Chapeltown 1955/56, a hive of ethnic diversity.
Jews, Irish, Poles and a scattering of others
dwelt in large Victorian terraced houses,
many of which had been converted into flats.
This was a whole world away from the life
I’d lived in Dublin, exotic and cosmopolitan.
In the flats where we lived, an Italian
lady resided in the basement and on the ground
floor a Hungarian man and his English wife.
My family lived on the first floor of what
the locals called Mulligan’s Mansion.
The sheer variety of the ethnic mix was
exhilarating — there were two synagogues,
a Catholic Church, a Kosher bakery
and a Polish club within striking distance.
We lived in this magical world for a year
or two until we were offered a council
house on the Miles Hill estate, but it could not
hold a candle to the exotic mixture
of cultures in Chapeltown.
Bill Fitzsimons