A community finds its place - the Lettesi story

‘Why did we leave? Why wouldn’t we leave? We had lost everything.’ 

 In the Hamilton home of Tony (Antonio) and Pina D’Accione, I am listening to Ralph (Raffaele) Della Grotta with his wife Maria tell of their experiences as a member of the Lettesi community in Newcastle. The Lettesi[1] are part of a unique community of extended family members of some 145 households where one or both partners were born in the Abruzzo village of Lettopalena in Italy, and who settled in Newcastle between 1950 and 1956. [2] Two similar Lettesi communities are located in America and Argentina. [3]

A discovery place - Hamilton Public School

My first impression was of some kind of a discovery garden - but it is a public primary school. Buildings are plain and functional and there is plenty of paving, but what catches my eye are the creative touches everywhere. A huge funky chair balances high above the entrance gate in Samdon Street, and colourful hand painted signposts are immediately helpful to the visitor.

Search for the station master's house

Since I first discovered the trove of online digital images available through Newcastle’s cultural collections[1] I have been fascinated by the photograph of the Hamilton station master’s house. Damaged and discoloured with age, the cottage with three people standing in front had an other-worldly quality. I wondered where exactly it was – perhaps it still existed – and who those individuals were.

Gregson Park

As a gift, it wasn’t  quite all it seemed. It was probably the worst piece of land in Hamilton. That’s hard to imagine today, as we absorb the colourful expanses of spring flowering annuals and roses, wander the meandering paths, or watch kids in a playground protected by ancient fig trees.

Music in the genes - Betty Lind

When Disney’s Beauty and the Beast opened in Newcastle in 2006, three generations of the Lind family were involved in its production. Carolyn, daughter of Betty Lind and her late husband Frank, directed. Another daughter Kathryn played Madame de la Grande Bouche. Three of Carolyn and Kathryn’s children played ‘enchanted objects.’

Hamilton Baptist Church

It seems only natural that the early Hamilton Baptist Church would conduct its Christmas Day service on a summer evening in the much-loved Gregson Park. After all, the Church is directly opposite, at 108 Lindsay Street, where it has been since 1929. Historical church records refer to this as ‘our tradition.’

An Italian childhood - Maria Martinelli

‘I was born in 1938 on a small self-sufficient farm on the outskirts of Ascoli Piceno, a city on the north coast of the Adriatic Sea. I am the 10^th child of a family of 12, seven brothers, four sisters and myself.’

So begins Maria Martinelli’s life story.[1]

The Fern Street house

Every weekend, from the age of two in 1938 until he was about 24, Brian Archer stayed at his grandmother’s two storey weatherboard house in Fern Street, Islington.

Not far from the house was the railway line.

Every time a train passed through, the building shook from the vibrations.

Mac's Fruit Shop

‘He knew every piece of fruit in the shop. If anyone touched anything, he could tell!’

So says Julie Lomax, whose father Norman (Gaetano) Santamaria ran Mac’s Fruit Shop at 138 Beaumont Street, Hamilton, spanning the years of World War II, from 1939 to 1946.

I wondered how someone from the Aeolian islands in Italy’s far south, with the name Santamaria, happened to call his shop by the very English-sounding ‘Mac’s.’

Pina Deli - a community of food lovers

Pina Deli has been serving the cosmopolitan community of Hamilton and beyond for 54 years. There have been eight different owners of the business in that time, including two sets of sisters. The first five owners were from the tightly knit Lettesi community, people who migrated in large numbers from the war-devastated village of Lettopalena.

Northern Star Hotel

‘This must be the best position in Hamilton,’ Des Ramplin observed to his wife Marie, as they were discussing the prospect of buying the 110 year old Northern Star Hotel, in Hamilton.

It was 1986; interest rates were affordable and the Ramplins were ready to take on another challenge.

Last days of the Newcastle trams

Hamilton has a lively history as a transport hub. I am reminded of this when I drive past Hamilton Station, ever since the heavy rail line was truncated there on Boxing Day, 2014. Especially in peak hour, buses jostle for space along a cramped section of the Islington end of Beaumont Street, often queuing back into Fern Street. As the waiting buses belch fumes, passengers hurry from trains to their connecting buses for the city.

From ship's mate to Hamilton station master

When Harry (Henry) Frank Nesbitt was christened in 1858 at St Pancras Old Church, London, his godfather was Admiral Sir Charles Kelso, of the British Navy.

This association would shape his destiny – his career choice, where he would live, and who he would marry.

St Peter's Anglican Church, Hamilton

Hundreds of children were on the march, a more-or-less orderly line snaking its way from St Peter’s Anglican Church to Hamilton Station. At the front, two children held a wavering church banner aloft. They were off to the annual Sunday School picnic at Speers Point, the highlight of the year.

