Ice-House, Preston Hall

This is a late 18th century icehouse, a free-standing cup and dome structure situated within the parkland of Preston Hall. It has a single wing wall. The exterior is a combination of lime rendering, ashlar long and short quoins, sills and copes, rubble sandstone walls, and a brick interior.

The northeast (principal) elevation features a boarded timber door within a plain entrance doorway set in a curved wall with flat copes. The right-hand wall sinks into the natural hillside, while the left-hand wall ends abruptly, adjoined by a low rubble and brick wing wall with flat copes set at a ninety-degree angle. The entire structure is concealed by an artificial, turfed earth mound with trees on top.

Inside, a passageway leads to an inner doorway with a sloped lintel, beyond which is a domed brick chamber.

The icehouse was sited near the east bank of the Tyne Water, a typical location for icehouses of the late 18th century, and faces north to maximise coolness. It sits at the top of a bank to aid drainage, to the west of the walled garden. Part of a group of parkland structures associated with Preston Hall (a mansion rebuilt on the site of an earlier house), the icehouse is a characteristic example of its type found in the Lothians. It was used to store foodstuffs placed on a straw floor over packed ice. This type of construction fell out of favour by the 19th century, when ice could be imported from America and Scandinavia. When packed with ice, it was believed the structure could remain cool for up to three years.

Historic records, including an estate plan by Thomas Carfrae (1842), parish histories, and publications on icehouses, provide further detail.