Icehouses

Icehouses feature in many a historic landscape, but, in contrast with most garden structures, are generally sited and designed to minimise their visibility. Technically fascinating, and representing a creative and effective solution to the challenges of refrigeration in a world without electricity, they are worth searching out. This post looks at just a few, each with a point of interest.

It’s Always Cold Inside the Icehouse

Icehouse (the band) were not wrong with the opening line to Icehouse (the song): it is indeed always cold inside an icehouse, and that is very much the point. As noted in Historic England’s Garden and Park Structures Listing Selection Guide:

From about 1600 below-ground icehouses were built in the grounds of country houses, usually brick-lined and typically with the profile of an inverted egg. Ice, harvested from a pool or lake, would be packed in to the icehouse in the winter months. This would then be taken to the kitchen as needed over the course of the year (the ice would keep a full year) to help keep perishable goods cool. By the later eighteenth century virtually every country house had one.

Ice was stored in England prior to the emergence of the icehouse, in pits or chambers, but the dedicated technology emerged in the seventeenth century. In Icehouses (2014), Tim Buxbaum observes that the first icehouse is regarded as that built by James I at Greenwich, in 1619, but also that seventeenth-century icehouses in England had ‘limited success’. Increased exposure to practice on the continent, and developments in construction, meant that they became more effective and more popular, with the design evolving from the initial flowerpot-shaped ‘snow wells’ with thatched roofs, to conical forms sunk into raised ground. Domes were added to the top of these cones, and, eventually, the more familiar ovoid form emerged – commonly used by the eighteenth century. By the nineteenth-century, some icehouses ‘reverted to simpler forms with vertical sides, showing a more targeted use of technology acquired through experience’. But in his Encyclopaedia of Gardening (1827), J. C. Loudon noted that ‘the form of ice-houses commonly adopted at country-seats… is generally that of an inverted cone, or rather hen’s egg, with the broad end uppermost’, providing the following diagrams.

As shown by Loudon, key features of icehouses include the main chamber for the storage of ice, with either (thick) single- or double-skinned walls, insulation (whether through thatching or mounding with earth), and shade from nearby trees. Drainage was necessary for the removal of meltwater, and an access passage (possibly with doors to increase insulation), as well as a hole or hatch for depositing the ice. With the appropriate measures, ‘the appearance will not be disagreeable… and may be made ornamental’.

Buxbaum describes key actions in the operation of a domestic icehouse:

• Breaking the ice on shallow ponds (obviously only possible when winters were cold enough)
• Reducing the size of the chunks of ice
• Transporting the ice by wheelbarrow to the icehouse
• Depositing it into the icehouse, and layering it with straw, or trampling it into a solid mass
• When the level of the entrance passage was reached, topping the ice with sawdust, straw, sacking or wooden boards.

The ice was then used primarily to ‘chill wine and produce desserts’, and for keeping food cool.

Historic England suggests (as noted here) that thousands were built, with around 1,500 icehouses since ‘positively identified through a combination of archaeological and documentary research’. Icehouses were not solely created on private estates, though. The commercial ice-well discovered relatively recently near Regent’s Park was constructed in the 1780s, and is both the largest and earliest commercial ice store. It is now scheduled. The wider availability of ice may have contributed to the decline of some of the icehouses on private estates.

Hanbury Hall

The Garden and Park Structures Listing Selection Guide notes that, in the past, many icehouses were scheduled, but that listing is now the ‘preferred option’. The mid-eighteenth century icehouse at Hanbury Hall is however both listed (Grade II) and scheduled (and lies within the registered landscape). The scheduled monument includes two separate areas of protection: the icehouse itself, and the associated ponds and ice freezing pool, about 50 metres away. Collectively, they are ‘a well-preserved 18th century example of this class of monument’, and an unusual survival, with particular evidential value.

There are three ponds, terraced into a slope, ‘retained by substantial dams’. The two upper ponds – originally used to fill the shallow lower pond, or ice-freezing pool – retain water, but the lower pond is now dry. As noted in the schedule entry:

The upper pool measures approximately 40m by 40m by up to 2m deep and is sub-rectangular in shape. The middle pool measures approximately 45m by 35m by up to 2m deep. It is rectangular in form and is approximately 2m to 3m below the level of the upper pool. The dams are approximately 1m to 2m above water level by 1m to 2m wide. The lower pool measures approximately 60m by 40m by up to 1.5m deep and is defined by external banks and a dam.

The brick icehouse is described in the list entry as ‘a particularly good example of its type’, and is believed to have been able to accommodate 24-33 tons of ice. Circular in plan, and covered with an oval earth mound, it has a conical chamber, and is accessed by a barrel-vaulted entrance passage, with its own drain. The icehouse was filled via a centrally located loading hatch. The mid-eighteenth century Ice House Cottage (listed at Grade II) adjoins the icehouse, and is believed to have been constructed as a garden pavilion.

