Ice Factory denied lottery funding
27th May 2014
UK: The Great Grimsby Ice Factory Trust (GGIFT) has been unsuccessful in its bid for £11m of Heritage Lottery funding.
The group has plans to restore the crumbling 110-year-old Grade-ll* listed building into a centre for cultural, educational and leisure activities with a strong emphasis on heritage.
Once the largest ice factory in the world, the building closed in 1990 cocooning its antique refrigeration equipment, the centrepiece of which is a plant room containing four huge 80-year-old J&E Hall four-cylinder ammonia compressors.
“This is an unfortunate setback, but like many ultimately successful projects before us, we are now reassessing our strategy and deciding on the most effective way to direct our energies in the short term,” said GGIFT chair Vicky Hartung.
“Ours was one of seventeen projects that put forward bids, and in this climate of limited funds and high costs, the HLF was able to pass only six,” she added.
Successful bids included £13m for a new history centre in Plymouth and £11.9m for the restoration and development of Canterbury Cathedral.
Undeterred, a defiant Vicky Hartung said: “We have received tremendous support for this project to date, from so many individuals and organisations. We will continue to work with our partners, the Prince’s Regeneration Trust and North East Lincolnshire Council, to save the Grimsby Ice Factory, for the benefit of Grimsby and the nation.”
Iconic refrigeration frozen in time
The Cooling Post has uncovered a huge amount of new information, photographs and drawings of the historic Grimsby Ice Factory, enough to begin a new three-part feature on the history of the Grimsby Ice Factory and the unique refrigeration equipment it contains.
In Part 2 of our special feature on the Grimsby Ice Factory, the Cooling Post takes a more in-depth look at the 80-year-old refrigeration system still contained within this historic building.
In Part 2 of this series on the Grimsby Ice Factory we looked at the 1930s J&E Hall refrigeration installation which replaced the original steam-driven compressors. In this article we look at that original equipment and how it worked within the Ice Factory.
