Ice House, The Square, Balmacara is a Grade B listed building in the Highland local planning authority area, Scotland. First listed on 25 March 1971.
Ice House, The Square, Balmacara
- WRENN ID
- fading-plaster-fern
- Grade
- B
- Local Planning Authority
- Highland
- Constituency
- Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire MP: Mr Angus MacDonald (LD)
- Country
- Scotland
- Date first listed
- 25 March 1971
- OS grid reference
- NG 805 282
- Coordinates
- 57.29196, -5.64293
- Source
- Historic Environment Scotland listing
Description
This is an early 19th century ice house situated within a roughly U-shaped courtyard, alongside a farmhouse, steading, and associated buildings of later dates. The site is located at Balmacara Farm Square.
The farmhouse is a two-storey, six-bay building, now divided into two dwellings. It is harled and features some original 12-pane sash windows, corniced ridge stacks, and a piended slate roof. Some modern glazing has been introduced.
The steading consists of a two-storey, seven-bay range constructed of whitewashed rubble. A square, central tower rises one stage above the roofline. The lower stage of the tower is faced with honey-comb dressed ashlar, above which is ashlar, with dividing band courses between the two stages. Round-headed doorways, with keystones, are located centrally on both the ground and first floors, the first-floor door being taller and showing evidence of a former hoist mechanism above it. Three blind square flightholes are present on each face of the tower at the upper stage, beneath a wide-eaved pyramidal slate roof topped with a ball finial. Cart bays are located at the rear of the steading, alongside a significantly altered hay barn of a Lochalsh type. A small, vaulted ice house is built into the bank behind the house. The tower does not contain any pigeon accommodation.
The ice house is shown on an Ordnance Survey map of 1872.
Local climate
Ice House, The Square, Balmacara sits in one of the wettest parts of the UK, with an average of 2,130 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 99% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 99% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 41 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 78% of listed buildings. Of these, 28 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.2°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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