Whatever time of year, working outside can make us sweat and run the risk of dehydration. Even in high humidity such as fog, and in low temperatures. And it’s worse in hot climates.
You might imagine in hot countries they’d be keen to keep labourers well hydrated and help them avoid heat exhaustion by finding ways of supplying them with cold drinks, but it probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise that the first written record of the technology to provide ice in hot weather shows that it was a Sumerian king that commissioned its construction. Zimri Lim – king of Mari – ordered it built in the city of Terqa in what is now part of Syria. His ice house was built 4,000 years ago, and the stone tablet recording his order has been dated back to one thousand and seventy seven years before the ‘common era’ calendar began. Unfortunately, no evidence remains to show whether his workers benefitted from iced drinks afterwards.
Here in the Cotswolds, Northerners always claim we drink flat warm beer, to which – from personal experience – I always respond we drink still cold cider. One of my fondest memories is riding up to the Five Mile House at Duntisbourne Abbots where Ivy Ruck kept cider cool by draping the cask with wet towels, using the same principle of rapid evaporation as used by our temporary local authority (the Romans) a few centuries ago. The cider was so good I can’t remember how often I fell off riding back home.
Long before the Romans began to find ways of keeping things chilled, the Egyptians and the Indians developed a process for freezing water using potassium nitrate. Saltpetre (the common name for the stuff) is known as a useful fertiliser. Mix it with sugar and carbon, add a little sulphur and you can create an explosive. Mix it with water and it lowers its temperature. Blow up your enemies or invite them for a drink on the rocks…
The Romans used to collect ice from the Italian Alps, then store it in ice houses. They could use the technology they re-engineered from other civilisations they had conquered: the Persians had been building takhchals (dome shaped structures with underground chambers to preserve ice) since 400 BCE, and long before the development of modern refrigeration, iced food and drinks became available in Europe. There are several icehouses around Ciren, including one by the artificial lake, known as Grismond’s tower, and another on the Grove Lane side of the Abbey Grounds Lake. For centuries Indians had been making Kulfi, and it’s entirely possible early sorbets and granita had been a feature of Roman feasts, but in the UK popular commercialisation of ‘ice-cream’ arguably began with a pork butcher from London.
T Wall’s sausage business declined in summer before the First World War. Instead of finding a new way of rewarding pig farmers by popularising barbecues, he decided to woo dairy farmers by making ice creams and distributing them by vendors with tricycles. Unfortunately, this venture was interrupted by war, and it wasn’t until the nineteen twenties that Wall’s ice cream became the household name it is today. A factory was opened in Gloucester and, in a few years, children’s ears longed for the chimes of Gloucester Cathedral announcing the arrival of ice cream vans all over the UK. Fighting off competition from Lyons Maid and buying out Mr Whippy (whose profitability owed much to the young Margaret Roberts’ ability to help them add air to their product) Walls remain the heirs to the legacy of four thousand years of relief to heatstroke and dehydration. Enjoy that 99, or cornetto.
Raise a cone to Margaret Thatcher for the cool air.
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