Welsh Italians

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This is the story of the Avventurieri...the Adventurers, which serves as an accurate and picturesque description of the first Italian emigrants who settled in South Wales towards the end of the last century and started the cafés without which no township in Glamorgan and Monmouthshire is now complete.

(Jack Parker, ‘The Adventurers’, South Wales Echo, Monday, April 19, 1959)

The first Adventurers

Most sources refer to the Bracchis, the Bernis and the Rabaiottis as the first Italians in South Wales at the turn of the 19th Century. This statement is not entirely correct. There were Italians before then, but these were the first Italians to open refreshment and confectionary shops in the region. Approx. 80 % of them came from Bardi, a village on the mountain hill near Parma.

A view of Bardi caslte and the Ceno Valley.

The remaining 20% came fro the south of Italy, particularly Picinisco and Atina.

A view of Picinisco and the Comino Valley

Frank Berni

An inscription on a front shop in Neath carries the name of Berni and it is dated 1870.

This is what the Daily Telegraph on 23d August 2011 reports on the famous Frank Berni of the Berni Inns:

Frank Berni was born in his ancestral village of Bardi in the Apennines on October 30 1903. He remained in Italy until his education was completed, before setting off to join his father's business in Wales in the early 1920s. The Bernifamily had once run a menagerie in Paris, but the animals were eaten during the siege of 1870. Frank's grandfather set off to find new fortune in the prosperous mining valleys of South Wales, where he built up a chain of cafes known as "temperance bars".

This grew to 48 outlets, but during the First World War many cafe managers were called home to Italy for military service, and trade dwindled. By 1929, when depression was afflicting the valleys, the family decided to move to the West Country to make a new start. When their mother died, Frank and Aldo invested their £300 inheritance in a cafe in Exeter, and by the Second World War had branched out to Plymouth and Bristol.

How many Italians were there in Wales?

There were already some 240 people of Italian birth in Wales in 1871 and nothing suggests that they were from the Bardi area.

In 1903, Italians living in the Cardiff Consular District were estimated as being around 430, including some 90 in Cardigan, although according to the Consul himself, since the time of the writing of the report in March 1901, the number had notably increased with many Italians working in the mines. Therefore, the Consul believes in 1903 there were up to 1000 Italians in Wales.

In 1921, Italians in Wales were estimated to be 1533 against 1394 in 1931.

Why did they come to Wales?

They escaped the very poor conditions of their farming lands. They heard stories that workers in Wales were paid in gold. The news of the industrial boom in S. Wales came via the sea to Bardi. Wood cut from the hills around Bardi was sent to Cardiff and Swansea to be used as pit props and coal was sent back to Genoa. However, there are some reservations about this statement , since Bardi, especially in the 19thcentury, was a secluded and remote place, very difficult to reach in the mountains.

Who were they?

One third of the Italians in South Wales and Cardigan were connected with shipping. They were either ex-seamen who used to be employed in the merchant navy and who joined the British navy being attracted by higher wages; or they were Italians with no previous experience of the sea, employed in various services to shipping, such as shipping agents, coal merchants, lodging houses for seamen, etc.). Other Italians in Cardiff Consular District were itinerant people who came from London, including organ-grinders and ice-cream and chestnut vendors .

Giacomo Bracchi and ice cream.

Giacomo Bracchi is widely recognised to be the pioneer of the ice-cream and confectionary shops in South Wales. Bracchi became synonym for Italian café in South Wales. The story of the Bracchis was made into a Musical called Bracchi telling the story of many Italians who came to South Wales between the 19th and the 20thCentury.

For more info on the Italians in Wales, please consult the book by Colin Hughes called Lime, Lemon and Sarsaparilla: Italian Community in South Wales, 1881-1945, published by Seren.