Tamzin Outhwaite Who Do You Think You Are?

Actress Tamzin Outhwaite is known for her role as

Detective Chief Inspector Sasha Miller in the

BBC's popular crime series New Tricks.

Alessandro Manzini, 65, he'd been drinking.

He's knifed in the throat and his body's stuffed upside down

in a water bath which then freezes solid overnight

as the temperature drops below zero.

Has to be thawed out before the PM can take place.

Don't get one of these every day of the week.

So, what do you think?

EXPLOSION

But Tamzin is probably best remembered for her

role as Mel in EastEnders.

Move, all of you! Get out!

Noooo!

My family, as far back as I know, are East Enders.

My mum was born in Clapton and my dad was Hackney.

So I often play a London character.

Quite recently I was doing a play at Hampstead and a friend of mine,

Izzy, she said to me after the read through,

"I've just worked it out.

"I know what it is. You're Italian, aren't you?"

She said, "You're just very free and very expressive

"and that must come from the Italian side."

And I said, "I do know that there's definitely an Italian

"influence within the family."

I'd like to get much more in touch with my Italian roots.

I'm going to see my mum, and she's going to hopefully tell us

a bit more about the Italian side.

My mum's father is Remo. Grandad Remo.

My mum and her dad had a great relationship,

from what I can remember. She loved her dad dearly.

But I don't know any of his ancestors.

I should imagine this is a real treat for my mum to be

able to find out about her family too.

And she is far more linked to Italy, far more spiritually drawn to it.

And I think this will be a really exciting thing for her.

And she's going to hopefully tell us a bit more about her mum

and dad's families, how they came here.

Tamzin has arranged to meet her mother,

Anna Santi, in the heart of London's East End.

-..over there.

-Oh, yeah, number 94.

-Yeah.

-Top Marks, London.

-Yeah.

94 Commercial Road was where Tamzin's Italian

great-grandfather, Tony Gonnella, once ran his cafe.

That's the picture of it.

Oh, my gosh, Tony's. That's what it was called.

-I thought it was called Gonnella's.

-No, it was Tony's.

So that's exactly...the shop front's the same except for that.

-Except for the sign writing.

-Oh, yeah.

And they lived above the shop. No bathroom.

Would he have had a tin bath?

A tin bath, yeah. In front of the fire.

Gosh, it's funny.

-That's Nanny and Grandad Gonnella.

-Oh, my gosh!

-And that's in the shop at first.

-Look at them! Gosh.

That's with Nanny Lina, your nanny, my mother.

-Oh, my gosh! Oh, yeah, look at Nanny Lina!

-Yeah.

-And that's them outside the shop.

-Oh, that's amazing.

And look at the shop, look how the shop was, you know, so different.

And they opened till midnight.

-I remember they worked very hard.

-From 6:00 in the morning.

-Yeah, they did work very hard.

-It was always open.

-Yeah.

Come in. Have a Coca-Cola.

SHE LAUGHS

This is White Church Lane, which leads down to, um, Brick Lane.

-Oh, does it?

-Yeah.

The Gonnellas opened the cafe in the 1930s.

They were Italian and obviously could offer

really nice Italian food.

They wanted to keep everything very English.

They wanted to be accepted.

Ham, egg and chips. Sausage, egg and chips, beans on toast.

Did they? Did they start doing as much English food as...?

-It was all English food.

-Through the war?

All the way through the war, after the war, all the through the '50s.

Most of the '60s.

They didn't start bringing like spaghetti,

pastasciutta or anything like that in until much, much later

because they weren't sure how the British people would take it.

-You know, they like, kept a low profile.

-Did they fit...?

Like, did they feel like outsiders?

Yeah, they did at first, very much like outsiders in their area.

Antonio and Antonietta Gonnella ran their East End

cafe for over 40 years.

When their daughter, Lina, married Remo Santi,

Remo and Lina helped around the shop.

Remo was Anna's father,

and Tamzin wants to know more about his side of the family.

What did Nanny and Grandad Gonnella think of your dad, Grandad Remo?

Um, he was...

They probably thought he was a bit of a liability.

More often than not you'd find him

playing cards with all the local rogues in the shop.

-In the shop.

-In the shop.

I do remember the card games that were continuous every time

I visited Nanny and Grandad. Cards were big, weren't they?

-Yeah. They used to have lots of...

-For money?

Always, always for money, yeah.

It was a bit of a gambling thing, really.

-I suppose you could say it was...

-Yeah.

But we didn't take too much notice of it.

What did Grandad Remo do?

He ran the shop, really.

He's quite a mystery really, Grandad Remo.

So I suppose Nanny Lina is the person to talk to.

-Yes, definitely.

