WHEN ice cream arrived from in this country from the Continent, it
was known as “frozen snow” and there was a flurry of responses to the
Memories 99 article about Italian ice cream makers

EVERY town and village had its own immigrant family, the first of whom escaped the poverty of rural villages around Rome in the 1890s to bring the art of ice cream making to the North-East.

They were known as the “hokey pokey men”, from their Italian cry of “oche poco” – “oh, how cheap”.

Here is some of the ice cream feedback: M EMORIES 99 showed Frederico Domenico’s horsedrawn ice cream cart which was made, of course, by Raines of Spennymoor.

Harry Flint, of Trimdon Station, used to work for Frederico’s son, also called Fred, who had a little property empire in Front Street, Wingate. He owned a fruit and veg shop, an ice cream parlour, a billiards saloon (later motorcycle showroom) and the Empire cinema.

“When I left Trimdon Foundry Boys school I started there as a trainee projectionist in 1955,” says Harry. “Fred was a sociable man, although his mother was a bit of a tartar. He went back to Italy to find a wife, and she didn’t speak very much English.”

After a year or so, Harry went down the mines, but kept a night job as a relief projectionist at the Empire.

“The films were delivered by a distribution van, but we had to go through to a wholesaler, Bruce Moore in Wheatley Hill, to collect the records for the music,” he says.

“About 300 yards up the street, next to the Commercial Hotel, was the Palace Cinema. It was bigger than the Empire, and had an upstairs balcony.”

When Fred died in about 1960, the ice cream parlour was sold to another Italian, John Parasella. His name can still be seen above the café door – it is called John’s – although the café itself seems long closed.

The Northern Echo: VAN FAN: Colin Hurworth, right, and a couple of Gabriele’s ice cream vans in the early 1970s.
Colin Hurworth, right, and a couple of Gabriele’sice cream vans in the early 1970s

Both cinemas have gone.

The Palace appears to have been built on, and in the 1960s, the Empire became a bingo hall.

The Northern Echo’s archive contains a picture taken in September 1970 of Francis Langford, who ran a mobile cinema business, reopening the Empire as a cinema. Nowadays, a run of shops called Empire Buildings is on its spot.

IN 1922, Emedio and Maria Gabriele moved from Arpino in central Italy to Bishop Auckland, and set up an ice cream factory in Bondgate. Now in its third generation, Gabriele’s is still serving.

Colin Hurworth had a student summer job with Gabriele’s in the early 1970s.

“Can you imagine the thrill of being 18 or so and given not only a vehicle to drive, but that the same vehicle was filled with ice cream, sweets, pop, crisps?” he asks, and it does sound like heaven.

His round was usually Hunwick, Willington and Byers Green. “The flats at Bessemer Park, Spennymoor, were something else,” he says.

The Northern Echo: An ice cream van made by Raines of Spennymoor for Gabriele’s in the 1950s
An ice cream van made by Raines of Spennymoor for Gabriele’s in the 1950s

“We would drive up to an area, ring the chimes, then sit back and read a couple of chapters of a book while they made their way down from the top floors! Heaven help you the following day if you had not waited long enough.” A NOTHER name that has been mentioned several times is Quadrini of Witton Park. Mr and Mrs Quadrini seem to have been late adopters of motorised ice cream transport because in to the 1950s they patrolled the area with a horsedrawn trap.

They did eventually get a cream and pale green Morris van.