Coffee & Cafes
Many people remember the inter-war period as a golden age of cafes in Leicester. Most of the large stores had cafes but there were many smaller ones as well.
From the 1890s JS Winn ran a chain of cafes that included the Oriental (Market Place, closed 1955), Turkey (Granby Street, still there), the Café Royal (44 London Rd, demolished 1974), the Sunset Café (7 Haymarket, demolished 1964). Winn’s made their own cakes in Bath Lane but JD Bennett suggests standards declined during the Second World War and never recovered.
You can listen to detailed memories of Leicester's cafes in the first half of the 20th century on this compilation on Special Collections Online - Coffee & Cafes.
One of Leicester's best 1930s buildings is the Art Deco building on the corner of London Road and Granby Street. Up until 2025 most people have known it as Blunt's Shoes, but it started life as the Harris furniture shop and had a cafe at the top of the building. The cafe eventually became a store room, but the illustrations on the walls survived and we would like to thank the staff for allowing us to photo some of them. These give a lovely glimpse of the 1930s and the high cafe style of that period.
Link to the article 'Leicester Cafes' in the Leicestershire Historian
The photos below are all copyright Colin Hyde. You can click on each one for further catalogue information.
