Royal Ice Factory

Today we will talk about ice! A very common issue today within the bar industry, but quite old in the history of Portugal, apparently!

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The Royal Ice Factory, also referred to as Montejunto Snow Factory, located in Montejunto saw, in the parish and county Cadaval, in the district of Lisbon, Portugal.

Unique in the country, is one of the rare examples of its kind in Europe and existing, in terms of technology at the time, one of the most advanced.

The habit of enjoying ice cream and quench your thirst with cool drinks in the hot summer months have been introduced in Portugal in the late sixteenth century, the time of the Philippine Dynasty. When the visit of Philip III of Spain to Portugal, in 1619, all means were mobilized for not missing the snow at the Royal table. Although it lacked any proper techniques for cooling at the time the ice came from the Serra da Estrela.

The building of this ice factory that supplied the city of Lisbon is attributed to the Dominican friars, in the era before 1741. It will cost 40 or 45 thousand crusaders, high expense at the time. The growing consumption of ice in the eighteenth century, not only in the Court and within the nobility, but also in the bourgeois and working classes, have motivated the construction of the Royal Ice Factory in Montejunto, which is the only mountain, among a set of highs near Lisbon, offering climatic conditions necessary for the freezing of the water during the winter season. In addition, its location had great advantages over the main supplier central snow, the mountains of Coentral, located on the southern end of the Serra da Estrela and Lousã.

One of its main owners, the Neveiro Real Julian Pereira de Castro, sent to expansion works for all in 1782.

The ice manufacturing process was beginning every year in late October, at which were filled with water the about 44 tanks installation. Once the ice is formed, the guard of the factory was riding to the nearby village of Pragança and with a horn, wake up people so that, before the sunrise, a hard and hard work, leaving the ice sheets, piling up the fragments and then the load for storage silos, where it was kept until the arrival of summer. After removed from storage wells, ice blocks were wrapped in straw and burlap and transported to the base of the mountain, on the back of donkeys and there, in oxcarts, to Vala's Born on the banks of the River Tagus. The last step was to transport to Lisbon in so-called "snow boats." Arrived in Lisbon, supplied from the Court to the cafés.

The activity will be over in the late nineteenth century, according to the testimony of the village elders of Pragança, which was possibly the leading supplier of hand labor to the factory. In fact, ended in 1885, which was superseded by the introduction of the first forms of industrial ice in the country.

Classified as a National Monument since 1997, was protected object of intervention and revaluation on the initiative of the Municipality of Cadaval, with the collaboration of Heritage Management Institute of Architectural and Archaeological (IGESPAR) and reopened on March 27, 2011.

The industrial complex

The complex of the Royal Ice Factory was considered by many international experts "as a unique case for the originality of its structures and the reasonable condition".

It is divided into two distinct areas: one for the production of ice and the other, which is distant to the south about 100 meters, for the repair, storage and conservation.

The area used for production is currently made up of two wells (with recent coverage) to capture water; a house where they were driven the daughters and that served as a warehouse; one main tank for receiving water; 44 and shallow tanks where water freezing was performed.

The shallow tanks are built in a gentle slope in three levels, communicating with each other by small rectangular openings located at 10 cm from the bottom, to allow build up of water at this point. The tanks are separated by lageadas passages, allowing easy access to all of them. The filling shows a remarkable inventiveness. First we proceeded to the main tank filling up to the level marked with color pink mortar (observable measure in the tank and which corresponded to the water capacity needed to fill the shallow tanks), followed by water runoff for those tanks.

The area used for preparation, storage, conservation, preparation and packaging of ice, consists of a building facade of sober decoration (the taste of the century. XVIII), two silos for storage and preservation of ice and another to order ice already packed.

The building of the silos has two access doors. On the main door there was a stone engraved plaque which recorded the purchase and the rebuilding of the factory by Neveiro the royal house, Julian Pereira de Castro, 31 January 1782. At the top of the facade, in a small niche, there was a picture (probably St. Anthony of the Snow).

The ground floor consists of floor slabs limestone and features tilt to the center to allow the flow of water from the melting ice when it is prepared in blocks. It has, at regular intervals, of small rectangular holes, suggesting the engagement of the legs of a bench on which the ice fragments were compressed to form blocks and then stored in storage silos. The building still owned a top floor, proven by the existence of beams fittings, dogs and a tiled arch, now destroyed.

The two silos for ice storage differ significantly from each other. The former has a cylindrical shape with a depth of 9.40 meters by 7.20 meters in diameter. Access to the interior was done by two doors, with the east side of a double door. The background is Lageado having, at regular intervals of about one meter, with limestone parallelepiped shape with about 30 cm. These stones serve for fixing a wooden pallet on which ice was added so as to avoid contact with the water melted and dripped to the bottom.

The water was drained to the outside through a triangular opening, blocked about a meter a lot of small stones that allow water infiltration but prevented air circulation in the silo. The silo has at the start of the level of the dome, a "window" that served to flow of hot air that accumulated inside during the work.

The second silo has a rectangular shape with a depth of 4 feet wide by 4 and 6 in length. The background is flagged as the first, also having the pallet nesting stones and opening to drain water.

The third silo also has a rectangular shape and is of comparable size to the previous. It is built outside the building and has one of the doors open directly to the outside. It has no background paved or stone blocks to stage the settlement, or opening for the water to drain. This silo would be intended for the storage of ice blocks already processed and ready to carry on the back of the transport of animals. Displays in vault, written on the bricks mortar coating, the date of 1856 (not knowing whether it will be on the construction or repair).

All silos have vaults in brick and iron hooks on the gates, pulleys suspension. The silos are rectangular addorsed the main silo being indicating a subsequent construction.

The lime kiln, located West of this complex have been constructed to provide it with lime mortars were made for the construction of complex, as well as for whitening of the interior of the silos, such as hygiene.

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