"I think because they were farmers and they didn't have a lot, they were determined," said Ida. The 94-year-old woman is sat at her kitchen table in Clydach, drinking a cup of tea and flicking through a photo album filled with old portraits of her Italian family.
Black and white photographs from trips to rural Italy when she was a little girl show her family posing next to farm animals in the Italian countryside. But as Ida Morgan turns the pages of the album, we are then transported to early twentieth century industrial Wales.
Stood outside a cafe and tobacconists in the Swansea valley, three brothers pose in front of their new business venture looking defiant and ready to embark on a new chapter worlds away from their humble beginnings in rural Italy. Over a hundred years later, their great-grandchildren are still fighting to keep their dream alive. You can get more Swansea news and other story updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to our newsletters here.
The teenager who walked to Wales from Italy to flee from poverty
According to family legend, in the early 1900s, 14-year-old Attilio Conti walked to south Wales from Bardi in Northen Italy in search of a better life. Attilio was the son of Alfredo Conti and his family lived on a small farm with little money.
Rural life in Italy was hard at this time and many Italians like Attilio came from all over Italy to south Wales. Attilio ventured to Merthyr and worked in a cafe run by the Berni brothers. The Italian community grew rapidly throughout the south Wales Valleys at this time and many cafes, ice cream parlours and restaurants owned by Italian families became part of the fabric of Welsh industrial life.
When WW1 began in 1914, Attilio enlisted in the Italian army to fight German troops in the Italian Alps. When the war ended, Attilio returned to Wales and was joined by his brothers Giacomo and Alfredo and his sister Luisa.
Brothers Giacomo, Alfredo and Attilio brought a slice of Italy to the Swansea valley mining town of Ystradgynlais in 1920 with the first of many Conti's Cafes. Famous for its ice cream, coffee and good food which was enjoyed by Welsh working class communities, Conti's Cafes eventually popped up across the country in areas like Newport, Lampeter and Builth.
Attilio returned to Italy to marry his childhood sweetheart, Maria Conti, in 1926, but his family soon came back to the Swansea valley to open a second cafe in Clydach. An industrial village famous for its nickel refinery, the new Clydach cafe supplied refinery workers with cigarettes, hearty meals and Italian coffee and opened from 6am until 11pm each night.
Attilio had four children with his wife Maria and they ran cafes in Clydach and then Newport together. One of these children, the now 94-year-old Angela Ida Maria Morgan, was born above the Clydach cafe and remembers the village as a "buzzing" community where everyone knew everyone.
The widower who moved to mid-Wales with four kids and served coffee to prisoners of war
After Ida's mother Maria sadly died at just 35 from a sudden illness the widowed Attilio found himself as a single parent with four young children. His fourth child, Louis, was born just two months before Maria's death.
On a family trip to Builth Wells in 1936, Attilio noticed a shop for rent on the high street. Moving his four children to Builth, he opened a new cafe and remarried to a Welsh woman named Winifred.
Ida remembered the American and Irish troops stationed around Builth that her family served in the cafe. With Pendre prisoner of war camp nearby, Ida said the Italian prisoners would be able to come into the village and her father got to know some of them quite well.
The prisoners would come in through the back of the cafe and speak Italian with her father, Ida said. One Italian prisoner of war was a tailor who had a business back in Rome and Ida remembered him making clothes for her and her siblings out of blankets.
Ida still reminisces about these earlier years - she said they later visited the man and his family in Rome and remembered the day the war ended when she was just 19. "The regiments that were there when the war ended were the Irish Inniskillings. Wonderful boys they were, we were all dancing on the greens."
Frothy coffee and steamed pies: The next generation carry on the Conti legacy in Wales
While Attilio stayed in Builth his children moved away, all but one carrying on the family business in cafes and shops across Wales. After marrying refinery worker John Morgan, Ida worked in the Tick Tock clock factory in Ystradgynlais before she took over her family's Clydach cafe from her sister.
Buying the cafe in 1957 with a six-month-old baby at her side, Ida said it was a difficult time. "We had nothing. John and I were working and Greg was in his pram in the shop. The customers were wonderful with him." Conti's in Clydach opened every day of the year other than Christmas and even then Ida said customers would knock on the door.
Ida and John did all the cooking, making anything that went with chips and toast for their loyal customers. "Frothy coffee was our main thing and steamed pies. People still talk about them. We were the first to have a coffee machine in south Wales I think!"
Ida's granddaughter Camille Griffiths, now 42, remembers the glass jars of sweets which lined the shelves of her grandparents' cafe and shop. Camille later lived above the cafe when her mother took it over but said her grandmother never stopped working there. Known as "Mrs M" to the locals, Ida was described as a true matriarch of Clydach who was well respected and did not take any nonsense. Her husband was well-loved in the community and known as "John the Caff".
Surviving the supermarkets: What happened to Conti's?
When her parents took over the shop from the late eighties, Camille said it was the place to be in Clydach. An integral part of village life, Camille said the customers were amazing and she adored growing up above the shop. Sadly, this was the final decade of the Conti's golden age in Clydach and by 2000, the family were unable to compete with big chains moving into the village.
