In Auerbach, a little village close to Darmstadt in Germany, we live on the Bergstrasse, literally the "mountain road". It is a scenic route that was once the main thoroughfare from Frankfurt south to Heidelberg before the autobahns were built, and which runs along the western foothills of the Odenwald.
Up the hill a little from our village is the Fuerstenlager, literally the "prince's camp", an ancient hunting lodge that was much loved in centuries gone by the grand dukes of Hesse, the local potentates.
The Fuerstenlager is a modest building by grand-ducal standards, but contains all the essentials for a life of luxury. In particular, I noticed when walking in the grounds just yesterday what appeared to be the entrance to a tunnel or a mine shaft, but an orifice which further investigation revealed to be too shallow for these purposes.
It was, in fact, an ice store, a deep, cool recess dug into the hillside in which in days gone by the winter ice would be piled up, there to be chipped away, as required, in summertime.
Large quantities of ice or snow, unless they are exposed to the direct heat of the sun, take a surprisingly long time to melt. Wordsworth, for example, noticed this in the mountains of the Lake District, where he saw little pockets of snow or hail that had survived well into the spring, or even early summer:
It was a cove, a huge recess,
That keeps till June,
December's snow.
And our own Patrick Kavanagh evokes the same image with more subtlety:
My hills hoard the bright
shillings of March
While the sun searches in
every pocket.
And suitably protected, ice can be made to last the summer through. The first known ice stores were built 4,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, and the ancient Greeks used thick-walled buildings filled with winter snow to chill their summer wine.
In Europe also, after the Renaissance, "ice-houses" became fashionable among the gentry. These specially constructed underground chambers were filled during the winter with ice harvested from lakes and rivers on the great estates, and the highly valued commodity was then used in summertime for chilling wine and making ice-cream. Ice was more plentiful in season then than now, since in previous centuries winters were much more severe.
In Britain in the 19th century it became the norm to import ice from Norway, and even to ship it out to many of the new colonies in semi-tropical latitudes. Almost half the ice aboard might have melted before it reached its destination, but there was enough left for entrepreneurs to make a handsome profit.