-And she's...

-You need to go and see Nanny Lina.

My Nanny Lina is this little girl here in this picture outside Tony's

who has turned into my 83-year-old Nan.

Hopefully what she can tell me is a bit more about her husband,

my grandad Remo Santi's origins,

where his family came from, where the Santis originated.

And I'm sure she's got some amazing stories stored away.

What have you done to me, Tammy?!

THEY LAUGH

Oh...

This is Grandad Remo's birth certificate.

Registration District in the County of Durham. 2nd December, 1924.

Remo, boy. Adelmo Santi, father.

Occupation of Father - Ice Cream Vendor, Master.

That's a wedding picture.

-Gosh, look at that, Nan!

-Right.

Look at the dresses. That's quite lavish, isn't it? Gosh.

That's Grandad Remo, your husband, my grandad.

Yeah, your grandad, that's right, yes.

Where is grandad's dad Adelmo? Why is he not in the wedding photo?

Because he...being a businessman, he wanted to stay in the shop.

Which shop? In the fish and chip shop?

No, he didn't have a fish and chip shop, he had a ice cream parlour.

So he kept...stayed in the shop...

He kept the shop open because he was the sort of man that,

you know, business must go on.

On the day of his son's wedding, he stayed in the shop.

-He didn't close the shop for the wedding?

-No. No.

-Wow!

That's Adelmo, Grandad Remo's dad.

-This is Adelmo.

-Mm-hmm.

What a stylish man, though.

A shirt, a tie, a waistcoat, buttoned up.

Always a tie and he always had his sleeves rolled up,

whether it was winter, summer, spring or autumn.

He opened the shop up in Fishburn, 12 Chaytor Terrace was the shop.

But he was a very generous man in Fishburn, everybody liked him.

He bought all his children a house each.

He must have come over in the early '20s

because grandad was born in '24.

I know that my Grandad Remo's older brother was called Peter.

From what Mum tells me, Peter was the only one that was born in Italy.

Yes. Well that's Peter, and that's his wife Iris.

Iris still lives in Fishburn.

Now, during the war, Grandad Remo's dad, Adelmo, right,

and Peter both got interned.

Gosh.

Yeah.

Because they were born in Italy and enemy aliens at the time.

Cos the Italians are like the enemy.

They were the enemy because they were...

they went in the war with Germany.

So therefore, because Peter was born in Italy

and Adelmo born in Italy, they took them

to a concentration camp on the Isle of Man.

What?!

But that was war, you know.

Only because they were born in Italy?

-That's right.

-Gosh! That's quite unbelievable.

And actually, Adelmo and Peter never even spoke

of being in a concentration camp.

He's... Oh, I can't...

-I've got to stop here because I'm...

-It's all right, Nan.

-HER VOICE BREAKS

-Um...

It's all good. Don't worry.

Yeah, so, what else is there.

-It's...I've completely gone off my track.

-Don't worry.

So, I'm now off to the Isle of Man, of all places, to see

whether or not this internment camp exists that my great-grandfather

Adelmo and his eldest son Peter, my great-uncle, were sent

to during the war, supposedly just because they were Italian.

If my nan's right, then that seems quite harsh.

But we're going to go and have a look.

During Victorian times, the Isle of Man had become one of the most

popular seaside resorts in Britain.

But located in the middle of the Irish Sea,

over 60 miles off the coast of mainland Britain,

the Isle of Man was also the ideal place to detain enemy aliens.

I need to find out if there are records that exist

that would tell me why they put away ice cream vendors...

..who were peaceful people, who had been in this country for a long time.

And just what happened, really.

So I think I need to just see where it is that my great-granddad

and my great-uncle were sent.

How long they were here for.

If they were both together and if they were in the same camp.

Was it pretty grim or was it OK?

At the moment, it looks like quite a pretty place to be.

Tamzin has come to the Manx Museum to meet curator Yvonne Creswell.

So, Yvonne, what I'm looking to establish really is,

whether or not these stories are true.

Well we've got records for some of the internment camps,

so what nationality were your family?

-They were Italian.

-Right.

OK, well, we have got records for Italians who were held here,

so hopefully we'll be lucky and we'll have some information.

-Brilliant.

-So we'll see what we can find.

-OK, let's go and look.

-OK.

Right, so here's the book for Palace Internment Camp.

and this is actually a register,

so it's their own sort of camp administration.

So, August 15th, 1940.

Oh, wow, I feel like I need to have gloves on.

S...

Santi. Oh, my gosh! Santi.

Santi A, Santi P - Adelmo and Peter.

12 Chaytor Terrace, Fishburn, County Durham.

So you've now got proof. They were here.

Goodness.

They were definitely here. My nan was right.

