Ice Well is a Grade II listed building in the Bromley local planning authority area, England. First listed on 21 April 1993. Icehouse.
Ice Well
- WRENN ID
- grim-pavement-solstice
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- Bromley
- Constituency
- Orpington MP: Gareth Bacon (Con)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 21 April 1993
- Type
- Icehouse
- Address
- Ice Well, Shire Lane
- OS grid reference
- TQ 445 634
- Coordinates
- 51.35184, 0.07501
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
The Ice Well is an icehouse built around 1850, located off Shire Lane in the High Elms Estate. It features a cambered brick entrance that is cemented over and visible above ground. Inside, there is a curved brick passageway leading to a large flask-shaped main chamber. At the top of the chamber, there is a small access point, and at the base, a drain for melt water. A later rectangular chamber was added off the passageway for food storage. The icehouse was designed to maintain a consistently low temperature throughout the year, with a gated entrance surrounded by yew trees to help extract warmer air. The main chamber could store approximately 2 tons, or 1,000 cubic feet, of ice. While it is unclear where the ice originated, there are several nearby lakes, and during the second half of the 19th century, there was a trade in ice from the Baltic, which could have been delivered in cartloads of 2-cubic-foot blocks and stored in layers with straw or hessian in between. This icehouse is an exceptionally large and complete example of its kind.
Local climate
Ice Well sits in a drier-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 720 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 83% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 86% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 32 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 59% of listed buildings. Of these, 15 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
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- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
- No related consent applications matched
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
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