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 Ice
House entrance - currently open
to the public one day in the year
Long before the advent of the refrigerator,
ice was available in Britain throughout the year. This was
not man made ice, but natural ice taken in the winter from
frozen streams, ponds and lakes and stored so that in summer
it could be used for preserving foods, cooling drinks and
for medicinal purposes.
Most ice houses were built in the grounds of
country mansions and were mainly underground masonry chambers,
usually with some form of drainage in the base and a door
at the side.
Ice was carted from a local source in large
blocks, which were lowered into the Ice Well, rammed in to
a solid block of ice and surrounded by insulating layers of
straw, which together with the masonry walls and its earth
covering and possible shade from nearby trees, provided sufficient
protection from climatic changes to preserve the ice all year.
The ice house would have been sealed until the
summer months, when the ice would have been removed as required.
In the autumn the house was emptied, cleaned out and refilled.
The example of this kind of construction situated
at Bedale, can be found within a small copse in the South
West corner of Bedale Hall Park and is still in the ownership
of Sir Henry Beresford Peirse, whose forebears had it constructed.
Research into Peirse archives reveal the existence of the
Ice House as early as 1778 (likely architect-John Carr of
York).
The Ice House is mainly of brick construction,
the large domed Well being entirely of brick and measuring some
12ft in diameter and 20ft deep. The passage is 17ft long, the
walls are of cobbled construction capped with an arched brick
roof and a cobbled floor,the inner and outer doors have brick
styles that held the door frames. These were often set at a
slight slope to enable the doors to close on their own to exclude
the air.
Unlike many others of the period the Ice
House at Bedale had no definitive drainage system, instead the
bottom was found to contain a deep layer of loosely packed cobbles,
through which the melted water would have drained. Above this
there appears to have been a large beam which spanned the diameter
of the Well, lodged in a brick support in the outer wall, supported
on a brick plinth in the centre and resting in a brick support
in the opposite wall. From the pattern of the brickwork this
could also have supported wooden joists over which a timber
planked floor could have been placed.
It is not recorded when the building was last
used as an ice store but it was brought back in to use in
1939/40 when the hall and surrounding parkland were occupied
by the military for the duration of the war. At this time
the outer door was altered and a cellar type opening was fitted.
After their departure in 1948 the building remained empty
and became susceptible to misuse and vandalism.
During the late 1950's and the 60's the administrators
of the Bedale markets used the Ice House to dispose of and
incinerate the market waste, this together with the many fires
started by vandals over the years, accounts for the smoke
damage which is evident on the brickwork. However for all
this in 1992 English Heritage gave the building a Grade 11
listing in its own right and Sir Henry Peirse agreed to Bedale
District Heritage Trusts request to add the Ice House to the
towns Heritage Trail.
After many unsuccessful attempts to make
the building secure the Trust was given planning consent to
remove the wartime construction and reinstate the entrance and
outer door. During the autumn, winter and spring of 1994/95
Trust members and volunteers removed almost a metre of accumulated
rubbish and debris from the entrance and passage. They then
raised almost 2 metres of debris from the bottom of the Ice
Well after first installing a temporary lighting system.
It is hoped the lighting will be replaced
by a more permanent system to enable the Trust to give access
to the public in the form of organised guided tours for interested
groups and parties and the occasional open days. Eventually,
for educational purposes, it is hoped to reconstruct the passage
doorway together with the door at the entrance to the Ice Well
and possibly do a sectionalised reconstruction of the flooring
at the bottom of the Well.
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