When they arrived on the Isle of Man, they would have been

marched along the promenade to the Palace Camp,

being jeered and heckled by the crowds.

As far as they were concerned, these were...Italian Fascists,

these were German and Austrian Nazis and...

So my great-granddad

and great-uncle would have been made to feel like criminals?

Yeah. Yeah. Dangerous criminals at the height of the war.

Gosh.

-They made ice cream.

-Yeah.

Goodness me.

On the 10th June, 1940, Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini

joined forces with Hitler.

Britain was now at war with both Germany and Italy.

Like Germans and Austrians, Italians living in Britain for less

than 20 years, who had not become British citizens,

were regarded as enemy aliens and a potential threat.

Anti-Italian riots broke out up and down the country.

Long standing Italian businesses were forced to close,

and many Italian men between the ages of 16 and 70 were interned.

Tamzin's great-grandfather, Adelmo, and his son,

her great-uncle, Peter, would have been living in Britain for almost

20 years when they were arrested and sent to the Isle of Man.

Tamzin wants to find out

if the buildings they were held in still exist.

There you can see, um, places...

That's actually on Douglas promenade with the barbed wire.

Gosh, look at that.

They were being held in internment camps that were basically

requisitioned boarding houses.

And we have a plan of the camp.

So you can actually see what it would have

been like in the summer of 1939.

People had been staying in as holiday-makers for one or two weeks,

by the summer of 1940, had barbed wire all the way round it.

And you might have anything from 1,000 to 3,000 men

interned in these blocks of hotels.

Well you can imagine, with the sea view, that would be quite

a lovely place to stay if it wasn't covered in barbed wire.

Yeah. And a lot of this promenade is still there.

I'd like to try and go there, if possible.

Yeah. So...

Here you go. This is where you need to go.

-There are hotels from the camp still there.

-Thank you.

So this is where my grandad and great-uncle must have come in.

From what Yvonne says, they would have been

marched along the promenade, which much have been quite humiliating

because there would have been lots of people standing out

jeering and hissing them because they thought they were the enemy.

And have been marched all along to one of these buildings.

I think it's one of those in the end there.

So, what I'm going to do is, um,

just take this trip all along the promenade.

I'd like to find the Palace Camp, see what is was like inside,

see if I can find out what the conditions were like.

STRONG WIND BLOWS

Palace View Terrace.

OK, so this is the beginning of the internment camp.

So this would have had barbed wire all along here.

Surrounded by security fences,

with the perimeters patrolled by British Army personnel,

Palace Camp was used for the internment of Italian nationals.

Germans, Austrians and other enemy nationals

were held elsewhere on the island.

So this will all have been enclosed.

All these apartments... Palace Terrace.

Few witness statements survive about life inside.

The Italians, locked within the camp, ran it by themselves -

from who did the cooking and cleaning,

to who shared which room with who.

Bet this is quite lovely in summer.

WIND WHISTLES

Gosh, it's windy.

Trevelyan. Ah...

Rutland Hotel.

I suppose we should take a look inside.

Ooh, if we don't get blown into the sea!

This hotel is one of the 33 boarding houses that made up the Palace Camp.

Ah, this is one of the rooms.

There's a bathroom there.

I wonder how many people would have shared one room.

I suppose it would have been like a dormitory situation.

With just under 100 people in each boarding house, Tamzin is

keen to know what life would have been like for Adelmo and Peter.

It's just strange to think that lots of Italians and...

any kind of supposed threat to our country

would have all been packed into here.

KNOCK ON DOOR

-Yvonne. Hi.

-Hi.

Found some more things.

-Brilliant. Your pictures.

-Thank you.

OK.

So, one of the things you've got to remember is, in the Italian camps

you had everybody from die-hard Communists, Fascists, to

people like your family who probably had no interest in Italian politics.

But because you've got the full political spectrum,

it means you're going to have a lot of issues.

There seems to be sort of Fascist minority of thugs, bullying,

intimidating and threatening all the other internees in the camp.

I mean, here we have a cartoon where it's, you know,

they're calling the island and the Italian camps Little Italy

with Fascist rule in the Manx Camps.

"Fascist rule in Manx Camp.

"An aggressive Fascist minority self-appointed to all

"posts of responsibility dominates Italian

"internees at the Palace Camp, Isle of Man."

Isle of Man, and he's doing a Nazi salute.

Yeah.

As I say, there's a group of sort of, um,

Fascist thugs that see it as their role to remind their fellow

Italian internees that Mussolini rules supreme

and that this is a little Italian Fascist state.

And here we've got an account of the cartoonist

who was attacked in the camp.

This was a cartoonist who had produced this cartoon.

