Built by King William III, this ice house is located in Hampton Court’s Home Park, and dates from the late 17th Century.
Ice was gathered in winter from nearby ponds and The Long Water
At least fifty years earlier, in 1625-6, King James I had commissioned an ice house for Hampton Court. A round, brick-lined well, 30’ deep and 16’ wide, it was covered with a thatched timber building for insulation. I so wanted it to be, but it clearly isn’t the building above.
A closer look at the rather dull door, but I thought the sign worth sharing
I hope you’ll bear with me during this post as, in the interests of historical perspective, it takes us away from Home Park and further afield, including (if fleetingly) to Italy, the New Forest, Greenwich Park, Regent’s Crescent, the Midlands and Norway. (None of these extra locations involved my bike).
King James I’s ice house - the one that King William III’s probably replaced - would have looked something like this, as drawn by Hieronymous Grimm
The idea is thought to have come originally from early travellers who returned to these shores with tales of ice houses being built and used in Italy. But then Alexander the Great was known to have stored snow in pits that were dug for just that purpose around 300 BC. And in Rome, in the 3rd Century AD, snow was imported from the mountains, stored in straw-covered pits, and sold from snow shops. They've been at it a while.
Designs existed for attractive, even ornamental ice house exteriors, but as Abraham Rees in the Cyclopaedia says: "... this is seldom done; the ice house being generally placed in a sequestered spot, on the side of a hill or sloping ground, the base of which is lower than the bottom of the well, the outside being well-banked up with earth to keep out all external air and heat, and neatly covered with turf or thatch".
In total, around 3,000 ice houses are thought to have been built in Britain, around 1,500 of which survive today, a small number still having associated ponds present, whilst in and around the New Forest National Park area, at least 20 such sites are known. The majority were built between 1750 and 1875. Most fell into disuse with the development of the refrigerator, and the decline of large country estates, though a small number were still in use up to and including the 1940s.
During WWII, because they were typically well-constructed buildings with significant underground capacity, some old ice houses found a new lease of life as air raid shelters.
Returning to their original purpose, ice houses were typically located close to a water source, such as a river or freshwater lake or pond, in order to simplify the harvest process in the depths of winter, during which ice and snow would be cut from the water source typically by teams of men using hand saws, taken inside the ice house, and packed with insulation.
Improving design from the late 17th Century included better insulation of the ice using straw, sawdust and reeds, or a combination of these, aided by a system of vents and drains; tight packing to reduce surface area; buildings with thick walls; a roof; small or no windows; a subterranean storage space inside and a drain hole in the base to allow slow-melting ice to escape. Access to the interior was provided through at least two close-fitting doors set a distance apart that, through never being opened at the same time, created a fairly effective airlock reducing the inflow of warm air from outside. All of this meant ice could remain frozen for months at a time, often until the following winter, available for use during the summer months. Mainly exploited for the storage / preservation of food^, including meat, fish and other fresh produce, ice houses meant the well-heeled could now serve up chilled drinks to their guests on even the most sweltering of summer days, in some cases even ice cream. Cold comfort, no doubt, to the labourers during harvest time, who could only dream of such luxuries when they dragged their frozen bones home after a day's work.
^This point doesn’t sit well with ice houses built for mansions on large estates, including royalty of course, where fresh meat was routinely available throughout the year, effectively killed or slaughtered on demand. Perhaps the ice stored here was more likely to be reserved for drinks and desserts.
Imagine the gasps of amazement as, courtesy of the ice house he commissioned at Green Park, Charles II and his top table were served Britain’s first ice cream, accompanied by white strawberries, in 1672.
During its heyday a typical commercial ice house would store 2,700 tonnes of ice in a 9 x 30 metre building, 14 metres in height.
Commercial ice houses were constructed in the 19th Century to provide ice for general use, and to stock private ice houses if / when normal supplies became scarce. They were used later to produce 'frozen' food. In the Midlands they were built near canals to simplify transportation.
Back, briefly, to King James. He not only commissioned the aforementioned ice house for Hampton Court, but also the construction of the first modern ice house a few years earlier in 1619 in Greenwich Park. There are no surviving examples from Medieval times, when they were known as ice pits. This is thought to be due to the use of less sophisticated and effective building materials, and relatively crude construction methods compared to what followed, so they quickly disappeared from use.
Hurtling back to more modern times, a massive underground ice house was recently uncovered in central London, dating back to the 1780s. It has since been designated by Historic England as a scheduled monument. The ice house was rediscovered by archaeologists from the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) during the development of Regent's Crescent, a landmark residential project near Regent's Park in London.
The subterranean ice house would have been one of the largest of its kind when first built, measuring 7.5m wide and 9.5m deep (about 1.5 times the height of an adult giraffe). Remarkably, despite the destruction in the Blitz of the mews houses above, the red brick, egg-shaped chamber survived, and is reportedly in excellent condition, along with its entrance passage, and vaulted ante-chamber. (A compelling advert for the aforementioned use of abandoned ice houses as bunkers in times of conflict).
In the 1820s, long before ice was manufactured artificially, the ice house was used by pioneering ice-merchant and confectioner William Leftwich to store and supply high quality ice to London’s Georgian elites. Demand was high also from catering traders, medical institutions and food retailers. Ice was collected from local canals and lakes in winter and stored, but it was often unclean, and supply was inconsistent.
According to MOLA, Leftwich was one of first people to spot the potential for profit in imported ice, and in 1822, following an unusually mild winter, he chartered a vessel to make the 2,000km round trip from Great Yarmouth to Norway to collect 300 tonnes of ice harvested from frozen lakes there. There was little to indicate that the trade in natural ice would become a booming industry later in the century, and the venture was not without risk: previous imports had been lost at sea, or melted whilst baffled customs officials dithered over how to tax such novel cargo. Luckily, in Leftwich’s case, a decision was made in time for the ice to be transported along the Regent’s Canal, and he returned a handsome profit. By the turn of the century Norway exported more than 1,000,000 tons of ice each year, with vessels going to Northern Europe, the Mediterranean, Constantinople, Africa and India. The primary market for Norwegian ice though was Britain, accounting for over half of Norway's total exports. Norway became effectively the sole provider of natural ice to Britain, with a market share of more than 99 per cent around the beginning of the 20th century. This is arguably explained, in part at least, by the fact that the quality / purity was far superior to that of ice gathered locally in Britain. But within a decade the market for natural ice more or less disappeared, with Norwegian ice exports in 1920 only 5 per cent of the levels of 1910. The advent of mechanical refrigeration ultimately did for the age of natural ice.
Returning to the ice house in Regent's Crescent, once restored it will be incorporated into the gardens there, which have been designed by renowned landscape architect Kim Wilkie, who was behind the gardens at the V&A and the Natural History Museum. Great Marlborough Estates are now in the process of rebuilding the historical integrity of the Crescent in conjunction with the restoration of the ice house. It is hoped that at certain times of year during archaeological and architectural festivals, public access will be made available using a new viewing corridor.
Red arrow: Ice House
Blue arrow: The Long Water canal (nearby ponds, and river too, of course)
Comentários