The Bede Island area, (26 acres) of Leicester which ran alongside the River Soar, roughly from Braunstone Gate to Upperton Rd., for many years dominated by Vic Berry’s locomotive scrap yard, old engines sometimes stacked 6 high dominated the area.
Scrap yards standing both sides of the river soar.
Photo above taken in the 1980s.
The whole area was transformed in the 1990s, when a massive regeneration scheme was undertaken, new houses, flats, offices, and riverside restaurants. A part of that was the refurbishment of many of the old industrial factories that stood on the site including a Victorian pump house into a pub appropriately called The Quay.
For local brewer’s Everards, it was trumpeted as a major commitment to Leicester.
A Riverside pub should have been a flagship outlet for the company.
Unfortunately it didn’t attract the type of trade Everards were looking for to get a return on their investment. Opened December 1998, the pub was sold in 2010 to be converted into a Tesco Supermarket.