First, they would catch the train to Cockle Creek, then a steam tram to Speers Point. The event would have been an exciting adventure for children whose families did not own cars, and who walked everywhere within their suburb, Hamilton.

The Roxy Theatre

When I first heard Colin Chapman’s name spoken, it was in reverential tones. ‘Of course, you know of Colin Chapman.’ I didn’t, then – but now I understand the reason for the revered expression.

Most of us are fortunate if we know one person like Colin Chapman in our lifetime.

Colin Chapman was a singer, teacher, conductor, producer, director, actor and playwright. A leader and a visionary, he was able to gather round him others who shared his vision and were prepared to personally volunteer their skills, effort and time to achieving it.

Elisa and Peter Sandrone

These days, Elisa Sandrone is retired from her work as restaurateur, cooking teacher, child care provider, caterer and chef. But with her friends and large family, including two children and five grandchildren, dropping in and out so often I doubt she will ever retire from taking care of others, offering hospitality, and responding to their desire for traditional Italian fare.

To her daughter Luana, Elisa is an inspiration.

‘I wish I could be more like her,’ she tells me, simply.

When Hudson Street hummed

At the northern end of Hudson Street, Hamilton, amid residential houses, was a veritable hive of industry. But it was more than that – it was a community. Three large commercial enterprises were interlinked, bartering their goods and services in a friendly, mutually beneficial exchange.

The towering wheat silos of McIntyre’s flour mill were a Hamilton landmark for many decades. Between 1899 to 1989, the mill supplied flour to bakers in Newcastle and beyond, including overseas.

The Michelangelo Centre

It had been his dream for a dozen years or more – an opulent function centre in the heart of Hamilton, a dazzling extravaganza of imported sculptures and marble floors, fountains, hand painted murals in the fresco style, and 60 crystal chandeliers. Recapturing the splendor of 15^th century Rome and the Renaissance, the centre would also reflect the twin loves of its creator, Giuseppe Risicato - his Sicilian home, and immortal Italian artist Michelangelo Buonarroti.

One bet each way - Tony and Clare Rufo

Over the past decade, Hamilton residents Tony (Antonio) and Clare Rufo have travelled regularly to San Donato Val di Comino, Tony’s ancestral home town in Italy. Accompanied by family and friends, they fill a dozen rooms in a large B&B, and revel in the festival atmosphere that takes over each August. The population triples, as people make the journey home from far afield. Not just within Italy, but from places popular with emigrating San Donatese like Boston, New York, Toronto, and Ireland, for a month of parties and celebrations.

Knowing the Gow family of Fettercairn, Hamilton

There was no celebratory clinking of glasses of Scotch whisky when Fanny Gow, aged 42, gave birth to a boy in 1886, after 10 girls in succession. Temperance was the watchword of this prominent Hamilton family. Ramsay Gow, Fanny’s husband, was a foundation member of the Sons of Temperance, a member-only organization devoted to a life of abstinence from alcohol. Fanny herself was a great worker for the temperance cause, though her father was a publican.

Born to perform - Elma Gibbs

The pulling power of a high media profile was obvious even in the Newcastle of the late 1930s. When ‘sweetheart of the airwaves’ Elma Gibbs resigned to get married in 1942, thousands packed the Town Hall for her farewell. When she married Charles Puddicombe, a Newcastle Sun journalist, at Wesley Church, Hamilton, the press of people was so great that as she left the church, she ‘had to be carried to her car over the heads of the spectators’. [1]

Saving an AA Company house in Hamilton

It continued to await its future, concealed in a battle axe block behind 195 Denison Street. This compact nineteenth century residence was once the home of two AA Company Overmen and a Viewer (manager) of collieries.

In 1994, a chance discovery by a young postgraduate student cycling over Cameron’s Hill along Denison Street was to bring hope to this historic house. Vacant since 1963 and the passing of owner Charles Little, it was becoming increasingly derelict.

Which David Murray was he?

The repetition of given names, especially naming first born sons after their father or grandfather, is a tradition with centuries of history behind it. I find it extremely  confusing, especially when trying to understand how the many different Murrays that scatter Hamilton’s history are connected.

Murray Street, Hamilton runs parallel to Beaumont Street to its east, neatly truncated at its northern end by Lindsay Street and south at Denison Street. The Scots Kirk, dedicated in 1887 and considered one of the finest pieces of church architecture in the Northern District, occupies the corner of Tudor and Murray Streets. Inside the Kirk are three stained glass windows – each a memorial to a man with the name David Murray. Were there three?