Wingate Italian ice-cream parlour moved to Beamish

The parlour's original fittings include names carved over the years

An Italian ice-cream parlour run for more than 50 years by the same family is to be moved to Beamish Museum.

The shop in Wingate, East Durham has original carved wooden seating booths, smoked glass and bevelled mirrors.

Believed to date from the 1920s or earlier, it will be rebuilt in the County Durham museum's new 1950s area.

Deputy director Jim Rees said he was "gobsmacked" when he saw it, "because you don't expect a pit village to have something like that".

The parlour and cafe closed eight years ago when owner John Parisella died.

'Extraordinary place'

"It'll be really sad when they do start dismantling it," his daughter Maria Ebblewhite said.

"But... our children, our grandchildren, they're going to be able to go there and say this is my granddad's. How many people can say that?"

Mr Rees called it a "most extraordinary place".

"I was astonished both that it had survived and that it had existed in the first place in a pit village," he said.

The museum is very keen to hear from anyone who has photographs, especially external views of the original frontage, which no longer exists.

It intends the ice-cream parlour and cafe to be fully functional.

"And it would still be called John's Cafe, because it is John's cafe," Mr Rees said.