The Fascist thugs found out about it and decided to teach him a lesson.

So it's real intimidation tactics.

-What did they do? Beat him?

-They beat him up.

So, basically, it was published without his permission

and then he was beaten up.

"Fascist thugs sent to prison.

"Italian internee beaten up by masked men, hooded like the Ku-Klux-Klan."

So it will have been a very threatening place.

Your great-uncle is going to be fearful of

your great-grandfather being attacked.

Your great-grandfather is going to be fearful that your

great-uncle Peter is going to be targeted by the Fascists

who would be wanting to get a young man to become a Fascist

and join their group.

You know, you've either got to side with them

or you've got to keep your head down.

Was there a way that you could somehow prove

or work your way out of here?

For young men, you could sort of volunteer to join the Pioneer Corps.

The Pioneer Corps was viewed by a lot of people as being

the lowest of the low in the British Army, doing all the labouring work.

But it was kind of like an initial first step to sort of get

yourself out of the camp, working for the British War Effort

and then you could take it from there.

Yvonne has found documents revealing more information about what

happened to Adelmo and Peter.

Here is your great-grandfather's card.

Adelmo Santi. Date and place of birth - 3/5/1896 at Barga, Italy.

Released 8/5/41.

-And if you turn it over...

-Oh, hold on one sec.

"Home Office reference - Number 12 Chaytor Terrace, ice cream vendor.

"Release recommended. Yes."

And this is why they felt that he should be released.

Oh, my gosh!

"Santi, Adelmo is 44 years old.

"He first came to this country in 1913

"and worked for four years as an ice cream vendor.

SHE SNIFFLES

"Eventually settled in Fishburn, County Durham, where his wife

"opened a confectionary and ice cream business.

"His only relative in Italy is his father

"and he has no property or investments there.

"His eldest son, aged 19, is now interned in the Isle of Man

"and he has five younger children,

"all born in this country, who are living with their mother.

"He has no money in the bank, no insurance policies.

"The appellant is a harmless and colourless individual,

"but he impressed the committee with his friendliness to this

"country and it seems desirable that he should return to his shop..."

HER VOICE BREAKS

"..to keep the business going to his large family.

SHE SOBS

"He first came to this country in 1913."

So we thought he came in the early '20s.

SHE INHALES SHARPLY

So that's your great-grandfather's. Now here is your great-uncle's.

"He was born 10/12/1921 at Barga, Italy.

It says, "Release not recommended." That's the 15/4.

"The appellant is a boy who is now in his 20th year

"and has been in England since he was a child of 11 months.

"He has no intention of returning to Italy but has declined to show

"his friendliness to this country by volunteering for the Pioneer Corps.

"The committee are unable to recommend his release

"in these circumstances."

He won't volunteer for the Pioneer Corps, so they're viewing

that as meaning that he's not friendly towards Britain.

He's a Fascist. Gosh.

What's interesting is why he doesn't want to join the Pioneer Corps.

And I wonder whether Peter is worried about saying, yeah,

fine, I'll join the Pioneer Corps

and heaven forbid he gets released even a few

days before his father, leaving his father in the camp on his own.

You're still having people being attacked by Fascist thugs

in the Palace Camp.

You wonder whether Peter just cannot take

the chance of leaving his father on his own.

Mm. That's quite a gallant thing to do, isn't it?

SHE EXHALES

So the discoveries are pretty horrific really,

what Great-Granddad Adelmo and Great-Uncle Peter went through

when they were sent here to the Palace Internment Camp.

Bullying and intimidation, probably violence...

And both of them worrying that the other one was OK.

And then of course eventually, after ten months for Adelmo,

him being able to be released. And a year for Peter.

But the interesting thing I found out today was that

Adelmo came over in 1913.

That means Adelmo was 16 or 17 years old.

So I'd like to find out how he got here, who he came with.

And I think the next step is Italy. And Barga.

So I'm quite excited about that.

Barga is a medieval hilltop town in rural Tuscany.

Tamzin's great-grandfather, Adelmo, left here more than a century ago.

Now she hopes to find out why.

Since I was a child, I've been coming here.

We came as children on holiday.

This is the old town and we always used to come to the old town

to get food. It's very, very pretty.

Although we didn't appreciate the beauty of it quite back then.

But not much has really changed here.

It still looks exactly the same to me.

The colours of the walls and the yellows and the pinks

and the oranges.

It seems like Adelmo came over to England in 1913.

So how did he go over as a 16-year-old?

Did he go over with his parents?

So I suppose I'm looking for why that journey happened,

where they ended up, why would you leave here?

Tamzin has arranged to meet researcher Maria Laura Frullini.

Ah. Maria Laura?

