Building record 0527400000 - ICE HOUSE, WYCOMBE ABBEY GROUNDS

Dimensions - Length 0600 cm Height 0250
Plan Form - CIRCULAR
ARTIFICIAL CAVE FILLED IN WINTER WITH ICE. FEATURE INTRODUCED BY CAPABILITY BROWN. AIR RAID SHELTER DURING WAR (B1).
CURVED, FLINT-FACED FACADE WITH GOTHIC ARCH AS ENTRANCE. ENTRANCE BRICKED UP. SHAPE OF MOUND SUGGESTS CIRCULAR PLAN. PARTLY LANDSCAPED INTO HILL (B2).
Documentary references to work carried out on icehouse in 1760 (B3).
Grade II. Ice house with screen wall. Ice house probably 1764 by Capability Brown for the Earl of Shelburne; screen wall probably c1804 by James Wyatt for Lord Carrington. Earth-covered brick-built ice house with screen wall of flint with Denner Hill stone centrepiece. Central four-centre-arched entrance, bricked up and covered by board door of c1985; archway and flanking piers of stone with galleted joints, the piers having chamfered plinths and capstones; flint parapet over door with chamfered stone off-set and coping. Flanking walls, slightly curved, have shallow, pointed-arched niches and end-piers with pyramidal finials, all in flint, right-hand pier missing upper part. The ice house is said to have a brick-lined tunnel leading to a chamber with a domed vault, the pit filled in with chalk. A mid-C18 ice house with an unusual and attractive early-C19 screen wall. Source: K A Walpole, From one generation to another (Cox & Wyman), p.4. Sylvia P Beaumont & Susan Poaf, The ice-houses of Britain, 1990, p.211 -212 (B4).