Barga

This guide to Barga in Lucca traces how a hilltop Tuscan town's woodcutters ended up shaping Scotland's fish and chip shops, beginning with an odd invitation from the Duke of Argyll in the 1890s and the collapse of Barga's wool and silk trade after Italian unification. It follows families who left for Glasgow, Ayr, Largs and Greenock and reinvented themselves in an unfamiliar trade. Listen for the Italian surnames that still hang over Scottish high streets and the accents that never quite left Tuscany behind.