Records of local births,

marriages and deaths are held in Barga's Town Hall.

Tamzin wants to find out about the life of her great-grandfather

Adelmo, before he left Italy for Britain at such a young age.

She's starting with his birth certificate.

This is a registry that is listing people for that period.

Look at the writing. Just...

..so beautifully done.

Yeah.

Ah, wow.

-Santi. Adelmo.

-Yes.

Barga.

He was born here, 5th May, 1896.

He...he has many names before Santi.

Yes. He has three names.

So he is Adelmo Alfredo Nello Santi.

-Giuseppe, the father.

-Santi, Giuseppe.

So Adelmo's father was a colono - he's a farmer.

Maria Laura can find no record of Adelmo leaving Barga in 1913.

But there's another route they can take.

Adelmo left Italy the year before World War I broke out.

Unlike World War II, during the First World War

Italy joined Britain and her allies,

fighting against Germany and Austria.

The Italian Government began calling up

hundreds of thousands of Italian men who had emigrated abroad.

Adelmo Santi was in Britain in 1913,

so there may be a record of him being called back to Italy to fight.

This is, er, army call up lists for young people living abroad

that were called for the Italian army.

Santi, Adelmo. So this is him being called up.

-Yeah.

-In what year would this have been?

-Er, 1916.

-19th July, 1916.

At the Italian Consulate in Glasgow.

Glasgow! The Italian Consulate in Glasgow.

-Yeah.

-Called him up. So he was living in Glasgow?

He was living, well, in Glasgow or in Scotland, yes.

So, in 1913, he must have gone to Scotland.

Yeah. And he was there on January 25th, 1916.

-And that's when he was called up. He had to come back to Italy.

-Yes.

Maria Laura has another document

which shows where Adelmo was living when he returned to Italy.

Carpinecchio, two. Due.

It's not far from Barga.

So number two, Carpinecchio.

Will I be able to find this in Barga? Is it easy to find?

Yes.

So we know that Adelmo turned up in Great Britain in 1913,

which means he would have left here at about 16/17 years old.

-Yeah.

-I'd love to find out what actually happened.

Tamzin wants to discover what Adelmo was doing

in Glasgow between 1913 and 1916.

Farming families like Adelmo's, could barely scratch

a living from the land in mountainous areas like Barga.

In the 50 years before Adelmo left in 1913,

grinding poverty in these rural communities had forced

millions of Italians to desert their homeland.

Tamzin is meeting local historian, Nicoletta Franchi.

-Ah, Nicoletta.

-Yes. Hi.

-Hi. Sono Tamzin.

-Piacere.

OK.

Adelmo Santi was just one of several hundred young boys who left

Barga to work in the emerging ice cream trade in Glasgow.

How could you leave Barga,

you left your family and go to Glasgow?

I mean, what would be the pull and what would be the reasons for going?

The people from Barga had a long tradition

since the 1700s of migrating during the winter to Scotland.

Most of the people that actually immigrated they were coming...

had a farm background and, by the end of the December, the harvest is

finished and therefore there's not much to do during the harsh winters.

And so I think your great-grandfather was

actually in this trend.

He was coming from a place that was 1,000 inhabitants,

whereas Glasgow was 750,000 inhabitants.

It was the second city within Great Britain,

-so that was one of the main attraction points.

-Of course.

-Many people from Barga had ice cream shops...

-In Glasgow?

In Glasgow itself.

So they would actually need boys or young apprentices

to work in the shop and prepare the ice cream.

Which would explain, you know, why people were,

would leave Barga and go to Glasgow because they would know people,

their families would all know each other.

Italy has always been famous for its gelato or ice cream.

Thought to date back to Roman banquets around 2,000 years ago,

gelato was originally made from snow and ice

brought down from the mountaintops and preserved deep below ground.

Ciao.

By the 20th century,

gelato had become a popular street food throughout Europe.

For emigrants like Adelmo,

making and selling ice cream was a potential route to economic success.

Ooh, that's good!

So it's a massive thing, Italians and ice cream.

I mean, they're just famous for it, aren't they?

Ah, we are. Well we're exporting all over the world.

It's like, we're the Santis - ice cream.

And then I know the Rossis - that's ice cream.

It seemed like quite a steady profession for Italians.

-All part of the catering trade, isn't it?

-It is.

What Nicoletta's going to do is, she is going to give me

a lift to Carpinecchio, number two Carpinecchio, which is

the house, the last place that my great-granddad lived in

before he decided to leave Italy forever and go and live in the UK.

So I'm really desperate to see it, if it's still there.

This is where Adelmo, my great-grandfather, came from.

In a hamlet or a village.

Being in a remote place up here, on the side of a hill,

kind of makes you think, going all the way to Glasgow must

have been a massively brave move.

