Between 1619 and 1626, King James I commissioned the construction of ice houses in Greenwich Park, England, to store ice cut from local ponds for summer use. These structures, often built partially underground, used straw insulation to preserve ice for months.

The ice house became a symbol of aristocratic privilege in English literature. Poets and essayists of the 17th and 18th centuries referenced these structures in pastoral poems and satires of the wealthy's excesses.