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.