Old photos of life and work in Norwich's Italian Quarter

And most of them could be found in half a dozen rough and tumble old yards within a stone’s throw of the Church of St Michael-at-Thorne off Ber Street.

A Saturday in old Ber Street during the 1920s, once home to the Italian community, when the cattle were on the move (Image: Newsquest Archive)

There is a chapter on The Italian Quarter in a wonderful little book called In the City of Gardens by the talented author Herbert Leeds published in 1907.

Life was tough in these squalid yards and Herbert threw the spotlight on the Italians saying how hard they worked to earn a few shillings to survive on.

Wood Yard, off Ber Street, December 1938 (Image: Philip Armes Collection)

Organ grinding and the selling roast chestnuts in the winter and the vending of ice-cream in the summer months were the chief ways of making a living.

“To trudge 20 vmiles a day with an organ, and very probably a wife and children, with perpetual stoppages to roll out a medley of tunes that have wearied you, and are fast wearing others, does not make up so easy going an existence as might appear,” writes Herbert.

Plaster moulding works established by the Italians in Ber Street (Image: Courtesy of www.picture.norfolk.gov.uk)

“In sunshine or rain; beneath a summer sky or in a dense November fog: throughout the day and well into the evening, these people apply themselves hopefully to their task.

“Meeting or resenting interferences from the police, tolerating with as good a grace as they can, taunts from mischievous  revellers and orders to move from irritated – or unmusical – householders,” he writes.

Children playing outside houses on Lamb Yard in Norwich, part of the Italian Quarter, July 1938 (Image: Philip Armes Collection)

But Herbert makes the point that making a living was often even harder for the chestnut vendor trying to selling them at night to the throngs of pleasure seeks as they went or returned  from “places of amusement.”

Come the warmer weather many of the chestnut sellers turned to the vending of  that iced confection, the praises of which during the summer months were daily chanted in our streets…ice cream.

“Big Peter Chiesa” in Ber Street in around 1910. Thought to be the first ice-cream seller in Norwich (Image: Courtesy of www.picture.norfolk.gov.uk)

“To the true bred Italian his pasticcio of macaroni is an essential to a full meal as roast beef is to that of the Englishman,” says Herbert.

While pointing out that recreation or amusement found little place in the lives of these people although a simple game by the name of Ginoco della Marra, amid much animated argument and gesture was popular.

Twiddys Court in the July sunshine off Ber Street in 1938 (Image: Philip Armes Collection)

And according to that census there were 28 German men and 12 women in Norwich along with 16 Russian men and five women, 11 American males and 9 women, 11 Swiss men and six women, six French men and nine women, nine Polish men and three women, one Belgium male and two women, while there was one Norwegian gent, one Austrian man and one Dutch female.

You will be fortunate to find a copy of  The City of Gardens by Herbert Leeds published in 1907 but there are copies of The Old Courts and Yards of Norwich by Frances and Michael Holmes of Norwich Heritage Projects on sale in City Books, Davey Place.