Leicester in the 1950s

At the beginning of the 1950s, Leicester was an industrial city picking itself up from the debris of the Second World War. Compared with nearby Coventry, Leicester has been a relatively safe place, but the effects of the Blitz were still very evident in New Walk and in the residential areas of Highfields and Stoneygate. After years of operating on a wartime economy, Leicester’s major industries – textiles, hosiery and machine tools – faced the challenge of returning to domestic production, and in assimilating a large male workforce returning from the battlefields of Europe and beyond to civilian life. In Leicester in the 1950s, Stephen Butt traces the vibrant lives of those recovering from the destruction of the Second World War.