A once-in-a-year opportunity to descend into these King's Cross ice wells.
There's a once-in-a-year opportunity to visit the Victorian ice wells at London Canal Museum this July — as part of a dedicated 'Ice Weekend'.
Before the days of electric refrigeration, fresh-cut ice was vital in everything from making ice cream, to relieving inflammation. Mammoth blocks of the stuff were transported by ship from Norway, then onward by horse-drawn canal barge — in this case to King's Cross. (Wouldn't it melt? is the obvious question, the answer being: only a quarter of it.)
In the 19th century ice was 'harvested' in Norway then transported by sea and canal to central London.
When the ice blocks reached the King's Cross warehouse — then owned by ice merchant and ice cream pioneer Carlo Gatti, now the London Canal Museum — they were lowered into one of these 42-feet-deep brick-lined ice wells, which would help keep them solid for months at a time.
