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Oral history recording in English with Vittorio Morillo. Recorded as part of the Italian Memories in Wales project (2008-10), delivered by ACLI-ENAIP and funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Summary Part 1 00.00 Vittorio was born in Morcone, Benevento province, in the Campania region on the ninth July 1937. When he was eleven he went to work on the land for a landowner and worked the land until he was fourteen. His family then worked together on the land themselves. He married at nineteen and went to carry out military service. In 1961 he emigrated to Wales and worked for a landowner for six years. He then moved to Houghton and worked on Church Farm for 18 years. In the meantime he rented some land and started to grow vegetables, he then bought some land. They rented a shop in 1983. In 1987 they opened a fish and chip shop on Bridge Street in Milford Haven. The family now sell coffee and coffee machines.

04.00 Vittorio’s parents weren’t married as his father had left his wife. So Vittorio has his mother’s surname. He lived with his father until he died when Vittorio was 24 years old. His parents had a small holding of about three or four acres, yet they rented land which they then bought. The family had always worked the land and he describes the crops, the work all done by hand and long working hours. Comparatively, farm work in Wales was easier, the equipment was better. In Italy the family would work the land and then crops would be divided in half. The landowner there treated the well.

12.07 Food was easy to come by, apart from during the war where the government took a certain amount of the produce. Vittorio believes it was kept until it rotted instead of being handed out to the people. The family would have to hide food underground. He recalls the fascist regime as a bad time; his grandfather was beaten into voting for Mussolini. He remembers German soldiers in the area, their camp was not far from his house. When the Americans were passing through from Sicily there was a lot of fighting around his house He remembers a situation where, as a child, a German soldier pointed a gun at him and made him go and get bread for them.

18.00 As a child Vittorio had always planned to move away when he was older. They were a poor family so he had to start worked as a child. He had two brothers and two sisters- Antonietta, Domenic, Vittorio, Maria and Pasquale. He went to school for the first time when he was eleven yet only learnt to write his name as they couldn’t afford the books etc. His sister never went to school and his mother couldn’t read and write, but his younger brother went to school as Vittorio made him get a better education. He went into the building trade whereas the other brothers carried on in farming. In November 1961 he moved to Wales. His brother went to the army, his sister went to South America, and so three siblings all left the family at the same time.

24.32 He went to church until the age of fifteen, when he had a bad experience with the priest who was very powerful in the town. The school was near his house and he remembers seeing children on fascist marches every morning. They would line up from about six years old in uniform. During the war as a young child he was terrified, there was a lot of bombing as they lived by the railway a lot of bridges were blown up to stop soldiers getting through. He recalls the social life in their town; people would go to each other’s houses to socialise and arrange a dance or music.

34.35 Things changed drastically when the war finished. He emigrated to Wales for work and a better life. Primarily he found life very difficult and hard work. He had a work permit before he left Italy and had to have a medical, and to go to the police station every month to show them his registration certificate. As a result he became friends with the local policeman, who would visit his house to stamp the document in the end.

Summary Part 2 00.15 Vittorio met Welsh people through their shop and through being the hospital gardener. They opened the ‘Old Cottage Chip shop’ and the family sold fish and chips thinking this would be more successful than a farming business. They bought another shop to make a coffee shop but ended up letting both shops. Italians wouldn’t come into the shop very often as Italians were competitive.

04.35 Vittorio managed to get a permit to work in Wales through a friend who was a prisoner of war in the area and stayed on to work on farms. He talks about prisoners of war being treated like family in Wales. When talking about the prisoner of war camp he compares it to National Service in Italy with regards to the curfew. Vittorio carried out National Service when he was twenty and gets a pension of £150 a year he laughs. Vittorio recalls his journey over to Wales; he had a medical and had no expectations of Britain. As part of the contract the farmer had to pay for him to emigrate, if he didn’t like it the farmer had to pay his return fare. The journey was three days and three nights, when he got off the train his shirt was black as it was a steam engine. The journey was hard as he didn’t understand the language, he had to trust people to tell him when to get off the train. Vittorio recalls his first impressions on arrival in Wales; he expected something grander. The language problems were very difficult, but he learnt from meeting people or buying and selling cattle or farming equipment.

Summart Part 3 00.18 Vittorio doesn’t find the Italian and Welsh cultures very different, he thinks they have a lot of similar ideas. For example the Welsh and Italian language is similar- words for window and broad beans. His children enjoy going to Italy but they feel Welsh. Vittorio does feel more Welsh than Italian now, though he has never changed his nationality. They eat Italian food and he spoke Italian dialect to his children. They return to Italy a lot with their importing business.

Summary Part 4 00.10 The coffee business is very competitive in Wales, there are a couple of Italian businesses- others are Segafredo, Ferrari yet they supply Gioia all over Wales, to Northern Ireland and Scotland. They started the business when they realised that people would travel miles for a good cappuccino from a good coffee machine. Their plan was to come for a short while to work and then return to Italy to be with their families.