Kew

The icehouse at Kew is believed to date from the eighteenth century, and to predate the botanic garden. Listed at Grade II, and located within the Grade I-registered landscape, it incorporates some of the boundary wall of the original botanic garden. The list entry observes that it has a brick dome, ‘of English Bond, with access arch and barrel vaulted passage-way, covered by a mound of earth’, and, further, that the entrance is modern.  

Wentworth Woodhouse

The icehouse at Wentworth Woodhouse, built in 1735, has a relatively modest chamber, but some splendid iron doors. Located near the stable block – at some distance from the nearest source of water – it originally had a thatched roof. It is not listed in its own right, but lies within the Grade II*-registered landscape.

Croome

The eighteenth-century icehouse at Croome is located in the Shrubbery of this Grade I-registered landscape, not far from its ice pond. As at Wentworth Woodhouse, it is not listed in its own right, but, following some restoration work, does provide an example of a thatched icehouse. In this photograph taken partway through the restoration, before the thatch was reinstated, the usually hidden brick dome may be seen clearly.

The icehouse is reasonably typical in form, with two-thirds of its egg-shaped store below ground, accessed via a brick and timber passage. The thatch would have provided valuable insulation (as well as a rustic appearance within this designed landscape), and the surrounding trees a degree of shade. The icehouse fell out of use in 1915, but was restored following the National Trust’s acquisition of the site in 1996. The restoration included rebuilding of part of the dome, and the reinstatement of the passage.

Compton Verney

Another thatched icehouse has been restored at Compton Verney. Listed at Grade II, and in a landscape registered at Grade II*, it is believed to date from the 1770s, and is located near the lake, surrounded by a grove of yews. Restoration began in 2010, and the related archaeology report notes that the icehouse was believed to have gone out of use in the 1920s, becoming derelict from the 1950s: the brick dome had a large hole, enabling it to be filled with refuse, and much of the structure was covered in earth. The brick-lined tunnel and ovoid chamber were reinstated, the latter being 4.5 metres high, with a fall of 2.5 metres from the tunnel floor to the base. The structure was then thatched.

Witley Court

Neither listed nor restored (though located within a Grade II* registered landscape) are the two adjoining icehouse domes at Witley Court. Just about visible in the landscape, they look to be surprisingly intact, but vulnerable.  

Wortley Hall

The icehouse at Wortley Hall lies within the registered landscape, and is itself listed at Grade II. It dates from the first half of the nineteenth century, and is described in the list entry as ‘an unusual and well-preserved example of this period’. It is certainly an efficient design. Located next to a fish pond, a stone-lined feeder channel for ice runs from the edge of the pond, under the adjoining path, and directly into the side of the icehouse (only otherwise accessible by ladder). The icehouse is a combination of brick and sandstone, and is described in the list entry as follows:

Earth-covered mound set in bank to north-east of adjacent fish pond and crowned by square brick upstand with heavy coping having hinge-pins for hatches (now removed), top of ice-house pierced by rebated round hole.

Research suggests that the icehouse would have been able to contain approximately 1,000 cubic feet of ice.

West Wycombe

As noted above, Loudon was of the view that icehouses ‘may be made ornamental’. One such is that at West Wycombe, where the Temple of the Four Winds (listed at Grade II*) was erected in the 1750s above an ice well within the Grade I-registered landscape. As observed in National Trust records:

The superstructure, comprising a flint wall and small stone cupola was obviously built at the same time as the ice house, with the round tower on the top of the mound being added later.

The flint arch is believed to have been inspired by the architect’s design for a ‘Temple of Winter’, and leads to the ice house: a large sunken brick chamber in the usual manner.

Biddulph Grange

An even more ornamental icehouse lies behind the listed ‘Chinese Temple and Attached Access Tunnel’, at Biddulph Grange (part of the wider Grade I-registered landscape). The mid-nineteenth century temple is the centrepiece of, and overlooks, the Chinese Garden, but it also fronts and conceals the access tunnel to the icehouse, itself located in an embankment which forms the boundary to the Chinese Garden.

Conclusion

Icehouses may no longer be necessary, but they do remain fascinating, and are just hard enough to find within the landscape to introduce an element of triumph as well as appreciation. Historic England note that they are a ‘significant component of local distinctiveness and character’, and, encouragingly, state that ‘most recorded examples with surviving remains will be considered to be of national interest and appropriate for consideration for either scheduling or listing’: whilst there may be ‘no love inside the icehouse’ (for those familiar with the classic tune from 1981/2), there is certainly plenty of appreciation elsewhere, as there should be.