The ice house is located in the grounds of Rode Hall, an 18th century country house on Church Lane in Scholar Green.
Rode Hall is an early 18th century country house set in extensive grounds and is Grade II* listed. (
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The Rode Hall Estate has been in the ownership of the Wilbraham family since 1669.
"When Roger Wilbraham (1623 -1707) purchased the Rode estate for £2,400 in 1669, its manor-house was probably half-timbered, like nearby Little Moreton Hall. Today, nothing remains of that original building. Instead stands a fine, redbrick, Georgian country house: Rode Hall. On approaching, it becomes apparent that this handsome home is, in effect, two houses in one, and that the substantial, porticoed building is a later second house attached to a smaller, now wisteria-clad, first house." (
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Ice houses were man-made structures used to store food before before the invention of refrigerators. Ice and snow was collected from frozen lakes and ponds during the winter months and compacted in the ice house, that was often insulation with straw or sawdust.
Only wealthy landowners could afford to have an ice house built. They were usually built under ground, into rock or built at ground level and then covered with earth to aid insulation.
Ice houses varied in size shape, and design, but all featured a deep chamber for the ice, and usually with a soak way to deal with the melted ice, a corridor leading from the outside, mostly brick-lined with one or more connecting doors and a domed brick-lined ceiling.
The ice houses would usually be positioned facing north to keep the structure as cold as possible. (
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The Grade II listed ice house, located in the garden, is built in brick and covered in earth. A tunnel-vaulted passage leads into a circular chamber with a domed roof.
The description given by Historic England reads as follows;
"ODD RODE C.P. (Off) CHURCH LANE SJ 85 NW Scholar Green
7/75 Icehouse at Rode Hall 1967 GV II
Icehouse. C18 or C19. Red brick covered with earth. Circular chamber with domed roof and dished floor approached by a tunnel-vaulted passage. The roof has partially collapsed.
Listing NGR: SJ8184457198"
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Information given on a poster by the ice house reads as follows;
The Ice House"The first ice house in England was built in 1660 in Green Park, London after Charles 2 returned from exile in France. He had been impressed by the use of ice at the court of Louis X1V.
The ice house at Rode is contemporary with the Queen Anne wing of 1705 when the beautiful mellow red bricks which match this house were made on site.
The winters in those days were reliably bitter as Europe had a mini ice age in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Days were set aside for the workforce at Rode to clean and prepare the site and bring up the blocks of ice cut from the lake. It was placed in the ice house and packed with layers of straw.
The ice house was accessed originally by a right angled passage to keep out the heat and for the same reason trees were often planted nearby for shade. You can still see the drain at the bottom of the structure. The ice was of course used in the kitchen for exotic ices and confections for the table.
The building fell into disrepair and all that could be seen in the early 1960s was a mound with a hole at the top fortified with some barbed wire. It was restored in the early 1980s by Mr Allport, a master bricklayer who also worked on the kitchen garden walls."
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