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    Icehouses
    Icehouses
    Icehouses
    Ebook104 pages53 minutes

    Icehouses

    By Tim Buxbaum

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Often hidden away or incorporated into other architectural features, icehouses are a largely forgotten part of our heritage. As winters warmed through the nineteenth century, and supplies of natural ice declined, the development of artificial refrigeration made redundant these curious buildings – often status symbols in themselves – which had been designed to store winter snow and ice into the summer. Icehouses allowed perishables to be preserved, chilled delicacies to be enjoyed, and fevers to be relieved – and on a commercial scale they fed an international trade that carried snow from mountain peaks and ice from frozen lakes to supply the needs of industry, markets and householders. In this illustrated introduction, Tim Buxbaum explains how icehouses developed; how, when and where they were built; and how they operated, including a chapter on icehouses from around the world.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateMay 10, 2014
    ISBN9780747815037
    Icehouses
    Author

    Tim Buxbaum

    Tim Buxbaum is a chartered architect in private practice in Suffolk. This book stems from his interest in garden architecture, which is reflected in his other publications, Scottish Garden Buildings, From Food to Folly, and, for Shire Publications, Scottish Doocots and Pargeting.

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      Book preview

      Icehouses - Tim Buxbaum

      image1

      ICEHOUSES

      Tim Buxbaum

      An architectural ‘pattern-book’ icehouse design from the 1790s has been attributed to the neoclassical architect John Soane.

      SHIRE PUBLICATIONS

      William Kent’s banqueting house at Euston Hall, built directly above the earlier conical icewell, yet seemingly retaining access to it. A more functional icehouse was added later, probably in the nineteenth century, much closer to the hall.

      CONTENTS

      INTRODUCTION

      DESIGN AND APPEARANCE

      OPERATION

      THE FASHIONABLE ICEHOUSE

      COMMERCIAL ICEHOUSES

      ICEHOUSES AROUND THE WORLD

      CONCLUSION

      FURTHER READING

      PLACES TO VISIT

      INTRODUCTION

      BEFORE REFRIGERATORS were invented, snow was brought down from mountaintops to cities in order to cool refreshing drinks. From ancient times it was carried from Mount Etna to Rome, from Mount Bursa to Istanbul, and from the Sierra Nevada to Granada in southern Spain, where the trade continued into the nineteenth century. Snow gatherers led their mules up the mountains on summer afternoons, filled their panniers by night and returned to the city before sunrise to sell through the heat of the day. In places where the supply of snow was less reliable, it was collected, compacted and sheltered in sufficient quantities to last throughout the year, or even several years. Most ancient civilisations did this, including the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and Chinese; often it involved filling a pit with snow or ice, then covering it with branches and straw.

      Who can say when the courtesy of cooled drinks arrived in Britain? Perhaps the Medieval Warm Period stimulated a demand for ice in summer, or maybe the Little Ice Age, which followed, encouraged the storage of ice by generating larger quantities. The climate chilled noticeably through the fifteenth century, affecting the way people lived. Many cold winters were recorded between 1650 and 1850 (1708 was possibly Europe’s coldest) and then temperatures rose. It is tempting to correlate the history of icehouses with climatic change, but that is simplistic; these buildings also track political stability, wealth and power. In Britain, substantial icehouses were symbols of luxury, and thus a low priority at times of unrest. Humbler structures are not recorded, and early techniques of ice storage may have been forgotten during such upheavals as the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the Civil War.

      Spanish neveros (snow gatherers) cut a layer of ice from the chamber and lift it by bucket and pulley to ground level, where it is loaded into a mule’s panniers for overnight transport to market.

      At a similar elevation to Ben Nevis, the stone-ribbed crown of the huge Cava Arquejada icehouse probably supported a roof covering, but could have been a symbolic openwork marker in the mountains; the fragile finial is now cradled in timber.

      At Burton Manor, a tunnel was cut into the bedrock c. 1805 for the storage of ice harvested from Burton Mere, which was wrapped in straw. When the house was remodelled, blocks of ice were delivered by commercial suppliers direct to the larders.

      There are more man-made caves in the soft sandstone below Nottingham than anywhere else in Britain. This chamber beneath the Broadmarsh Shopping Centre, is one of several that may have been used for storing ice.

      In Mediterranean Europe, stone structures were built before 1500 to store snow for palaces, abbeys, monasteries and castles, serving nobility, refreshing pilgrims, providing income and assisting the sick. Less permanent structures were also built. Snow became ‘a monopoly that produces a revenue to the Pope’, and from 1596 to 1855 taxes from the sale of snow in Mexico went to the King of Spain.

      In medieval Britain, ice could have been collected from frozen fishponds, moats and millponds, and used to chill wine imported from Gascony from the fourteenth century. As the merchant John Frampton observed in 1580, ice is ‘used in the courts of kings, princes, great men, lords and common people residing there’. Frampton’s Elizabethan readers knew that chilled water was beneficial against hot humours and would improve a glass of wine. In hot weather, iced plums, apples, cherries and melons were particularly refreshing, as were cold meats. Of course, the ice had to be selected with care, lest it be corrupted by ‘rotten plantes, naughtie

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