Ice house

Before there were refrigerators, it was possible to have refrigeration by collecting and storing ice in underground rooms or cellars, especially built for the purpose. I’m not sure with our climate at the moment if that would be possible, because we don’t often seem to have severe enough winters to freeze sufficient ice to be useful!

We saw an ice house recently at Killerton in Devon, a lovely stately home with extensive gardens with many interesting features including the Bear’s House (in which a real bear called Tom lived) and an ice house. The ice house at Killerton was built in 1808; it’s brick-lined and has a brick floor and a drain. There are three rack-grooves and it could store 40 tons of ice!. The ice house is circular and has a conical roof; it’s covered  by a rockery, and there is a secret passageway leading to it through the rocks and dry-stone walled entrance… OK it is not really secret, but if you were a child you could imagine it was!

Ice houses have been in use since ancient times, right back to Mesopotamia, and China, but they came into fashion in Britain in the 1660’s and were used as fridges are now, to store perishable things, but also to create chilled and frozen dishes…. such as ice-cream!