Well it's not unthinkable, but at 16/17 it seems to be.

-In my head, I'm thinking that's a really brave...

-Thing to do.

..move. Well, it's quite ambitious, isn't it?

It's so quiet.

I can really see my great-granddad, Adelmo, here.

I can really see him in this place.

And you do think, why would you want to leave

if your family are around you?

But something must have been very attractive in Glasgow.

I can understand why at 16 or 17

you would want to go and see what else was out there.

But if this is all he knew, I can completely understand why he'd

want to go and have a look for some bright lights and more opportunity.

I think I need to go to Glasgow next.

By the time Adelmo arrived in Glasgow in 1913

there were several thousand Italian immigrants living here,

and more than 300 Italian shops and cafes selling ice cream

in the summer and fish and chips in the winter.

The Italians have left their mark on the city.

It is estimated that around 2% of Scotland's population

is of Italian descent.

What I want to do now is find out a bit more about ice cream

and what my great-granddad,

Adelmo, must have gone through in 1913 when he was 16 years old.

And so I've arranged to meet someone called Ivan, he's a historian.

I'm going to meet him at one of the very few ice cream parlours

that are left here in Glasgow.

-Ivan?

-Tamzin.

-It's lovely to meet you.

-Come and have a seat.

This place looks amazing.

It is lovely, isn't it? It's a time warp, really.

Italians had been coming to England since the early 1850s,

making ice cream in the summer,

selling it on the streets, chestnuts in the winter

or even barrel organs with monkeys, that kind of thing,

just to make a living.

By 1913, there were even two generations of Italians here,

so people would come from Barga, particularly to Glasgow.

So when he came as a young man,

there would have been a network of relatives, friends of the family.

That doesn't mean to say it was cosy, because a lot of these

young men at that age were really exploited by distant relatives.

Now I've got an amazing thing here for you.

Let's have a look.

This is the Bible for Italian ice cream makers from this period.

It's an amazing book.

-It was written by a man called Pinot Grifoni...

-Grifoni.

-And it was published, look, in 19...

-1911.

-Yeah.

-So that was just before Adelmo came here.

-Yeah.

Milano...

So this is the state of the art book for the gelateria of the

pre-First World War period.

What you're looking at here is something which is

probably like the premises that Adelmo worked in here in Glasgow.

What would they have called that? A parlour?

Well this is called a laboratorio di gelato.

-Laboratorio.

-A laboratorio. A laboratory of gelato.

What I find baffling is how do you do this without freezing equipment?

OK. This is actually the sort of equipment that Adelmo would

have used when he first came to England in 1913.

This is an ice cream maker.

This is a wooden pale and this is called the sorbettiera, which,

it's made of pewter, and I'm going to get you to actually make some

ice cream using the sort of method that he would have used himself.

What we've got to do is get some ice.

I've got some here.

And I've also got this thing here.

-You need to...

-Oh, I can I do that?

You're going to. If you can... Not too forcefully.

-OK.

-But just try and crush it up a bit, OK.

No, you've got to whack it harder than that.

Ooh, that's satisfying.

-That's brilliant.

-Basta.

-You enjoy that.

-Finito.

Next thing, I'm going to...

When Adelmo first learnt to make gelato, blocks of ice were

broken up with hammers and packed between the walls

of the wooden pale and the inner metal container.

You can put your salt in again now.

Adding salt to the ice brought the temperature down to

well below freezing point.

Just a little sprinkling...

Now the business of making ice cream can begin.

Be quite generous.

Got to put some over my left shoulder, just because you have to.

But the ice cream is going to be

made from what your great-grandfather would have

called fior di latte, which is actually a very thin cream.

-Right.

-Pour that cream into your ice cream maker there.

-So just put the lid down, pour it in, OK.

-OK.

Now the other ingredient, the most important of all,

-is this, which is sugar syrup.

-Wow!

You can't make ice cream without sugar.

So I've got about half the quantity of sugar syrup to cream.

Gosh, that's syrupy.

Let me show you the two things that he would have done.

First of all, the first thing is, once it's generally mixed up,

you spin it like that, OK.

Keep spinning it and it's going to whirl around and it's going to

mean that the cold is going to work through the whole mixture.

OK. Now if you take the lid off...

OK, now look in there,

can you see now that it's really beginning to freeze hard?

-Yeah.

-OK.

Now what I'm going to teach you to do now is one of the skills that

Adelmo would have learned as a young lad,

and that is to spin it like this, look.

-Oh, so it's...

-Oops!

THEY LAUGH

Did I catch you? I'm terribly sorry.

Have we got a wet cloth somewhere?

