Building record MDR1349 - Icehouse, The Rookery, Ashford-in-the-Water

This is a small domestic brick-built ice house with a good limestone façade. The chamber is 2.4m high and there is no well. The ice house is built into the side of a low earthen bank, with the entrance facing south to the River Wye, close by. The roof is covered in dense ivy and ferns (in 1990)(1-3). The ice house is located on the bank of the River Wye and only 4ft (1.2m) above it, facing south-east onto the river. It consists of a passage including two doors opening into a chamber 3m x 2m and 2.4m high, and has a barrel-vaulted roof with a 0.6m square chute hole. It is earth-covered and well protected by trees. Internally it is built of brick, but the façade to the river is of pleasantly rusticated arched stonework. It was visited and surveyed by R Perkins in 1984. (4, 5)