ROSE & CROWN – DIXIE ARMS/OLD DIXIE, 2 CURZON STREET/HUMBERSTONE ROAD

Photo above: Humberstone Road and the now Old Dixie (there was another Dixie Arms in Leicester), in its hey day in the 1960s.  (Denis Callow collection)

The Rose & Crown address was mainly Humberstone Road.  J. Fletcher was landlord in 1822,  and the landlord in 1849, was Mr Sibson (a name that crops up many times as landlord of Leicester pubs), as Mrs. Sibson died at the  Rose and Crown in that year. Difficult to research prior to that date because although there were many recordings of a Rose & Crown in court cases, there were three or four of that name in Leicester around that period and no precise address was given.

We do know that the Rose & Crown was re-built and renamed the Dixie Arms in 1853 from the sale notice that appeared in the press:

All that substantial erected and old licensed public house by the sign of the Dixie Arms situate in Humberstone Rd, with brewhouse, stables, outbuildings and carriage way into Curzon Street  now in the occupation of Mr. Ellis Pestall Thomas. The above property has been recently erected on the site of a well accustomed house called the Rose & Crown.

Its address is given no. 2 Curzon Street.

Fred and Elsie Turner were licensees of the Old Dixie Arms from 1938-52. During the Second World War the pub was used by American GI’s who often pawned their watches and valuables’ for whisky.

Ray Turner, the son of the landlord, Fred, was told by his father that a black GI was stabbed and killed outside the Dixie.  Fred had to wash the blood from the front door off the street but claimed that he was later visited by Allied authorities and was told not to talk about the incident, although this is an uncorroborated account, rumours abounded it for years. 

There is a backdrop to this incident, there was at this time racial tension in Leicester, but not between locals and the Black soldiers, but between the racially divided US Forces In Feb 1944 the first major race riots occurred in Granby St between black and white G Is, it was reported that at leased 12 servicemen were knifed. The Red Cross Service Club was wrecked due to the presence of newly arrived black servicemen. Granby St was littered with debris and broken glass.