end of the 18th century and it stands today,
regularly open to visitors, a fine example of
a mound-covered “cup and dome” structure.
Ice would have been cut from the nearby
lake and poured by the barrowload into the
deep brick-lined chamber. The surface of the
ice would have been covered with insulating
materials such as sacking, straw or sawdust to
keep it frozen. The icehouse would have held
up to 20 tonnes of ice, with the space above
the insulating layer providing cold storage
where food could be stacked on the surface
or hung from hooks in the ceiling – although
preserving food by refrigeration did not
become practical or commonplace until the
early 20th century, with the invention of the
domestic refrigerator.
The icehouse at Parlington Hall at
Aberford near Leeds, in West Yorkshire,
is also built on the cup-and-dome principle,
and the strength of the structure is the reason
why so many of this type of icehouse still
exist today. The most significant advantage
of the cup-and-dome design was the fact
that the ice slid down the tapering side walls
as it melted, allowing it to compact and
consolidate under the weight of the ice above.
Once in place the ice would remain intact for
as long as two to three years.
The Parlington icehouse was uncovered
by Brian Hull, who said: “I was curious to
discover more about the structure so took it
upon myself to excavate the years of collected
cover, from leaf mould to soil. Although the
walls have been largely demolished you can
see in the photograph how the ‘air lock’ was
formed, by a series of two rooms leading to
the aperture in the icehouse wall. The floor
can be seen along with the dividing wall with
parts of it still attached to the flank wall.”
Some thatched icehouses also remain.
Built partly as decorative structures in
landscaped gardens, they were more
fragile than their earth or brick-covered
counterparts and those that survive have beenBelow, Norwegian ice cutters handle blocks
of ice harvested from frozen lakes, circa 1900
(London Canal Museum). Right, an archaeologist
from MOLA brushes the near-perfect exterior of
the Regent’s Crescent icehouse exposed during
excavation in 2018 (MOLA)