Wilkinson Eyre’s new residential development at King’s Cross has given three historic gasholders with their sculptural frames new life and a new identity, their 19th century classical sculptural frames facing across to the new park within the fourth gasholder and out to the Regent’s Canal beyond. In one of the hottest summers of recent years, Bombass & Parr have brought a unique ice cream pop-up to the ground floor of the Gasholders, ‘SCOOP: An Ice Cream Experience’, both a museum looking backward at the history of ice cream, its development, recipes and advertising, with ice-cream-related exhibits from the immense collection of Robin & Caroline Weir, and looking forward to new exciting scientific developments that could affect the future of ice cream.
SCOOP in 2o18 coincides with the 300th anniversary of the first printed volume to feature ice cream in an English publication, by Mary Eales who claimed to have sold confectionary at the court of Queen Anne, and, in 2019, with the 400th anniversary of the first ice house built in Britain to make ice cream, in Greenwich Park. Royalty enjoyed their luxuries!
Visitors are invited to attend a class to make their own ice cream under the steely eyes of Agnes B. Marshall, known in the 19th century as ‘the Queen of Ices’, who published several cookbooks and patented her own ice-cream making machine and, at the end, can relax with a variety of exotic flavours including cucumber and daffodil.
Inevitably it is popular, so if you plan to go, book well in advance.