You're going to have to get your make-up guy to do something now.

Oh, my gosh!

THEY LAUGH

Oh, dear!

Hold it at the top, that's it.

Just very gently and it'll go, it'll just...

That's it. Do it fast.

When you get really good at it, like Adelmo was, you can

sort of do it with one hand. Try it with one hand.

-Ahh...

-Yeah. Now what you're doing now is you're getting...

SHE YELPS

You're getting air into the mixture, OK.

You've got this in your genes, I think.

It looks like it.

OK, I think you're there, actually.

When Adelmo was making ice cream in Glasgow in 1913,

the cone, as a way of serving it, had just come in.

Most of the ice cream vendors were selling their ices in these

-little things which are called 'licks.'

-Licks.

You've got a penny lick there cos that gives you a big helping.

-Mine is smaller, it's called halfpenny lick.

-Right.

And what you actually do with these,

is you get your serving of ice cream on there with a spoon and you

give it to your customer and they lick it off

-and then they give you...

-What, no spoon?

-No, no spoon.

You just lick it off and then you give the glass back to Adelmo

-and he washes it...

-Oh.

-..and gives it to the next customer.

But let's serve it out.

I think the ice cream is really perfect now.

I get it like that and I try and...

get it to form a little kind of pyramid.

So you hang on to that. I'm going to serve myself...

-Quite uncouth just licking it off.

-..a halfpenny worth.

Doesn't feel right.

-Salute, eh.

-Salute.

Go on, do it.

I can't do it in one go... Mmm.

Mmm.

We made that.

Mm.

-Wow, that's gorgeous.

-Mm.

By the early 1920s, Glasgow was teeming with Italian cafes.

About eight years after he had first arrived,

Tamzin's great-grandfather decided to seek new opportunities.

He headed south to Fishburn in County Durham.

I suppose what I learnt about Adelmo is,

he was willing to start from scratch, from absolutely nothing.

To learn a trade that he didn't know much about at a very young age.

And then eventually turn that trade into a business.

Well, being Italian was, at that time, probably...

They were in favour, they were out of favour,

just before the war they had...they suffered some racism.

And then once the war happened,

then they were put in internment camps

because they were classed as the enemy.

And then suddenly people decided they quite liked ice cream,

so then they were all in favour of the Italians.

So there was definitely an element of,

oh, we'll have your ice cream and your fish and chips

and all the good bits about you, but you know, don't be too Italian.

And so I think they had to become British to fit in.

And that takes a lot of swallowing your pride.

And the integrity and the determination that he must have had

to make that work, sounds like such a man of substance.

So now we're off to Fishburn.

I've been to Fishburn many times. And the shop, I remember really well.

And the ice cream, it was called Santi's Ices.

My memory of Fishburn was the smell of coal, which was so strong.

As soon as you came in to the village,

you saw the smoke and then you smelled the coal.

In the 1920s, Fishburn's existing colliery expanded to employ

over 500 men.

With small but steady incomes to tap from the local miners' families,

Fishburn was the perfect place for Adelmo to open

the village's first Italian ice cream parlour.

A century later, Tamzin has returned to Fishburn to see how

successful Adelmo's venture was.

Chaytor Terrace. Goodness me. It's exactly the same.

The only difference is, it doesn't smell of coal any more.

So this looks familiar.

This must have been... where are we... 15, 14, 13,

so this is number 12, this was the shop.

Hello there, Tamzin.

Lifelong resident, Bert Draycott,

has tracked down the keys to Adelmo Santi's old shop.

This is the...

Bert grew up with Santi's ice cream and knew the family well.

When I was a lad, Santi's was the place, the ice cream.

It was lovely.

The kids used to say, "Santi's ice cream is the best.

"It's good for your belly and chest.

"You pay a penny, you get too many, Santi's ice cream is the best."

Did they? That's so cute!

That was the thing they used to say. Cos it was. It was lovely ice cream.

So I know Adelmo as being my Italian great-grandfather.

-Yeah.

-Everyone called him Arthur,

-maybe because he wanted to not seem too out of place.

-Mm.

And, er, the main thing that I've found out along the way

is just how hard he worked.

He came from absolutely nothing. He had no money.

He then went on to buy all of his children houses in the area.

Oh, yeah, they used to say, "Arthur Santi, richest man in Fishburn."

Yes, which he owns houses, he owns houses that...he owns houses.

When would that have been?

-1950, something like that.

-Right.

It took him that long to be known as the richest man in Fishburn,

but what an achievement, that my great-granddad was called

the richest man in Fishburn. HE LAUGHS

-This is obviously where the pit was.

-Yeah.

So it seems to me that Adelmo - Arthur - Santi

must have spotted an opportunity.

