Swansea’s Ice-Cream Families 🍦🇮🇹

Joe’s, Verdi’s, Forte’s and Ripples are the big names in Swansea ice-cream today - perfect for the recent heatwave! But did you know that the Swansea ice-cream trade has deep roots, many of them Italian?

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, much of Italy - especially the south - was still poor and rural, and both long-standing hardship and the upheaval after the First World War drove thousands to seek better lives abroad.

Some found their way to South Wales, setting up cafés and making ice-cream in back rooms, then selling it from handcarts, converted vans, and smart seaside shops.

This week, enjoy a look at some of those early makers in Swansea.

I’ll catch you on Sunday!

Andrew.

How Joe’s Got Its Name

Luigi Cascarini, born in the Abruzzo region of Italy, left home in 1898 hoping to reach America for a better life. Travelling through France, he reached Le Havre, a major port on the English Channel, and instead boarded a coal steamer bound for Swansea.

At the time the city had a large industrial workforce - miners, steelworkers, factory hands - but no cafés open at the hours they worked. Spotting a gap in the market, Luigi opened a High Street shop that began serving at 4 am to catch men heading to and from shifts. He made his own vanilla ice cream from milk, sugar and cornflour, and later expanded to several more cafés across the city, including on Fabian Way and St Helen’s Road.

In 1922 he brought his eldest son Giuseppe (“Joe”) from Italy to take over the café at 85 St Helen’s Road. Joe turned it into an ice-cream parlour (still the business’ flagship venue today), naming it after himself, and focused entirely on ice-cream.

After the Second World War he reworked the recipe - dropping the cornflour base in favour of a blend of five different milks with sugar, stabiliser and vanilla - and it’s the same formula that’s remained a favourite of locals to this day.

On VE Day in 1945, Joe marked the end of World War 2 by giving away free ice-cream, with queues stretching along St Helen’s Road - a gesture repeated in 2022 for the company’s centenary.

Swansea’s First Ice-Cream Man

Francesco Romano came to Swansea from Picinisco, Italy, in 1893. He started with a handcart, keeping his mixture cold in churns packed with Norwegian ice unloaded at Swansea docks - ice that had sailed from the fjords, stored in vast blocks in the town’s icehouses until it was needed.

Later, he and his wife, Rosa, plus six children who all helped, opened a shop on Rodney Street.

By the 1920s Romano was also selling from a Ford Model T, painted cream with gold lettering - possibly Swansea’s first ice-cream van (the photo above shows a later 1930s van).

He worked the Strand, Wind Street, and outside theatres after evening performances, catching the crowd still spilling out after performances.

Roberto Romano, Francesco’s grandson, recalls his grandfather’s ‘blobs’ - a generous scoop of ice cream topped with a glossy pour of chocolate that set hard enough to crack with the first bite.

The Pelosi Family Van

The Pelosi family came from Atina, a small hill town in Italy’s Lazio region that sent many migrants to South Wales in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, often to work in or start cafés and ice-cream businesses.

Loreto ran a café at 16 Lower Oxford Street and later added a converted Bedford van, which had a churning cabinet driven from the engine and worked a fixed summer route through Manselton and Cwmbwrla.

Vanilla was Loreto’s staple ice-cream flavour, but he also made orange, strawberry and coffee ice-cream in a back-room dairy using milk from Gorseinon.

The Fanciest Parlour in Town

You’re probably familiar with the Forte’s ice-cream parlour that overlooks Limeslade Bay today, but the business’ history in Mumbles stretches back to May 1936, when Giuseppe (Joe) Macari and his wife Vittoria - who had moved from Montattico in southern Italy via Scotland and Brighton - opened their first parlour on the seafront at The Dunns, right on the corner of Oystermouth Square, opposite Boots.

With curved glass windows, wicker chairs, marble counters and chrome coffee machines, it was one of the most modern cafés in the area. Ice-cream came in tall glass dishes, sometimes with fruit or wafers, and a trip to Mumbles often meant a visit to Forte’s, whatever the weather.

For more than three decades it was a fixture of the square, until September 1970, when the entire block - including the parlour - was demolished for a road-widening scheme, taking with it one of the village’s busiest corners.

Have you got a memory of buying ice-cream from any of these names, or another Swansea favourite I’ve missed? Hit reply and tell me!

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Sources:

• Romano family ice-cream van – Romano family ice cream business, Swansea
  https://www.peoplescollection.wales/items/1356796

• Loreto Pelosi’s van – Loreto Pelosi ice cream van, Lower Oxford Street, Swansea
  https://www.peoplescollection.wales/items/1357426

• Forte’s Ice-Cream Parlour, Mumbles – Forte’s Ice Cream Parlour – celebrating 80 years
  https://sites.google.com/site/ahistoryofmumbles/shopping-in-edwardian-mumbles-by-carol-powell-m-a/fortes-icream-parlour-celebrating-80-years

• Forte’s, Oystermouth Square – Forte’s Ice Cream Parlour, Oystermouth, c1969
  https://www.storyofmumbles.org.uk/en/catalogue_item/fortes-ice-cream-parlour-oystermouth-c1969

• Joe’s Ice Cream history – Our Story – Joe’s Ice Cream
  https://www.joes-icecream.com/our-story/

• Joe’s Ice Cream centenary article – Joe’s Ice Cream celebrates 100 years
  https://emmajanesmith.co.uk/joes-ice-cream-celebrates-100-years/