About the Author

Born and bred into an Ancoats Italian ice cream family in 1962, the stories I heard fuelled my passion to document the history of my community.

At the age of 7 my parents took me on my first Italian holiday, where I met our many relatives and saw the villages of my emmigrant grandparents. This inspired my interest in my roots and love for local history.

The seed for the book was a school history project started when I was 13, which then grew as I got older. I researched the church records of the Italian communis, the local libraries of Manchester, pestered my family, and drew on my own experiences working in the family ice cream business in Ancoats.

Today I give slideshow presentations on the community, around the north west of England. I am so pleased to see that the result of many years of my own painstaking research has fuelled passion in so many others. Its wonderful to know that the history of Ancoats Little Italy, documented from a variety of viewpoints, will never be forgotten.

This site is based on extracts from the booklet 'Ancoats: Manchester's Little Italy', above, by Anthony Rea. For copies you can contact me at: rea_tony@hotmail.com.
Alternatively you can purchase online from Amazon in the UK.

Never intended as a dry social history of Ancoats, the book paints a picture of Little Italy through anecdotes of its colourful inhabitants. It was first published in 1988, at a time when Ancoats had become virtually forgotten.

I would like to thank my cousin Patricia Gonzalez (nee Schiavo) for her time and help transcribing this book, and her continuous support throughout my research. Also the many people who contributed pictures and information, and especially the history makers of Little Italy.

Finally may I thank the hundreds of people who took the time to write after reading the book, talking of the happy memories it had evoked.

review and letters