Description

Late 18th century. Free-standing cup and dome estate icehouse with single wing wall. Partly lime rendered with ashlar long and short quoins, sills and copes, rubble sandstone walls and brick interior.

NE (PRINCIPAL) ELEVATION: boarded timber door within plain entrance doorway set in curved wall with flat copes: right wall full size sinking into natural hillside; left wall ending abruptly and adjoining low rubble and brick wing wall with flat copes set at ninety degrees.

Concealed by an artificial turfed earth mound with trees surmounting.

INTERIOR: passageway leading to inner doorway with sloped lintel; domed brick chamber beyond.

Statement of Interest

Icehouses were generally sited near to a source of ice, in this case situated on the E bank of the Tyne Water. As with most icehouses of the late 18th century, it is plain and faces (almost) north. It is sited at the top of a bank to facilitate drainage, to the west of the walled garden. It is part of a group of parkland structures linked to Preston Hall, a mansion rebuilt on the site of an earlier house. The icehouse is a good example of a type found in the Lothians. Foodstuffs were placed on a straw floor over the packed ice but these structures tended to go out of fashion by the 19th century, when it was feasible to import ice from America and Scandinavia. It was realistic that once packed with ice, it could remain cool for as long as three years.

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q56612399

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Warwickshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Staffordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Cumbria: Cumberland, Westmorland and Furness (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Harrow on the Hill: A photographic portrayal of listed buildings and structures (Historic Buildings Picture Guides)
• 
  For the Record
• 
  Building Small Projects (New Best of Fine Woodworking)