At Christmas time, Camille said they would sell beautiful boxes of chocolates and at Easter they would sell thousands of chocolate eggs. Camille laughed as she recalled her mother coming into her room and taking the eggs that had been gifted to her so the shop would have more stock.
But then supermarkets arrived and sold the same products for half the price. Like many other family-run businesses across Wales, Conti's was hit badly by the competition. Ida said it was a terrible time for the family. "[The business] had always been in the family," said granddaughter Camille. "Then all of a sudden you were seeing shops like Kwik Save, which is now Co-op, and Spar. This had an affect on little businesses like ours. Suddenly at Easter we would have eggs left on the shelves."
The shop and cafe, which had been a part of the village for the best part of a century, closed in 2000. Camille's grandparents finally retired and her mother went to work in the furniture shop Eddershaws. Camille moved on with her life and left Clydach, moved to university, working in the council and even having a little boy named Vito. But this was not to be the end of Conti's legacy in Clydach.
"There's something missing in the village": Clydach gets a new wine bar with a familiar face
Taking after her great-grandfather, Camille had always been involved in catering and hospitality and her grandmother Ida joked that she was more Italian than her. One evening she was sat with her husband and said to him: "There's something missing in the village."
With the closure of the popular Carpenters Arms family pub in Clydach, Camille felt there were plenty of places in the village for men to go and watch rugby and have a pint but nowhere to go and have a nice drink as a couple. In 2016, Camille decided to go back to Clydach and open her own wine bar on the same high street her family had traded on for generations. Camille and her grandmother said everyone was horrified at Camille's new business plan as they felt it was too ambitious for a humble village like Clydach which many thought had seen its better days.
"People thought it was a bit of a run-down village. It was the mindset of people- they thought it could happen in Swansea but not down here," Camille explained. Grandmother Ida added, "It was a spit and sawdust type of place, it just wasn't the place for a wine bar."
"Everyone thought, 'what is she doing?' But when it started to work, it worked," said Camille. Her proud grandmother said Piccolo Bar was a very special gem that brought Clydach back to life. Before he sadly passed away two years ago, Camille's grandfather John would visit with wife Ida and enjoy wine tastings and afternoon tea. The Contis were back in Clydach and customers came in to catch-up with old friends.
"We were back in the village life again," said Camille. "The generations of customers would come in and [her grandmother] would say to me, 'Oh I kicked him out for swearing once!' The youngsters who used to come in are now married with children."
Just like her grandmother had done sixty years earlier, Camille had taken a risk with a new business and had a young family to support. "There were a few quiet weeks and I thought, 'what have I done?' But then Christmas came and by that point there wasn't enough room in the bar to fit everyone."
Old photos of the Conti family were hung proudly on the wall as the cosy but classy new wine bar proved to be a hit with the village. Eventually outgrowing the small building, Camille moved the bar across the road to the former Barclay's bank in 2018 so more customers could enjoy the friendly atmosphere.
The new bar boats three different rooms and an outdoor seating area and was filled with customers in the first two years. "We would be roofed on weekends, everybody knew everybody and it became the place to be because you wouldn't have to pay for a taxi home from Swansea," said owner Camille, who added that she finally felt part of the community again.
Cost-of-living crisis and Covid: The Conti family are still fighting
Then Covid hit and the thriving business faced unprecedented times, spending hundreds of pounds to meet safety requirements and having to close during lockdowns. Things have never been the same since Covid, Camille explained, with less people coming out in the evenings ever since. Coupled with the cost-of-living crisis, it has been a tricky couple of years for the business owner. Camille said running the bar had got more expensive with basics like gas for the beer and oil for the fryer tripling in price.
Although it has been a difficult time, Camille is confident the village will pull together and support local businesses. Ida said she was so proud that Camille was carrying on the family legacy as the fourth generation to serve loyal customers in Clydach.
"The village had actually gone until she opened and she brought it back," Ida said. "She's done more for Clydach than anyone else had done. All the business people admired Camille for bringing life into the village."
While there is still one original Conti's Cafe in Lampeter, the business has also been hit by the cost-of-living crisis which is wiping out small operations across Wales. Conti's Cafe in Lampeter shut its doors for the first time in its 90-year history this winter due to "massive increases in energy costs" and the sky-rocketing cost of ingredients.
Famous for their Italian-style ice cream, the family-run business which was owned by Ida's now 94-year-old older brother Angelo Conti before his daughter Jo took it over has been a staple in Lampeter for almost a century. Their famous secret-recipe ice cream is loved by many and was even sampled by the cast of Gavin and Stacey. A truly Welsh-Italian institution similar to that of Joe's ice cream in Swansea, Conti's has made its mark in mid-Wales and beyond.
The Conti's have sacrificed a lot to make a better life in Wales and the younger generation of the Conti family are still serving Welsh communities decades later. As we face historically difficult times, the hard work and determination of the young boy from a farm in Italy who walked to south Wales clearly lives on through Camille and her strong-willed family members.
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