The Marten Inn was built circa 1880. The earliest known record is from August 1882, when William Ward had been licensee for about a year. He applied to have his licence renewed at the Brewster Sessions but was turned down. Instead, the bench told Ward that he did not conduct his house in orderly conditions that he ought. The Marten Inn was in a very rough neighborhood and the pub required a landlord of great firmness due to the amount of drunkenness in the area. Obviously Henry Ward was not that man. The bench took the unusual stance of allowing Ward to renew his licence on the understanding that he would quit the pub and licence and transfer it to a stronger man as soon as possible. Within a couple of weeks William Ward had transferred the licence to William Townsend.
William Townsend wasn’t to survive long at the Marten as before a year was out the pub was up for auction – in June 1883. This was not before Townsend had the distressing duty of having an inquest at the inn on the body of a male infant found in a nearby heap of manure. A labourer who found the body and the PC on duty deposed the body to the Marten Inn, where the inquest subsequently took place. The body was so decomposed to discount a post mortem. The Jury passed the verdict of ‘the body of an unknown child was found dead.’
In 1883, the Marten Inn was optimistically advertised as ‘having the advantage of a valuable and lucrative business seldom to be met with being the only fully licensed public house in Martin Street.’ The potential buyer also had the advantage of stables outbuildings and yard, with the option of purchasing the next lot, the adjoining house and butchers shop with rear slaughterhouse.
Within a few months William Townsend was no longer licensee, having the licence transferred to Thomas Burton.
Disturbances and drunkenness continued, not always amongst men. Women were involved in fighting at the Marten on more than one occasion. Two couples were once all charged with affray and drunkenness and assaulting each other, the women using their umbrellas as weapons. One even turned up in court still supporting a black eye from her injuries sustained by the offending weapon.
In 1892, the Leicester Journals ‘THE BLACK LIST’ was headed by the Marten Inn when its licence was again objected to on the grounds of its past convictions. It survived, and by World War I things seem to have calmed down as fewer and fewer cases were recorded.
A Leicester Mercury article on past landlords of the Marten. The inn did finally close in 1994 and was put up for auction. Its future became uncertain and not until three years later did it reopen, dispensing fine Indian food.
‘In the early days to gain entrance you were checked thoroughly on entrance after a coded knock on the front door, but once inside the atmosphere and food is great. The bar soon gained a reputation. Being in the mainly Asian area of Leicester, it could only really serve one kind of food: the staple English diet-curry. The outside really doesn’t suggest what’s in store inside, in fact little has changed in the bar, still has a pub feel, but the food is by and large excellent, tucked away off the ‘Golden Mile’ it has gained a popularity that brings people back from far and wide.
Barry Lount
Unpretentious, its simplicity scores, with a noisy buzzing atmosphere, Jamie Oliver the renowned TV Chef and entrepreneur has visited and cooked there.
