Ice House, Bighouse is a Grade B listed building in the Highland local planning authority area, Scotland. First listed on 7 March 1984.
Ice House, Bighouse
- WRENN ID
- fallen-pavement-starling
- Grade
- B
- Local Planning Authority
- Highland
- Constituency
- Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross MP: Jamie Stone (LD)
- Country
- Scotland
- Date first listed
- 7 March 1984
- OS grid reference
- NC 892 649
- Coordinates
- 58.55817, -3.90603
- Source
- Historic Environment Scotland listing
Description
This is an early 19th century ice house, a large, tall cylindrical structure built from rubble and set into a hillside. It features a bowed, projecting lower outer chamber with a central door facing north towards the River Halladale. The roof is conical and covered in turf. A ramp at the rear leads to a wallhead ice chute.
Inside, the outer chamber has a stone flagged floor and a conical shape. The ice house remains in commercial use. It is an unusual example of an ice house due to its form.
Local climate
Ice House, Bighouse sits in one of the wettest parts of the UK, with an average of 1,210 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 92% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 90% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 18 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 83% of listed buildings. Of these, 14 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
Sign in or create a free account to unlock:
- 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
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.