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This curious ice well, portrayed in La Vanguardia’s Readers’ Photos, can be found in the small town of Horta (Avinyó), in the Bages region.
It is very peculiar because it was cut in half to make the Artés road (B-431) and it has remained as a form of apse of a Romanesque hermitage, as can be seen in the photographs.
It was a rather small well (about 6 m high and 5 m in diameter). The wall has a thickness of 43 cm. It preserves one of the two openings that the well had. It is made with irregular stone ashlars tied with mortar, according to the Cultural Heritage Map of the Barcelona Provincial Council.
An ice well was an excavation made underground, generally circular, whose purpose was to store the ice produced in the nearby snowfields in order to supply the population all year round.
The well was made with dry stoneware most of the time. In the upper part, which was visible from the outside, the well was closed with a hemispherical vaulted cover or roof of the same material.
Rectangular in shape, they were intended to allow access and extraction of the ice blocks using a pulley and, at the same time, access for the working personnel.
These construction systems gave an almost hermetic insulation inside and made it easier for authentic “refrigerators” that provided the necessary ice for human consumption to exist in low-lying places or with infrequent snowfall.
