This is serendipity: a visit to a museum about London’s canals led me into another story altogether, though connected to the canal story as well.
The museum occupies a building along the canal on New Wharf Road that was originally one of the ice houses of London’s largest ice merchant, Carlo Gatti. The building stands over two huge ice wells, where ice was stored, insulated by hay, until it was needed. You can still see into one of them, although it’s partly filled in; when it was dug it went down over 40 feet into the ground and held about 750 tons.
Gatti came to London from Switzerland around 1847, by way of Paris, where he learned about cafes and chocolate-making machines. With a partner, he started a cafe in 1849, and attracted business by putting a chocolate machine in the window. His cafe was also one of the first to sell ice cream, formerly a treat for the wealthy, to the public. He sold it in the cafe and from carts at penny for a small scoop in a shell—the original ‘penny lick.’
He got ice for the ice cream from the Regent’s Canal Company, the start of his connection to the ice business. By 1857, he had moved full-scale into the ice business while keeping other enterprises—including a music hall—going. The ice from the canal, however, wasn’t the cleanest; it could chill ice cream, but it couldn’t be consumed. Starting in 1860, Gatti began importing huge cargoes of clean ice from Norway; the ice arrived at the Limehouse end of the canal, and was carried to the ice house on barges.
Gatti’s company, eventually known through mergers as United Carlo Gatti Stevenson and Slaters, became the largest supplier in London, with several depots and ice houses around the city. Gatti died in 1878, but the business continued into the 1970s. When mechanical icemaking became possible in the 1920s, the company stopped the Norwegian imports and turned some of the depots into ice factories.
Delivery by horse-drawn carts continued until after World War II; they company had over 300 horses, and the depot on New Wharf Dock had stables on its upper floor.