The pit is the reason that Adelmo came here,

because he saw it as a place that would bring cash into the village.

Yeah. Yeah, well Fishburn would be an up-and-coming place then.

He probably knew that there was no ice cream parlours in the area.

-Exactly, yes.

-He must have known that.

Fishburn was a coal town, and during the years of the depression

in the 1930s, colliery wages were low.

But after the pits were nationalised in 1947, Adelmo's customers'

disposable income rose as they topped the industrial wages league.

Now, my Auntie Iris and Peter lived on a corner house.

It could be this corner, but I think it might be that one.

Tamzin's Great-Uncle Peter died some years ago,

but his wife, Iris, still lives in Fishburn.

Cleveland View. It's this one here.

It's very different, they've obviously got a new fence.

So this was where Uncle Peter and Auntie Iris lived.

I remember, they always had a lovely garden.

That's right. Look how close everything is.

Auntie Iris!

Tamzin! Where have you been all my life?

-Oh, you look exactly the same.

-Ohhh...

You don't look any different at all.

Nanny Lina sent her love as well, I spoke to her today.

Oh, yes. I spoke to her on Saturday.

It's so surreal being back here.

In the last ten days I have been on a magical mystery tour

-of Great-Granddad Adelmo's path.

-He was a lovely, lovely man.

-He was really well respected round here, wasn't he?

-Definitely.

And when Nanny told me about... when she showed me

the wedding pictures of her and Grandad, Nanny Lina

and Grandad Remo, and I said, "Where is Adelmo, why is he not there?"

And she said he had to open the shop.

-Yes.

-Because someone...

-The shop came first.

-Shop came first.

-Absolutely.

And although he was such a family man,

he let everybody else go to the wedding because the idea of him

closing the shop for a day would be too much of a loss.

-Ooh, no. No, no.

-What a hardworking man.

-Definitely.

Iris reveals that Adelmo had another son who Tamzin knows nothing about.

Well, there was Henry, but they were playing on a swing,

a rope over a tree, and they fell.

And I was told that he injured his liver and he died.

-How old was he?

-Just a child.

-Gosh.

I can't imagine what that must have been like for Maria and Adelmo.

Oh, terrible.

In the garden across the road there, is a tree, a cherry tree it is...

-Right.

-And Grandad, he sat there and we're talking like this,

and he really sobbed his heart out.

And that tree was in flower.

I thought maybe it had triggered something in his mind of Italy

cos he was old then.

If Henry died from falling off a swing from a tree...

-Yeah, it could be. I don't know.

-..would it be to do with that?

Yeah. I couldn't ask him because I didn't want him to cry.

I would say it was more about Henry than Italy.

Yes. I suppose.

-Look how pretty it is over here.

-Specially when the sun shines on it.

Isn't it?

Bert has brought Tamzin to Fishburn Cemetery

to look for the grave of Henry, the great-uncle she never knew.

Down this way. It's the one that's fell over.

Oh, wow. Look.

"In loving memory of a dear husband and dad. Arthur Santi.

"Died 11th November, 1978, aged 82 years.

"Also a dear wife and mam, Maria Santi, died 27th June, 1980."

Two years later. "Aged 78 years.

"And Henry, their dear son, died 1936, aged 13 years."

When Henry died, they hadn't been in Fishburn very long,

and they were...they had no money for the funeral.

Fishburn people had a collection and paid for the funeral.

So later years, when they said, "Mr Santi, richest man in Fishburn,"

he bought a field, not to be built on, donated to the village

as a playground for the Fishburn children as a thank you for

the kindness of the village people.

-So when his son died, he didn't have any money?

-No.

-And so everyone clubbed together to pay for the funeral?

-Mm.

-That just tells you what kind of a man he was.

-Yeah.

They must have loved him.

And then when he did eventually have the money,

-that's how he repaid Fishburn.

-Yes. It was, yes.

That's lovely.

Came from nowt up to being richest man in Fishburn.

Such an honourable, loyal thing to do.

I'm going to go down to the playing field now, to the playground.

CHILDREN PLAYING LOUDLY

My great-granddad, Adelmo, bought the plot of land to say thank you

to all the local people.

Looks busy.

Wow!

What a great place.

"In memory of Mr Arthur Santi who bequeathed this

"ground in 1952 to the children of Fishburn."

How lovely.

Having traced his journey, you just think what a tale of,

you know, immigration, and the achievement...

Well, all the achievements - his businesses, his travelling,

his learning the language, his children, his grandchildren,

keeping everyone as together as possible.

And striving and fighting, and the hard work and the determination

that it took him to get to that stage.

And look, now he's had recognition.

Doesn't get much better than that.

It's all done in the name of family.