Cold Storage and Warm Histories: Britain's Ice Houses

Over the coming months, Levrant will explore Britain's historic building typologies - how they evolved, adapted, and survived in a world of constant redevelopment. We begin with a small but remarkable structure: the ice house.

At Hill Rise in Richmond, Surrey, our team is working to restore a long-forgotten mid-nineteenth-century example, which will soon be reborn as part of a wine bar. The once-dark chamber, filled for decades with rubble, will find new life as a space that once preserved ice for a local dairy. The Grade II-listed terrace, built around 1853 by William Holloway, hides the domed brick vault - 6.5 metres deep, damp and echoing - typical of its kind. Excavation has revealed fine brickwork, a ventilation oculus, and traces of the original sump and drainage system.

Ice houses like this are more common than many realise. Hidden beneath gardens and parks across Britain, they were once essential to daily life, storing ice collected in winter for use throughout the year. Beyond their practical origins, they hold a quiet fascination: part industrial artefact, part sculpture, their domed forms seem both functional and beautiful.

Though the surviving examples mostly date from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the concept is ancient. Archaeological evidence from China shows 'ice pits' used for cooling food as early as 700 BC, and written records suggest they existed much earlier. Britain's first recorded ‘modern’ ice house was built for James I at Greenwich in 1619, inspired by Italian precedents. Typically, these were underground brick or stone chambers, circular in plan with thick walls to retain cold and a drain to remove meltwater. Properly packed, ice could last for well over a year.

By the late 1700s, ice houses had become fashionable symbols of refinement. Global trade and changing tastes created a growing demand for frozen delicacies - iced fruits, sorbets, and elaborate moulded desserts. Grand estates built their own ice houses beside lakes, while cities such as London saw merchants and fishmongers follow suit. The arrival of the railways in the nineteenth century expanded the trade: ice was imported from Norway and New England, packed in sawdust, and stored in great urban depots like Gatti's Ice House at King's Cross, now part of the London Canal Museum.

Mechanical refrigeration eventually rendered the ice house obsolete. Some became air-raid shelters; others decayed quietly underground. The Richmond example is one of the fortunate few to find a new purpose. As it returns to life - its brickwork conserved, its story re-told - it reminds us how even the most functional buildings can embody the ingenuity and endurance of their time.