I wrote a little while ago about the ice house in the grounds of Killerton, a rather lovely stately home in south-west England. Without giving the game away, an ice house is involved in the last chapters of Magick; this ice house is in the grounds of a very dilapidated old country home, not on a grand scale like Killerton, but a place which is more modest although the owner in Georgian times had aspiration. The owner didn’t have the money to create the sort of property he saw his richer neighbours and other wealthy gentlemen showing off. He tried to produce a cut-price version where corners were cut and builders and the building were not the best… as a result much of the features soon fell into disuse and decline, and the ice house became lost beneath a mound of shrubs and trees, tumbling in on itself…
My main character Thomas accidentally discovers it, in a very painful way, and also discovers what has lain concealed within it for the last nearly seventy years…
Lois Elsden 