Just like fish and chips and a traditional roast, ice cream has become a national institution.

After all, who can resist a tempting cornet, especially while on summer holidays by the seaside?

Despite popular belief, however, ice cream is not an English invention. A version of it was enjoyed in China as early as 200BC and it was from the orient that Venetian explorer Marco Polo (1254-1324) introduced it to what is surely now regarded as its adopted home – Italy.

The Italians made (and, indeed, still make) fantastic ice cream and were responsible for developing its popularity across Europe.

Even Charles I (r.1625-1649) had what was described as “frozen snow” on his court menus.

Three hundred years later, Italian ice cream came to Maldon - and it was all thanks to one remarkable dynasty.

The Consonni family originally lived in Ponte S. Pietro, near Bergamo, in the Lombardy province of northern Italy.

Luigi Consonni and wife Carolina (née Ravasio) had four children – Pietro Luigi (b.1880), Maria (b.1882), Carolina and Gina.

All seemed fairly normal – a picture of happy Italian domesticity – but in 1890 they upped sticks and moved 850 miles, initially to London and then to Maldon.

Carolina’s family were already in London and knew of the rewards available for hard work as also found by many other Italians who were making the same migration at that time.

They changed their name from Consonni to the, nevertheless, equally Italian Volta and Luigi became Peter and Carolina, Carol.

Having moved, Peter Volta established a Refreshment House at 29 High Street (one of the shops that stood in front of All Saints’ Church) and he became renowned for his home-made Italian ice cream. He also had a stall on the Promenade for which the rent was just £35 per annum, and, as one author has put it, no visit there “would have been complete without an ice cream or glass of lemonade”.

They also had “sweets and sugared almonds in glass jars waiting to be weighed out”.

The family lived above their High Street shop, became accepted as part of the Maldon community and grew with the addition of two more children – Francesco (b.1892) and Beatrice (b.1894).

By 1901, 20-year-old son Pietro Luigi (who had become known as Lou, or Lewis) had taken over running the business with his sister, Maria.

Volta’s expanded to include a neighbouring building at 31 High Street (rented from Mr Bright) and in 1907 Lou married Heybridge-born Gertrude Ella Patten.

They, in turn, had two sons, Benvenuto Angelo (aka Ben, b.1908) and Mario Luigi (aka Bill, b.1913).

Their business grew and they added 48 High Street, also always known as Volta’s Café, (now the site of M&Co), to their ice cream (and other refreshments) empire, which included number 44 Mill Road, known as the “bottom shop”, and managed in the 1920s by Miss Esther Palmer.

The rest of the Consonni family moved back to the Bergamo area of Italy and when numbers 29 and 31 were eventually demolished in 1917, trading continued at number 48.

Lou had a new home built (a bungalow in Victoria Road) and also built at least two other properties in the same road.

He had interests in Colchester (at 2 St Botolph’s Corner) and Burnham (the Quay Café, managed by Alf Patten, Gertrude’s brother).

Lou’s generation of the family visited their relatives in Italy most years, travelling by train with precious tea hidden in the false bottom of a suitcase!

Ben and Bill were of course able to speak Italian and spent time helping with the grape harvest.

Having been naturalised in 1927, Lou eventually passed the baton on to his sons, mainly due to declining health caused in part by his service with the Suffolk Regiment in the First World War.

Bill took over the High Street outlet which evolved into a bakery with a small café area (which some older residents will still remember) until the late 1950s, while Ben in the 1930s managed the tea garden at 44 Mill Road until the beginning of his war service in 1942.

Together they represented the third generation Consonni and continued to tempt locals and visitors alike with their unique taste of Italian ices.

Their father died in 1940, mother in 1961 and then Ben in 1985 and Bill in 1987.

Ben’s obituary is particularly revealing. As well as a loving husband and father, with his passing, at the age of 76, a central figure had been lost to the town – a former head boy of the Grammar School, a wartime Naval veteran, transport manager at Hasler’s (a corn and animal feed importer and supplier), and for a few years prior to retirement, he was employed by Marconi in Chelmsford.

He was a very keen and proficient golfer, one year being captain of Maldon Golf Club. Bill was equally if not better known in the town due to his running of the High Street business.

He later went to work for the ambulance service and at Bradwell Power Station until he became fully retired.

He was a keen yachtsman and a member of the Blackwater Sailing Club, and, like his brother, a member of the Constitutional Club and regular attendee at the Catholic Church.

Both important Maldonians, you might say.

But above all of that, perhaps we should think of Ben and Bill and all their ancestors every time we tuck in to an ice cream cornet on the Promenade that they knew so well.