More information : Ice house at Audley End Park. The ice house was built 1835-36 to replace an earlier ice house. The building was constructed of red brick in a variant English bond, with a narrow central doorway, which is blocked as of 2015. The ice house has a slate roof.
An undated sketch of the structure gives the ice pit as being 14 feet in diameter and 12 feet deep, reducing to 6 feet in diameter at the bottom. The lowest section was lined with bricks, but the conical pit itself was not. The top of the pit is surrounded by a 3ft wide walkway. The external wall was designed to be 2-3 feet deep. The sketch specifies that the roof was to be thatched, but estate accounts from October 1836 report the roof to be slated.(1) |