We are grateful to David Lea, the author of the definitive book “Swithland Slate Headstones”, for sharing this account of his family in Belgrave.
“As promised, I’m sending you a photo of my grandfather, Thomas Willam Lea (1888 to 1960). He married my grandmother, Mary Light, who I never knew, and my father never remembered: she died of TB in the 1920’s, as did two siblings and their father too. Mary Light was the daughter of Thomas Light, a boilermaker’s rivetter, from Stratford in Essex, and Sarah Light, from a family of hawkers in Leicester. Apparently, she used to sell salt which she acquired from the canal wharf near to St Mark’s church in Leicester.
Thomas Light and his sister Blanche Emma were both born in Stratford, Essex (West Ham), the only two of ten children of William and Emma Light to survive infancy. Thomas and Sarah Light had nine children, eight born in Belgrave. Only four children survived infancy, and only one of these lived into old age, three dying in their 30’s of TB. Thomas Light and wife Sarah, three infant sons named Thomas and one infant daughter named Sarah, and adult children William, Emma, Mary and Blanche (who lived into her 80’s), are all buried in Belgrave Cemetery. Blanche Emma Morgan, Thomas Light’s sister, who AFAIK, never lived in Leicestershire, was buried in the private Light plot in Belgrave Cemetery in 1939.
In 1911, the Light family was living at 27, Bath Street. If the numbering has NOT changed over the years, that is Gladstone Cottage, the white detached property at the end of the northern section of Bath Street. When Mary Light and Thomas Lea married in 1918, she was living at 20, The Green, and this would remain their home until she died in 1928, and he died in 1960. It was also where my father was born. (The Light family, on the evidence of an electoral roll, must have moved from 27, Bath Street to 20, The Green, shortly after the census in 1911).
Thomas William Lea was born in Thurmaston. Mother Mary Lea was formerly a Bentley, a member of the Thurmaston family of framework knitters, who can certainly be traced back to Belgrave.
Number 20, The Green, was the very last house in the terrace on the left as you reached The Green when walking down Bath Street from Loughborough Road. The house plan had an odd shape, well seen on the O.S. 25” map. Mary worked for Howard and Hallam shoe makers. Thomas William worked for Corah’s as a mechanical engineer. In later life he had a little job as garden attendant, working for the council, in Belgrave House garden (or was it called a park?).
I think that the photo was probably taken in the later 1950’s. In a photo almost certainly taken in 1959, he possibly looks a little older than he does here”.
For a description of David’s book please our resources page at: