Frost Fairs were held in London over the frozen River Thames. There were stalls, displays of horsemanship designed to test the ice, and printers who would print you up a record of your attendance on the surface of the river. The first was held in 1564, and the last in 1815. Then, as well as perhaps the incipient global warming caused by the Industrial Revolution and the end of the Little Ice Age, a new bridge with wider spans changed the flow of the Thames.

The Thames did freeze over once more in the 1890s but it was not considered safe enough to hold a fair on.