The Italian community in Clerkenwell, which had grown from a handful of emigrants fleeing the revolutions in Italy in the 1840’s into a full “colony” of several thousand by the 1890’s, was fading when Geoffrey Fletcher visited and recorded his impressions in his book London At My Feet in the 1970’s. How much would be left, I wondered, as I set off to look for it on a sunny March morning in 2019? I wasn’t optimistic. I’d walked through this area many times and couldn’t remember any particular Italian character.
Fletcher described the neighbourhood around Saffron Hill in his book as “an atmospheric area that still houses a considerable Italian colony” occupying “the great, grim, tenement blocks…[of the area]…and the various odiferous courts, which no doubt reminded them of the slums in the old Spanish quarter up-hill in Naples.”
Saffron Hill’s name sounds a lot more fragrant and rural than the reality of the twenty-first century street. There are no tenements left and only very few buildings that predate the birth of this new century. Modern faceless, dull, utilitarian buildings crowd out both sides of this narrow street which leads from Charterhouse Street and winds up to Clerkenwell Road. It was very disappointing and reinforced my pessimism. This did not look like it would be a rewarding trip.
Little Italy was based around St Peter’s Catholic church on Clerkenwell Road and I was delighted to find it where Geoffrey had left it half a century ago. Its design is undoubtedly influenced by Italy. The pretty, gaudy doorway into the church could be transplanted and dropped into a back street in Rome and would not look a jot out of place. Unfortunately a service was in full flow when I arrived and I was unable to have a poke round the inside.
Using this as an excuse, I took myself to a cafe I’d spotted a couple of doors down the road and inadvertantly found myself in Terroni’s of Clerkenwell which Geoffrey had delighted in back in the 1970’s. Terroni’s was only a grocer then but now it is part grocer – all Italian brands arranged attractively on open shelves as you would hope – and part coffee shop. It smelt wonderful, all coffee and hams and cheeses and good bread. Fletcher wrote that Terroni’s was the type of shop which offered “civilised shopping of a kind now fading from England – personal shopping, well interlaced with gossip; no stupefying self-service in which one might as well be automated; the shop is a club, open to all, with time for conversation, comparisons, little slices of family history.”
And I was delighted to find that in this cafe, a little bit of the old Little Italy remained.
I ordered a coffee and sat back to watch the drama of the cafe unfold.
Italian songs played on the radio.
Men who had been sent to buy cheese and ham from the counter talked in a mixture of Italian and cockney with the smiling man behind the counter and the line of people behind them in the queue.
A man joined me on my table. He ordered a coffee and got a book out but before he started reading we fell to talking. He was English but was waiting while his Italian wife worshipped in St Peters. They lived out in Chiswick but came to Clerkenwell most Sundays for church and then a snack in Terroni’s. His wife had grown up round here.
“My wife has done this for as long as I can remember,” he said. “In fact she’s been coming back here since before we met. She likes to meet up with old friends who are now scattered across the city. They come back to the old neighbourhood on a Sunday.”
The cafe bustled with friendly assistants, one of them took time to explain the limited Sunday menu to me and when I chose a panini, she told me she would make my sandwich with love. (She must have done, it tasted terrific.)
Announced by a cloud of perfume and glinting sunlight rebounding from a plethora gold jewelry, an invasion of Italian ladies burst in and scrambled to pull together a table for eight, giggling and talking ten to the dozen. Ignoring the rest of the room, they all seemed to be talking at the same time and nobody appeared to be listening!
An old man dallied over a small coffee, looking lonely and sad in the middle of the noise.
A mother talked on her mobile phone, while her little girl sat kicking her legs under her chair in her Sunday best.
The staff enjoyed joining in all the conversations.
It’s not a posh cafe, nor is it a place for gourmet cooking but it has a heart that beats with a light foreign energy, and an easy smile and a welcoming gesture.
It felt very local, yet not very English.
It was indeed, still, a little slice of Italy in Clerkenwell.
Delightful.
