The Italian community in Dumfries and south-west Scotland: a short history

Most Scottish-Italian families came from a few hill districts of central Italy, above all Barga, near Lucca in Tuscany, and Picinisco in Lazio, mainly between the 1880s and 1920, and opened the cafés, ice-cream parlours and fish and chip shops found in almost every Scottish town, Dumfries and Galloway included. In June 1940 Italian men in Britain were interned, and hundreds died when the Arandora Star was sunk; today about 14,500 people living in Scotland were born in Italy. This short history comes from Ivano's Italiano, the Italian takeaway at 11 Whitesands in Dumfries.

Where they came from

As the historian Terri Colpi puts it, "Barga (Lu) and Picinisco (Fr) have become household names, and not just amongst Italians." A map of Italians in 1930s Scotland, built by the National Records of Scotland and the National Library of Scotland, lists the main provinces of origin as Lucca, Frosinone, Isernia and La Spezia, in that order. Glasgow's Italians came mostly from the province of Lucca, especially Barga; Edinburgh's were dominated by people from Picinisco.

When, and why

Small numbers of Italians appeared in Glasgow after 1860, many of them pedlars and makers of plaster religious figurines.

The big wave came from the 1880s to 1920, driven by poverty in the hill villages: between 1876 and 1914, fourteen million Italians emigrated. Barga's town council adds a local cause: when Barga became part of the new Italian state in the 19th century, it lost the tax privileges it had enjoyed as a Florentine enclave in the territory of Lucca, and grew poorer.

The numbers grew fast:

Cafés, ice cream and fish suppers

Glasgow's local history site describes the split that became famous: many families from Barga "found a niche as proprietors of fish and chip shops", while families from Picinisco turned to ice cream. Many opened cafés specialising in ice cream and, as the same site puts it, "recognising the effects of the weather", diversified into fish and chips.

By the 1920s and 1930s, in Colpi's words, "almost every town hosted at least one Italian family in ice cream or fish and chips", often where there were no other immigrants at all.

In Dumfries and Galloway

The 1930s map gives a close look at the south-west. Built mainly from a 1936 directory of Italians in Britain, which its makers warn is incomplete and has errors, it lists around ten Italian entries in Dumfries: among them a confectioner and ice-cream merchant on Queen Street, an ice-cream vendor, a café on Ann Street, and shopkeepers on Friars Vennel, English Street and Queensberry Street. It has more in Annan, Stranraer, Newton Stewart, Lockerbie, Castle Douglas, Kirkcudbright, Langholm and other towns: just over thirty entries across the region in all.

There were Italian prisoners of war in the region too. At Hallmuir, near Lockerbie, the wartime camp held German and Italian prisoners before it became home to Ukrainians, and Historic Environment Scotland records that one of its huts, now the Ukrainian chapel, was used as a chapel by the Italians.

The tradition carried on after the war. Bruno's restaurant on Balmoral Road says it opened in 1967 as the first Italian restaurant in south-west Scotland, and that its founder came from a small village in the Garfagnana, the upper Serchio valley next to Barga. The Palmerston Café on Glasgow Street has been run by the Tamburrini family since 1969, serving fish and chips and Italian ice cream. And Ivano, whose cooking our takeaway is built on, was born in Lucca in 1957 and, as our old website put it in 2009, came to Dumfries "about 20 years ago".

June 1940

On 10 June 1940 Italy entered the war on Germany's side, and that night anti-Italian riots broke out. In Edinburgh, crowds of up to 2,000 gathered and more than 100 shops were attacked.

The next day, according to the National Archives, Winston Churchill told the War Cabinet he had instructed the Home Security minister to arrange for male Italians to be interned. The order is popularly remembered as "collar the lot", though the Churchill historian Richard Langworth points out that the phrase doesn't appear anywhere in Churchill's published words. Italian men aged 17 to 60 who had lived in Britain for less than twenty years were arrested and interned, most of them on the Isle of Man.

The Arandora Star

On 2 July 1940 the Arandora Star, taking internees to Canada, was torpedoed by the German submarine U-47 about 75 miles off the west coast of Ireland. The National Archives gives 717 Italians aboard and 470 killed; other counts differ, and the most recent research, by Alfonso Pacitti in 2024, puts the Italian dead at 442. Colpi estimates that around 100 of them were from Scotland, and at least 15 came from Barga alone.

Today

Scotland's 2022 census counted 14,500 people born in Italy, more than double the 6,000 of 2011. Barga still calls itself "the most Scottish town in Italy", with a fish and chip festival every summer: we've written about it in Barga, "the most Scottish town in Italy". Our own story is in Ivano's on the Whitesands: a short history.

Once we reopen, Thursday to Sunday, 4pm to 10pm, you'll find us at 11 Whitesands, Dumfries DG1 2RR, frying fish suppers next to the pizza oven. Order at ivanos.uk.

Sources

Every source below was opened on 3 October 2026 (a few through a downloaded copy or an Internet Archive snapshot, where the live page blocked automated reading).

• Terri Colpi, "Made by Italo-Scots: the Italian factor in Scotland today", keynote at the Scottish Parliament, 16 April 2013 (University of Edinburgh)
• Terri Colpi, "Building Italian communities", Our Migration Story (Runnymede Trust)
• Terri Colpi, "Italian identity in Scotland: archival foundations", Broadsheet 50, Scottish Council on Archives
• National Records of Scotland and National Library of Scotland, "Family Portrait: the Scots-Italians 1890–1940" map
• TheGlasgowStory, "1830s to 1914: Migrants"
• Comune di Barga, "L'emigrazione" (archived January 2026)
• Census of Scotland 1911, report on foreigners (Vision of Britain, University of Portsmouth)
• Scotland's Census 2022, demography and migration
• North Lanarkshire Council museums, "Italians in Lanarkshire"
• Curious Edinburgh (University of Edinburgh), Leith Walk
• The National Archives, "The loss of SS Arandora Star"
• Richard M. Langworth, on "collar the lot"
• Alfonso Pacitti, Arandora Star analysis and embarkation listing of Italians, December 2024
• Italian Scotland, the Italian Cloister Garden
• Historic Environment Scotland, Hallmuir Ukrainian Chapel (LB49592)
• Wendy Ugolini, Experiencing War as the 'Enemy Other': Italian Scottish Experience in World War II (Manchester University Press, 2011)
• La Nazione, 18 April 2024 (Barga and the Arandora Star)
• Bruno's Italian Restaurant, about, and Palmerston Café, about

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