sick child and her father would not let her stay away from home: she was also pregnant with her second child, Timmy.

Paul stayed in England to work in Manchester and finally found work as a JCB driver in Leicester.

Mary and Paul first lived on 33 Medway St. and rented the ground floor of a terraced house for £3 a week. They rented from a Greek landlord who would come to the house to collect the rent on Saturdays. Mary thinks he had several properties around the area.

Patrick, Mark, Dympna, Helen, Timmy and Paul Considine.

 Mary’s family had the front and middle downstairs rooms of the house and the use of the kitchen. The children’s bed was pushed up against the front door and so everyone come down the entry and through the back door. She washed the kids in the sink and dried them in front of the fire.The people upstairs would have to go through the living room to get to their flat!

Mary remembers that the morning post would drop on the heads of the children whose bed was pushed up against the front door.

The family then moved to 49 St. Saviours Rd to a ground floor flat: 1 bedroom, living room, kitchen. Another family had the top floor of the house of the house and they would come through Mary’s living room to go upstairs! Mary had 4 children by now and had to hit the walls of the house to scare away the mice before she went in.

They also lived in

45 St Stephen’s Rd: a 3 storey house from Woods the builders, £3 a week.

42 Evington Rd : a 3 storey house, damp with no back garden and

18 Henry Ave, Eyres Monsell.

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.