Ice House At Wycombe Abbey

SU 8692 HIGH WYCOMBE

5/10005 Ice House at Wycombe Abbey

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.

Listing NGR: SU8655192356