Ice house (building)

Some were underground chambers, usually man-made, close to natural sources of winter ice such as freshwater lakes, but many were buildings with various types of insulation.

[4] The most common structures have a conical shape above ground with a subterranean storage space, shade walls, and ice pool.

James I commissioned the first modern ice house in 1619 in Greenwich Park[6] and another in Hampton Court in 1625–6.

Bruce Walker, an expert on Scottish Vernacular buildings, has suggested that relatively numerous and usually long-ruined ice houses on country estates have led to Scotland's many legends of secret tunnels.

Good examples of 19th-century ice houses can be found at Ashton Court, Bristol; Albrighton, Bridgnorth; Aynhoe Park, Northamptonshire; Deddington Manor, Grendon, Warwickshire; and at Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich, Suffolk; Petworth House, Sussex; Danny House, Sussex; Ayscoughfee Hall, Spalding; Rufford Abbey, Eglinton Country Park in Scotland; Parlington Hall in Yorkshire and Croxteth Hall Liverpool; Burghley House, Stamford and Moggerhanger Park, Moggerhanger, Bedfordshire.

It was built in 1830, and used to store ice for packing salmon caught in the River Spey before transportation to market in London.

It was created for Samuel Dash in the early 1780s for commercial use before the building of the John Nash crescent was begun in 1806.

This passage was found to be the ice house that had been known to exist on the grounds, but whose location had not been rediscovered until this date.

In summer months, icemen delivered it to residences in ice-wagons; the ice would then be stored in an icebox, which was used much like a modern refrigerator.

Ice merchants diversified to sell groceries and cold beer, serving as early convenience stores and local gathering places.

[18] Southland was not the only company in the Southern United States to develop a convenience-store corporation from an ice business.

[19] By the 1970s, Munford, Inc. was operating a large chain of convenience stores with the name Majik Market (the company was sold in 1988 and filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1990).

[20] In some parts of Texas, especially from San Antonio and the Texas Hill Country down to the Mexican border, ice houses functioned as open-air bars, with the word "icehouse" becoming a colloquialism for an establishment that derives the majority of its income from the sale of cold beer.