Ice Houses
Between 1729 and c.1845 many improvements were made to the Rufford estate. For example; the addition of the bath house, the creation of the lake and mill buildings, the construction of the brewhouse, water tower and coach house and also the addition of five ice houses.
Although Rufford Abbey once boasted five ice houses, only two remain today. All were constructed around 1820, when the estate was owned by John Lumley-Savile, 8th Earl of Scarbrough (1788–1856). The five ice houses are located near Rufford lake, created c1750; for the simple reason that the movement of ice from its source was easier.
Not all of Rufford’s ice houses faced north, as accessibility and the logistics of the ice may have meant that the builders found it easier to place the doorways facing the lake rather than northerly. It is believed that ice was mainly taken from Blackwalk Pond, which was drained to make way for housing in the 20th century. Blackwalk Pond was used to serve the abbey in Rufford's monastic era, and later supplied water to Rufford's water tower and brewhouse, which remain on site today.
Read more about this topic: Rufford Abbey
Famous quotes containing the words ice and/or houses:
“I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and bad dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“People’s backyards are much more interesting than their front gardens, and houses that back on to railways are public benefactors.”
—Sir John Betjeman (1906–1984)