Icehouse

An icehouse is a building built to keep ice frozen through the warmer months, the principal way of preserving food and chilling drinks before mechanical refrigeration existed. Ice cut from a lake or river in winter was carried to the icehouse and packed in insulation, often straw or sawdust, where it could stay frozen for months, sometimes until the following winter ice was ready to replace it. The type took different forms in different places: British icehouses were commonly brick lined, domed structures built mostly underground, Persian yakhchals rose in a distinctive cone shape above a subterranean storage chamber, and some icehouses were simply man made underground chambers dug near a natural source of winter ice. At the height of the commercial ice trade, a single large icehouse could hold thousands of tons of ice.