The Ice House at Kew - by Jeannie Waudby

Since 1840, Kew Gardens has been a public Botanical Garden. It's now also famous for its Millenium Seed Bank which conserves over 2.4 billion seeds from all around the world, and when the Princess of Wales Conservatory was built a time capsule of seeds was buried under it by Sir David Attenborough - all plants facing extinction. In the 18th Century, these gardens encircled Kew Palace and the White House (now demolished) which were home to Queen Charlotte and George III and their large family. Echoes of the life they led can be seen in Kew Palace, Queen Charlotte's cottage, and in the kitchens.

I've visited Kew over many years and in recent years the kitchens and Ice House have been opened to visitors. I always find the spaces where servants worked and lived more interesting than ballrooms and galleries. The kitchens served the White House so that cooking smells would be separate. Lavish meals were prepared, including cold desserts: ices, syllabubs and jellies. But how did they keep them cold before electricity? This is where the Ice House came in. It's a brick-lined structure covered with earth and grass so that it looks like a mound with a tunnel entrance from outside.

It was built in the 1760s with beautiful arched brickwork above a pit where blocks of ice were packed between layers of straw and sacking. This was the Palace's giant 'fridge'. It was actually very efficient and the ice could stay frozen for months. It's not a new technology. Ancient Romans and Persians used the same system from 1800 BC.

But it was very labour-intensive, so in Georgian times only the very wealthy could afford the luxury of ice-cold drinks and food. In those days the ice was hacked out of the lake in blocks and carted to the Ice House to be packed into the pit. This was an extremely unpopular job and it must have been very hard for workers to keep their fingers from freezing as they laboured in the depths of winter in a place designed to keep in the cold. Then, fetching ice for the kitchen must have also involved cold hard work hacking out blocks and perhaps making them smaller before carting them the 400 metres to the kitchen. This is an image from the information notice outside the Ice House.

By the 19th Century ice from Siberia was brought by canal. It's strange to think of a time when ice had to be harvested and stored now that we can easily freeze it ourselves. Back in Georgian times, it was a natural resource from the winter lake and the colder weather, and the energy used came only from human beings.

Standing in the cold silence under the Ice House dome, I thought what a great setting for a story scene it is, and I used it in the 19th Century book I have been working on. This made me think of this week's writing challenge.

WRITING CHALLENGE Set your story in this brick Ice House. There are two characters inside. They have a wooden cart, an ice pick and a lantern, as well as lots of ice, sacking and straw. But the door is locked - from the outside! This seems like a scary scenario, but it doesn't have to be. You could make it funny, moving or even romantic. What happens?

Jeannie Waudby is the author of YA love story/thriller ONE OF US and has been working on a YA novel set in Victorian times.

jeanniewaudby.com @JeanWaudby

Contrasting a peaceful setting with an action scene - by Jeannie Waudby

I wanted to write a sinister scene in which one character seems to have all the power. My story is set in 1848 and initially this scene was set in an upstairs room in an inn. But then I read a feature on the Palm House at Kew Gardens – a place I often visit – and I was intrigued to see that it first opened in 1848. It was always for the public to enjoy since by this time Kew Gardens was a botanical garden, open to everyone.

I could imagine the amazement Victorian Londoners must have felt to see all these beautiful tropical plants for the first time: hands of green bananas, mangoes, palm trees reaching up to the glass roof. I thought about the people wandering through the glasshouse in their colourful and elaborate clothes.

 

To me, the tropical plants feel like home because I saw many of them growing outside in Hong Kong when I was a child. I know that Kew is preserving plants against extinction and climate change. But to the character in my book, from the north of Scotland, the plants might have looked strange, exciting and larger-than-life. I thought of the dark side of British exploration to tropical countries in the nineteenth century and already a sinister note felt present in this setting, in spite of the gently dripping leaves and the gorgeously coloured tropical flowers.

 

 

Sometimes an obviously scary setting enhances a scary scene – a chase at the top of a skyscraper, through dark woods or in twisting tunnels. They tap into fears we may already have: vertigo, the dark or claustrophobia. But it adds an element of surprise to set a scary scene in a peaceful setting.

 

 Writing challenge

This week’s writing challenge is to write a high-stakes chase scene set in a surprising setting. You can choose who is the ‘good’ character – the pursuer or the pursued. Instead of a scary environment, choose somewhere that would normally be a tranquil space: a library, a hospital, a place of worship or a garden for instance. Or a glasshouse like the Palm House.

 

Use the things in your setting to make the scene come to life: tumbling books, rolling trolleys, galleries or pews for instance. You can use the specific sounds of these places too: silence disturbed, beeping machines, chanting or singing. The more peaceful the setting is to begin with, the greater the shock value when you disturb it with your characters crashing through.

 

 

One Of Us by Jeannie Waudby is a YA thriller/love story, published by Chicken House. It was shortlisted for the Bolton Children's Fiction Award and the Lancashire Book of the Year 2016 and has been adapted by Mike Kenny as a play in the Oxford Playscripts series.
One Of Us is published by Chicken House
The Oxford Playscripts play is published by Oxford University Press

 

 

 

For more information about Jeannie and her books visit her website.